Built in 1863 for the Reverend Henry Bull, the Borely Rectory now has the reputation as The Most Haunted House in England. In fact, when a later owner, Capt. W. H. Gregson addressed an envelope with those words and mailed it from overseas, it arrived at his home with no problem.

According to legend, a monk and a num who resided in the Rectory ran off together, but were soon apprehended. The monk was Summarily executed, the nun was walled up and allowed to starve to death. (The picture to the left shows Gregson standing outside of this room.) Sightings of their ghosts persist to this day.

The most famous residents of Borely Rectory, excluding the ghosts themselves, were the Reverend Lionel Foyster and his wife Marianne. The Foysters moved into the rectory on Oct. 16, 1930, and departed exactly five years later after numerous poltergeist and other paranormal events.
Mrs. Foyster was the target of most of the ghostly activity, and the subject of various writings on the walls and scraps of paper around the building. Examples are pictured above, below, and to the left. The evening after Mrs. Foyster wrote the question "What do you want?" an answer was scrawled below--"rest."

Borley Rectory was consumed by fire in 1939, but the haunting persisted. Below is a photo of the ruins, taken April 5, 1944, and published in Life magazine September 22, 1947. Off center and to the right, you can see a white object, purportedly a brick, hovering in a doorway.

Click here for a more thorough history of Borely Rectory and many photos which its creator (the son of Marianne Foyster) jealously guards.

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