Considerations of space will not allow all of the allegations made in HBR to be dealt with in detail.  Some of them are very trivial, but even trivial allegations may require a great deal of space to refute them.  The allegations dealt with in this chapter have been chosen because they are comparatively clear-cut and can be answered briefly.  It is not claimed that they are a typical cross-section.

Almost at the beginning of HBR where the effect of unanswered allegations on the attitude of readers is likely to be greatest, the authors write as follows (HBR, p.19):

Perhaps the most striking example of exaggeration, however, is demonstrated by an incident where we have been able to compare Price's published account with his own contemporary notes.  On p. 48 of MHH Price says:

'One day Harry [Bull] was in the garden with his retriever "Juvenal", when the dog suddenly started howling and cowering with fright.  Looking in the direction at which the dog was "pointing", the Rector saw the legs of a figure, the upper part of which was apparently hidden by some fruit trees.  The legs moved, and when they had cleared the bushes, Harry Bull saw that they belonged to a man who was headless.  The figure went towards the postern gate - which plays a big part in the Borley drama - through which it passed.  This gate was always kept locked.  The figure disappeared in the vegetable garden, where it was lost to sight.'

The authors go on to say:

Unfortunately, the authors have not noticed that there were two sets of notes by Miss Kaye in Price's files. Miss Kaye did not

write shorthand.  Her value to Price seems to have been that she was a woman of considerable ability, and a linguist.  One set of Miss Kaye's notes consists of the rough and much abbreviated pencil jottings evidently made on the spot whilst the witnesses were talking; and the other consists of the typewritten notes presumably prepared when she got back to the office.  The latter were approved by Price who added a note in his own handwriting which reads 'The Owner's Account - Notes made by Miss Kaye'.  This, rather than the rough pencil memorandum, is no doubt the source of Price's account in MHH.  The relevant passage in this account reads:

Harry Bull in garden one day with the retriever, Juvenal, who howled and cowered when Bull saw the legs of a man, otherwise hidden by fruit trees, pass towards a small postern gate, which was kept locked and pass through it.  Someone chased the headless man through the garden who eventually disappeared in the veg. garden.

Little exaggeration will be found when this passage is compared with the account published by Price on pp. 48-9 of MHH.

The authors have other complaints to make about Price's reporting.  On the same page of HBR (p. 19) they write:

If we turn to MHH p.45 we shall see that it was Miss Elsie Bull - not Miss Ethel Bull - who is there reported as having seen the nun's face.  This agrees with the contemporary notes.  According to these the nun was first seen on the lawn from a distance by the Misses Ethel, Freda, and Mabel Bull, who were frightened.  An elder sister, Miss Elsie Bull was called.  It was she who had walked towards the apparition, which stopped, and turned its face towards her.  The authors do not appear to have interviewed this sister.  The authors also complain that Price over-stated Miss Ethel Bull's narrative by manufacturing several alleged occurrences from one single experience. They write (HBR, pp. 18-19).

'One one occasion, when in one of the upper passages Miss Ethel [Bull] saw a tall, dark man standing beside her.  Before she could recover from her surprise, he vanished.'

'One night Miss Ethel awoke suddenly and found an old man in dark, old-fashioned clothes, wearing a tall hat, standing by her bed.  On another occasion, the same figure was seen sitting on the edge of the bed.  This figure was seen many times.'

These several alleged occurrences appear to have been manufactured from a single experience of Miss Bull's, some 60 odd years ago, which she described in a letter to THH dated 2 April 1953 in these words:

'The man I saw once standing beside my bed was tall and dressed in dark clothes, it was twilight, and once or twice I felt someone sitting on the side of my bed.'

The authors have not quoted Miss Bull's letter at sufficient length to enable us to know precisely what her complaints are.  It may, however, be remarked that in 1953, when Miss Bull wrote to Mr Hall, she was approaching ninety years of age, (1) so that it would not be remarkable if, by this time, her memory had begun to fade.  Fortunately, it is not necessary to cite Miss Bull's memory in 1953 for the purpose of checking the accuracy of Price's reporting.  Fifteen years earlier in 1938, Miss Bull and one of her sisters were interviewed by S. H. Glanville who made a record of the statements they made then in his 'Locked Book' which is now in the possession of one of the authors. The appropriate extract is as follows:

Notes of a conversation with Miss Ethel Bull and her sister at Pinner on June 25th 1938

They both stoutly maintain that the Rectory has always been haunted by the Nun and by the other manifestations.  They both say that, with their sister, they all clearly saw the Nun walking slowly across the garden on a sunny July afternoon.  Her head was bowed and her hands clasped together in front of her, hanging at full length.... Miss Ethel Bull says that, for years she frequently heard a knock on her bedroom door.  Investigation never disclosed any cause for this.  Further, she says that, on a great many occasions, she was awakened by the presence of a figure of a man in a tall hat standing by her bed.

There would thus seem to be little doubt that, in earlier years, Miss Ethel Bull and her sister had been wont to claim a number of paranormal experiences at Borley, and not just the one experience which is all, say the authors, that Miss Ethel Bull was able to remember in 1953.  Price last interviewed the Misses Bull on

1 Journal S.P.R. June, 1956, p. 260

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29th March, 1939.  This was either during or at about the time he was writing MHH.  His reporting of the Misses Bull's experiences in MHH is thus a contemporary, or nearly contemporary, account of what the Misses Bull told him in 1939, supplemented by notes made at previous interviews.  Price specifies his various sources of information on p. 44 of MHH.

We may think that the agreement between Glanville's account of the Misses Bull's experiences as recorded in the Locked Book, and Price's account of their experiences as published in MHH, is too close to leave room for serious charges of exaggeration against either of these writers.  Both are reporting what was told to them for what it is worth or what it might prove to be worth.  Of their respective reports, it is Glanville's which, if anything, is slightly more sensational.

It is also worth mentioning that the stories of a coach, a headless coachman, and a 'nun' or woman in black do not rely on Price's or Miss Kaye's reporting, or on the Daily Mirror, or even on the people Price had interviewed.  There is a note in the S.P.R. files of an interview with a Mrs C. - the wife of a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford who had been introduced to the S.P.R. by a former President.  Mrs C. stated that she had formerly lived in the neighbourhood, and had frequently stayed at Borley for long periods.  She stated that the Rev. Harry Bull, who died in 1927, 'used often to see his mother walking about the garden, and also a headless coachman'.  (S.P.R. files. Notes of an interview with Mrs C. - 8th Dec. 1931.)

(ii) THE REV. L. A. FOYSTER'S WRITINGS

On p. 84 of HBR, the authors complain that Price confused and misrepresented Mr Foyster's writings in his books.  In particular, they complain that the title of Chapter XIII of MHH 'LEAVES FROM THE FOYSTER DIARY' is 'deliberately misleading' because, they say, the writing quoted in that chapter is not a diary in the true sense of the term, but a tabulated summary of experiences between 1930 and 1933 which had been compiled by Mr Foyster at Price's request in 1938.

Let us take stock of Mr Foyster's writings. They are as follows:

Writing A  The original records covering the whole period of the Foyster incumbency.  Claimed by Mr Foyster to have been written as a diary between February and July 1931.  These writings are not in HPL, but there are references from which their sometime existence can be inferred.

Writing B  Enlargement of Writing A for the period up to July

An additional reason for thinking that Price's words are not misleading, and certainly not 'deliberately misleading', may be

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The original charge against Price was that he edited Mr L'Estrange's testimony, cutting out many errors but leaving in an account of Foyster seeing a pencil propelled as if by an unseen hand, which Foyster nowhere confirms.  The authors now admit that the corrections made by Price were limited to one or two matters relating to the history and construction of the Rectory.  The more important items in Mr L'Estrange's testimony were presented as he wrote them.  Moreover, the authors now concede that there appears to be no reason to doubt that Mr L'Estrange wrote a straightforward, if (in their opinion) somewhat uncritical, account of his experiences, and they do not necessarily accept his interpretation of what he witnessed.

(iv) MRS LLOYD WILLIAMS'S CLAIM TO HAVE SEEN THE 'NUN'

The last sentence is not quite accurate.  Whilst it is true that

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So much for the 'Nun'.  One witness only whose faith that she saw 'something' is not to be shaken.  We have since, as you know, ascertained that this 'Nun' when seen has always been observed at this particular spot.  I give this whole story wholly without comment.

(v) THE GRAFFITI - 'THE SQUIGGLES'

The graffiti were of two kinds.  During the Foyster incumbency they took the form of words and messages.  At other times, they took the form of meaningless pencil marks, or 'squiggles' as they came to be called.  There are reasons for thinking that the squiggles may be phenomena of a different kind from the actual writings.  They will therefore be considered separately.

Let us ignore Price's slip for the moment, and start afresh from the original sources.

Arrived about 9.00 a.m. Saturday 14th inst., inspected house and

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grounds inspecting all rooms and cellars. Door to attics was fastened so these were not visited and the door was left fast....

Photographs were taken of four of the more elaborate 'writings' on the walls of the passage to the kitchen and also on the first floor.  These have been developed and the results are moderate....

Our only absence was between 6.15 and 7.15 on Saturday evening for a meal....

Routine visits were made to all rooms at approximately 9.40 p.m., 11 p.m., 12 midnight, 1.00 a.m. between these hours several new 'markings' were found, ringed in red chalk and dated 14th or 15th accordingly.  One of these was close to the message 'Marianne get help' which we had photographed a few hours before and which does not shew the mark, thus proving photographically that the addition was made later....

Cleaned up, locked up and left at 7.00 a.m. Sunday.

(Signed) H. G. Harrison,

S. H. Glanville

Glanville was greatly impressed with the photographic evidence.  In the letter to Price which accompanied the report he remarked that 'the "markings" done during our visit ... were well worth the whole trip'.  In his Ms. intended for the Borley Symposium he described the precautions that were always taken, and added:

It was therefore quite impossible for any person to enter the house without our being aware of it; and I am quite certain that during the time when our party, consisting of Dr H. F. Bellamy, Mr Mark Kerr-Pearse, Sq.-Leader Alan Cuthbert, my son and myself were there, no one ever did.  My companions will, I know, confirm this statement.  This applies to all our visits and the whole period we were there.  Upon numerous occasions I have been asked whether there was any possibility of persons outside, villagers, and so on trying to trick or mislead observers.  This, I am sure, did not happen.  We never had any evidence to suggest such activities.  The Rectory is remote from other habitations and, strange as it may seem, we soon learned that people were more ready to avoid the place, especially after dark, than to approach it.

In addition to the matters mentioned above the authors have not told readers that amongst those who testified in favour of the paranormality of these squiggles was C. E. M. Joad who presented a carefully written report on a mark that had appeared during a period of his own observation (MHH, pp. 230-1).  The only reference to Joad in HBR is the quotation of his words that it is

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'incredible' that poltergeists should materialise lead pencils and fingers to use them.  By omitting the context in which Joad's words were written the authors have made it seem that Joad had denied the paranormality of the squiggles whereas in fact the reverse was the case.  Nor have the authors mentioned, or attempted to answer an argument in favour of the paranormality of the markings to which Price himself attached importance.  Price concluded the chapter in MHH in which the wall markings had been described with the words: (MHH, p. 152):

My task has been to collect and present the evidence - of which there is more than ample - for the paranormal pencillings.  And I do not think that this evidence can be shaken.  If the whole thing had been a hoax from beginning to end, and if a number of silly people had set out to fool us - and themselves - I think these practical jokers would not have been content to make these lines, dots, and half-formed letters on the walls.  I think they could not have resisted the temptation of writing more messages, amusing or facetious.  The fact that only scrawly marks or lines appeared goes far, I think, to prove their genuineness.

I. The Alleged Payment for Evidence

Although the copy of Price's reply to Miss Williams is now

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missing from the files, (1) there is no justification for the authors' presumption that the sum asked for was paid.  The authors have overlooked the letter Price wrote about the matter to the Rev. A. C. Henning on 21/4/39 (HPL):

Concerning this, the reader must judge for himself.  The following is the original text of Miss Williams's report, the words printed in italics being those that were omitted in MHH.

2 In the general statement of policy which appears on pp. 117-18 of MHH Price claimed the right to shorten reports where considerations of space made this necessary. - R.J.H.

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The reader is now in a position to judge for himself whether the authors' complaint that the words omitted from the original report 'would in each case tend to diminish the possibility of the paranormality of the experience', is justified.

(vii) THE SMASHED ORNAMENTS

On another occasion, a vase that normally stood on the mantelpiece of their [Mr and Mrs Smith's] bedroom was found smashed to pieces at the foot of the main stairs.  No one was in the house at the time, the Smiths being in the garden.

made written reports.  Price's report, which appeared in MHH, p. 39, was as follows:

We descended by the main staircase and had just reached the hall when another crash was heard and we found that a red glass candlestick, one of a pair we had just seen on the mantelpiece of the Blue Room, had been hurled down the main stairs, had struck the iron stove, and had finally disintegrated into a thousand fragments on the hall floor. Both Mr Wall and I saw the candlestick hurtle past our heads.  We at once again dashed upstairs, made another search, and found nothing.  We returned to the hall.  We turned out all the lights, and the entire party sat on the stairs incomplete darkness, just waiting.  A few minutes later we heard something come rattling down the stairs and Mr Wall said he had been hit on the hand.  We then relighted the lamps and found it was a mothball which, apparently, had followed the same path as the candlestick.

In quick succession, and in full light, the following articles came tumbling down the stairs: first of all same common seashore pebbles; then a piece of slate, then some more pebbles.

A few seconds later we were descending the stairs, Miss Kaye leading and Mr Price behind me, when something flew past my head, hit an iron stove in the hall, and shattered.

With our flashlamps we inspected the broken pieces and found them to be sections of a red vase which, with its companion, had been standing on the mantelpiece of what is known as the blue room and which we had just searched.

Mr Price was the only person behind me and he could not have thrown the vase at such an angle to pass my head and hit the stove below.

p.146

It will be noticed that although the authors refer to Glanville's notes on his 1937 interview with the Smiths, which are in the Locked Book, they do not actually quote Glanville's words.  Let us rectify this omission.  Under the heading, 'Smiths' testimony as to their own experiences' Incident No. 2 is described in these notes as follows (Microfilm of Locked Book in HPL):

It will be seen that Price's reporting in MHH agrees with Glanville's notes.  In both accounts two separate incidents are mentioned.  One incident involves a vase, and is alleged to have occurred when nobody was in the house: the other incident involves a candlestick, and is alleged to have occurred in the presence of observers.

relevant passages in Glanville's notes, which agree with Price and not with Mr Wall. (1)

Nor would the authors have found any more support for their claim if they had consulted Miss Kaye.  The following is quoted from an undated typescript by Miss Kaye which she gave to Mrs Henning who afterwards passed it on to Mr Peter Underwood, in whose possession it now is.  Miss Kaye wrote:

Earlier in the day when we had first examined the Haunted Room we had been surprised, not to say thoroughly shaken, by our first poltergeist experience in the house.  Emerging from The Room we crossed the landing (over the cold spot) and were beginning to descend the staircase, Price being a step behind me, when something hurtled by us and crashed at the foot of the stairs.  It had passed within inches of us and at considerable speed, and of course we turned - but there was nothing at all suspicious to be seen.  The Rector and his wife emerged from a ground floor room, and upon our going downstairs we found that the object was a red glass candlestick - a pair of which we had noticed on the mantelpiece of the Haunted Room a bare minute earlier.  We had in fact agreed on their ugliness.  They had been placed one at either end of the mantelpiece which, with the door open, was in direct line with our descent down the staircase.  As we cleared the pieces we instinctively apologised to the Smiths!  I believe the thought uppermost in both our minds was that had we not made derogatory remarks about it, it might not have hurled itself at us.  Anyway, it gave us our first feeling of wholesome respect for the haunt and decided us to concentrate on this particular room.

(viii) THE SWINGING BLIND

The swinging blind was observed jointly by S. H. Glanville, his son, Captain H. G. Harrison (brother in law) and Dr H. F. Bellamy. (MHH, p.201)  All were reliable observers.  They reported that the edges of a blind which had been lowered earlier in the evening were waving regularly with 'a sort of palpitating action as though being blown' which they found hard to describe.  The movement continued for about five minutes, and they unanimously concluded that there was no draught to account for it.  The authors of HBR dismiss this incident remarking that blinds often move like that and adding that 'the little real attempt made to investigate the "phenomenon" on this occasion indicates the small scientific interest that those present took in the occurrence' (HBR, p. 136).  Quite the contrary was the case.  The authors have omitted to mention that before reaching their conclusions, the observers had in fact carried out an experiment by blowing tobacco smoke which

1 See also p. 98 n. above.

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was not dispersed immediately as it would have been if there had been a draught.

*        *        *

Of the minor allegations it has not been possible to discuss at length, I do not think there is anything that touches upon Price's integrity either as a man or as an investigator; though in some cases it would be necessary to know what he was aiming to achieve before a similar verdict could be reached concerning his integrity as a writer.

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