(host) A nun walks across a churchyard and vanishes.

Footsteps echo through empty rooms.

A bell rings even though it's been disconnected.

Messages appear on the walls: "Marianne, please help get."

Nobody knows who wrote it.

Dozens of witnesses swear these events happened at Borley Rectory, known as the most haunted house in England.

Stories continued for decades.

Then investigators arrived carrying notebooks and a healthy sense of skepticism.

They conducted interviews and overnight vigils, rigged cameras took temperature readings and published reports.

The more I dug into it, the more stories piled up-- different families, investigations, firsthand accounts, and decades of eerie events that all seemed to build on each other.

This was not only the most haunted house in England; it may have been the birth of modern ghost hunting as we know it.

[page rustles and tears] Okay, Borley Rectory is not the kind of haunting you can explain with one ghost story.

Let's go back to the beginning.

We'll call this the Bull Period.

Borley Rectory was constructed in 1862 by Reverend Henry Bull, who had been appointed the rector of Borley Church in Essex.

The parish at Borley existed in some form dating back to about the 11th century.

Bull's construction on the property was sprawling and eccentric.

Over the years, the house Borley Rectory saw numerous additions and renovations, many of which were needed to house Bull's ever-growing family.

He and his wife had 14 children.

Fourteen.

The hauntings at Borley began soon after the Bulls moved in.

[eerie music] The most famous early report centered on a ghostly nun.

Several visitors to the rectory saw ghostly apparitions, and one visitor in particular said he saw the mysterious nun several times, gliding silently across the rectory grounds.

When he mentioned it to Reverend Bull's son, Harry, Harry confirmed he had seen the same apparition.

On July 28th, 1900, the story became even harder to dismiss.

Three of Bull's daughters witnessed the figure of a nun roughly 40 yards from the house.

They said the figure looked solid, but they couldn't see her face.

They reported the sighting to a fourth sister who bravely approached the woman to try to speak with her, only for the woman to vanish.

Later interviews suggested that Mrs.

Bull may have encountered this same figure years earlier, so by the time the story began spreading in the news decades later, the mysterious nun was already a reoccurring presence attached to the rectory.

The nun sightings were connected to a much older piece of local folklore.

According to the legend, a young nun in training fell in love with a monk from a monastery that supposedly existed at Borley.

It was said that the two lovers met in secret through an underground tunnel system and planned to run away together, but they were caught, and the punishment was brutal.

For abandoning their religious orders, the penalty was death.

The monk was hanged, and the nun was said to have been sealed inside the walls of the nunnery and left to die.

Legend has it that the figure lurking the rectory grounds was her restless spirit searching for her lover.

Some said that a spectral version of the horses and carriage meant to carry them off on their ill-fated journey also haunted the rectory.

And as all good ghost stories with horses seem to inevitably become, in some of these accounts, the nun, driver, and even the horses are headless.

The problem is there doesn't seem to be much evidence for any of this.

After some research, I found this map, which details all the medieval monasteries of England from around the time this alleged forbidden romance occurred.

Nothing in the Borley area.

While nothing supports that the monastery ever existed at Borley, the story gave the apparition something powerful, an origin story.

But the ghostly nun wasn't the only supernatural presence on the property.

Henry Bull's daughter Ethel woke one night to find an apparition standing over her bed.

It was the figure of an old man dressed in old-fashioned clothing and a tall hat.

His son, Henry Jr., more commonly referred to as Harry, who became a reverend and took on the property after Henry passed in 1892, had his fair share of paranormal encounters.

Harry even built a summer house to allegedly better see the nun making her ghostly rounds across the lawn, which was apparently one of his favorite pastimes.

Harry was an eccentric man who leaned into the supernatural events on the property.

He would do things like promise the family he would return as a ghost and that they would know his spirit was around because he would throw mothballs.

According to later accounts, he kept his promise.

Harry remained caretaker of the property until he died in 1927.

He died in the blue room, same as his father, a first-floor bedroom where the man with the hat was seen frequently.

After the Bull family's long chapter as overseers of Borley ended, Reverend Guy Eric Smith became the new rector in October 1928-- shout out spooky month.

Reverend Smith and his wife arrived at Borley after living in India, and they knew very little about the rectory, let alone its haunted reputation, at first.

Locals quickly brought them up to speed.

By 1928, the rectory was in a state of disrepair, so Reverend Smith and his family lived in a nearby property.

As caretakers, the Smiths would frequent the rectory, and things started getting weird pretty much right away.

First, Mrs.

Smith found a human skull wrapped in paper in the library.

They buried it in the churchyard, but that didn't seem to silence any spirits.

Reverend Smith began to hear strange whispers that would follow him around the house.

Once, he distinctly heard a voice say, "Don't, Carlos."

Carlos was a family nickname for Reverend Henry Bull.

The family saw lights in unoccupied windows and heard footsteps in empty hallways.

Eventually, the activity became disturbing enough that Reverend Smith reached out for help.

He wrote to "The Daily Mirror" hoping they could put him in touch with the Society for Psychical Research.

Founded in 1882, the Society for Psychical Research was a nonprofit organization that used scientific methods to investigate paranormal and preternatural phenomena.

This was a big shift from the spiritualism that had become popular in the 1800s.

Many people believed they could communicate with the dead through seances, often led by paid mediums, but the Society for Psychical Research was trying to approach the supernatural in a different way.

They weren't just trying to contact spirits; they wanted to interview witnesses, collect evidence, and test whether any paranormal activity was happening.

Instead of sending on the letter to the society, however, the newspaper published it and sent a reporter.

"The Daily Mirror" dispatched both a reporter and a photographer who posted up at the rectory for a week.

By the end of the week, they began to take Reverend Smith's claims seriously.

They crafted an article that told the world about the strange phenomena at Borley Rectory.

The article ran on June 10th, 1929, and turned Borley from a local ghost story into a national mystery.

Two days later, London's "Daily Mirror" printed a story in which a former maid at Borley Rectory, Mrs.

Mayford, claimed to have seen a figure of a nun dressed all in black haunting the grounds.

Mrs.

Mayford, who grew up in the area, even said that her grandparents told stories of the haunted rectory.

She quit after only one month because, she stated, "The place was so weird."

After the article ran, the newspaper arranged for Harry Price to visit the house.

At the time, Price was one of Britain's best-known paranormal researchers, made famous for his investigations into the strange and supernatural.

And with Price, Borley became something else, a test case for ghost hunters.

Sorry, ghost investigators.

Now enter the Investigation Period.

Price had a background as a trained magician.

He was especially good at spotting tricks, exposing mediums who were frauds and debunking doctored spirit photographs, but he wasn't purely a skeptic.

Price believed some cases were worth taking seriously, and he approached Borley as a mystery that needed to be tested, documented, and investigated.

He presented his investigations as psychical research and sought documentable evidence and accounts for events witnessed by multiple individuals.

He was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, and he approached the investigation with a methodical, scientific mind.

[sprightly music] A couple of hundred years earlier, in the 17th century, a Puritan vicar named Joseph Glanvill wrote a series of books that explored supernatural findings, mixing religious ideology with experimental science.

He laid a lot of the groundwork for Price, who used some of these basic principles as a foundation, but upped the game by introducing things like audio recordings, eyewitnesses, and photography.

On June 12th, 1929, Price arrived at Borley Rectory for the first time.

He was careful to be objective and methodical, sealing the doors and windows of the upper story to prevent outside contamination, human or environmental, but almost immediately, paranormal events returned, but this time was different.

[dramatic music] The Smiths reported strange sounds, but with Price in the house, the activity became physical.

Stones, keys, mothballs-- thanks, Harry-- and other objects were thrown from seemingly nowhere.

A vase flew through the air.

Strange tapping sounds seemed to come from the frame of a mirror.

Price later called the visit "16 hours of thrills."

After Price's initial investigation, the Borley haunting became a national headline.

About a month later, Reverend Smith and his wife packed up and left Borley Rectory for good.

The next chapter began in October 1930 when Reverend Lionel Foyster became the new rector.

Under the Foysters, the hauntings seemed to increase in intensity.

Reverend Foyster started keeping a diary to record the strange events at Borley.

One of the more bizarre stories he recorded involved three wine bottles at a dinner party.

Foyster said the first bottle flew across the room and smashed into the chair where his wife, Marianne, had been sitting.

The second then crashed near a guest chair.

And finally, a third bottle was said to hang in midair, appearing to transform into a mushroom before changing back into a bottle -before shattering.

-[bottle smashes] More odd events followed, and they became harder to ignore.

Objects moved without explanation.

-Glasses shattered.

-[glass smashing] Rocks were thrown through windows.

Household items disappeared and reappeared in strange places, but the most unsettling events were the messages that began appearing on the walls.

These weren't long, clear sentences.

They were fragmented, cryptic, messy, and strange, almost like someone was struggling to communicate.

Some looked like broken words or pleas.

Others seemed to be directed at Marianne herself.

The most famous message read, "Marianne, please help get."

Later versions of the story often complete that thought as, "Marianne, please help me get out."

This was more than flying objects or random noises.

It implied someone was trapped.

Was it the nun or something else?

The messages seemed to continue to focus on Marianne.

When Price returned to Borley in 1931, he was a little more skeptical.

Price came back to the rectory at the Foysters' insistence.

Objects were reportedly thrown down the stairs, and a few other odd events occurred, but this visit felt different.

Price suspected Marianne was faking at least some of the activity.

At one point, she was mysteriously locked in her bedroom, but Price and his colleagues were so unimpressed they didn't even take notes as they normally would during an investigation.

Media coverage and public interest in the rectory grew, and Price's star continued to rise.

[mysterious music] In 1936, Price did a live radio broadcast from a supposedly haunted house for the BBC.

For the first time, people curious about the supernatural didn't have to pay money to attend a seance or event in the hopes of encountering the paranormal.

They could follow the mystery from home.

That shift helped pave the way for the ghost-hunting shows, podcasts, live streams, and online investigations we see today.

After five years, the Foysters left the rectory due to a combination of factors.

The vacancy provided the perfect opening for Price to conduct an in-depth investigation.

[inquisitive music] In May 1937, Price recruited a team.

Through an advertisement in "The Times" and follow-up interviews, Price assembled 48 official observers, many of them students.

He then rented Borley Rectory for a year, during which time his team would watch, record, and report anything strange.

Price and his colleagues documented many strange occurrences.

The servant's call bells and the front doorbell would ring inexplicably even after their wires were cut.

Strange rapping sounds, footsteps, and whispering were heard.

A candlestick was tossed down the stairs.

Bottles and stones hurled through the air.

Lights would appear in the windows.

Hot coals would materialize and start fires.

Often, these events were witnessed by multiple individuals, exactly what Price's methodology was looking for.

One method they used was called planchette writing.

A planchette is a small board or device used in seances.

People lightly place their fingers on it, and it is believed to move on its own, guiding a pencil or pointer to spell out messages.

In October of 1937, investigators on Price's team began conducting planchette writing sessions inside Borley Rectory.

They asked direct questions and recorded the answers that came back.

The transcripts are messy and fragmented as again and again the investigators ask, "Is anyone there?

Who are you?

Can you give us proof?

Where should we look?"

Some of the answers, though, were strangely specific.

When they asked, "No questions asked," the response came back, "Marianne"; "Can you tell me when you passed over?"

"1667."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Yes."

"Was there a monastery here?"

"Yes."

"Was there a nunnery here?"

"Yes."

"What happened to you?"

"I died."

"How?"

"Murdered."

"By who?"

"Henry."

"What is your name?"

"Marr."

"Were you a nun?"

"Yes."

"Were you buried here?"

"Yes."

When the investigators wrote back to the writing on the walls, sometimes they received answers.

However, ghostly figures were only glimpsed a handful of times.

In all cases, it was either the nun or an apparition of Reverend Harry.

I guess he kept his promise.

By 1938, the hauntings had even generated a named ghost.

[inquisitive music] During one reported planchette seance in London, one of Price's associates contacted a spirit named Marie Lairre, described as a French nun who had been murdered near the rectory.

Suddenly, the old nun legend had a name, a motive, and a possible explanation for the wall message "Marianne, please help me get out."

The same scene also produced another strange finding that a spirit named Sunex Amures supposedly predicted the rectory would burn.

The date was wrong, but when the house did burn the following year, that prediction became another eerie thread people could weave back into the legend.

The fascination with the Borley Rectory seemed to never end, not even in 1939, when the structure burned to the ground.

[stirring music] All of the reports of the fire I found mention the house's haunted reputation.

One article reports the cause of the fire as an upset oil lamp, but not everyone believed it was an accident.

Some blamed the supernatural.

While the house was set ablaze, witnesses spotted a young woman wandering inside the building, staring out the windows as the structure burned around her.

After the fire, people working on the property continued to see apparitions.

On one particular night in March of 1939, a gardener heard the phantom sounds of horses trotting down the hill.

The same gardener claimed to see mysterious lights in the windows of the rectory, even after the fire left it a burned-out shell.

With the public hooked on these stories, Borley locals took the opportunity to turn a haunted history into public ghost tours and seance events.

Price also understood that Borley had become more than a haunting.

He hosted a Ghost Club event on the grounds of the ruined rectory with the proceeds going to the Borley Church Fund.

[pensive music] The Borley Rectory is an early example of how supposed haunted houses can contribute to a community's popularity and financial success.

For years, papers perpetuated the stories of the nun, the other hauntings, and the headless horsemen.

The legends of the ghosts changed, but that didn't stop articles from declaring Borley Rectory a worldwide place of interest.

This became even more true with the publication of Price's book, "The Most Haunted House in England," which gave detailed accounts of his methods of investigation, the results of the various tests of his year at the rectory, and drawings of the property.

Price's heavy reliance on technology and collectible scientific data, which was emphasized in the book, distinguished the field.

Constant news coverage of the supernatural events and Price's year-long residency kept Borley Rectory in the public's imagination and introduced a broader audience to paranormal investigation.

If you've ever seen a ghost hunting show, and of course you have, this probably feels familiar-- a haunted location, a team of investigators, witness testimony, cameras, audio recorders, overnight vigils, attempts to communicate, and a final analysis of whether the evidence proves anything.

Borley helped popularize that format long before it became entertainment.

By 1944, what remained of the rectory had been sold and demolition completed.

After the demolition, the ghosts seemed to transfer their efforts to the buildings surrounding the old rectory, the church, and a cottage on the property.

You can't get rid of the most haunted house in England that easily.

Even after the demolition, people still visited, looking for the wandering nun or to hear a phantom bell.

The legend outlived the structure, but not all the stories were positive ones, which brings us to the Debunking Period.

In January 1956, the Society for Psychical Research published its own book on the haunting of Borley Rectory.

The world was curious to know what a respected scientific organization had to say about England's most haunted house, and some were likely a bit disappointed.

"The Haunting of Borley Rectory" concluded that all but one or two of the reported incidents at Borley were totally unfounded.

Citing the power of suggestion, pranks, and misinterpretation of ordinary events, they basically debunked the whole thing.

In the following decade, other publications, like Trevor Hall's book "New Light on Old Ghosts," doubled down on the falsehood of the Borley haunting and other famous cases.

There was even claims that Price himself was behind some of the events.

Whether that was for fun or for more nefarious purposes is still debated.

But even if Borley wasn't truly haunted, it still changed how hauntings were investigated, publicized, and argued about.

The debunking didn't end ghost hunting.

In some ways, it became part of the format.

Every modern ghost hunt still depends on the same elements that Borley made famous-- believer versus skeptic and evidence versus hoax.

Given advances in technology, scientific understanding, media expansion, it's not that surprising that skeptics might have a bit of a logical advantage, but that doesn't mean people aren't still gripped with a fascination with all things paranormal and a healthy dose of fear.

And the rise of psychological horror, both in literature and on screen, keeps investigations into haunts like Borley Rectory captivating.

Ghost hunting was gaining popularity, as well.

Andrew Green's "Practical Guide" to ghost hunting and Hans Holzer's popular books on the paranormal further enticed anyone with the right equipment to try their hand at ghost hunting.

In 1975, a BBC program called "The Ghost Hunters" focused on the Borley case.

The rectory itself had been demolished for 30 years, but the story was still strong enough to bring cameras, psychic researchers, and a late-night investigation at nearby Borley Church.

One of the people interviewed was Peter Underwood, a major British ghost hunter who spent years researching Borley, helping keep the case alive for a new generation.

But even as Borley was finding new life on television, Harry Price's reputation was becoming more complicated.

In 1978, Trevor Hall's "Search for Harry Price" shifted the conversation again.

Hall devoted significant attention to discrediting Price and his research.

Newspapers began describing Price as a fraud.

That was a long way from his earlier reputation as a credible paranormal investigator.

But the interest in paranormal activity and ghost hunting never wavered.

By the late 20th century, the basic ingredients were all there.

Ghost hunting meant haunted locations, amateur investigators, equipment guidebooks, tours, and audiences eager to decide for themselves.

Borley had become a template for investigating the paranormal.

The turn of the century brought us to where we are now, the Virtual Paranormal Tourism Period.

The 21st century brought the couch version, people who can experience hunts on television, YouTube, and TikTok.

There are entire Reddit forums dedicated to the best techniques for ghost hunting.

There are even smartphone apps to help you out.

It's dark tourism for the digital age.

Borley Rectory may or may not have been haunted, but the way people investigated it, argued about it, and tried to debunk it, helped create the modern ghost hunt.

The house is gone, but its spirit will always be with us.

And he approached the investigation with a methodog... A method-methodical.

The debunk... That sounds... I said "over" weird.

When Price returned to Borley... Oh, hold on, we gotta change this.

A bit of a logical advantage, but that... I have to do it again: "a bit of a logical advantage."

[sighs] They basically debunked the whole... But that sentence is terrible.

[crew member laughs] Oh, my god.