Place and story are little remembered now. The rectory in Essex was severely damaged by fire in 1939. But any old house with an unpleasant atmosphere, especially isolated, damp, dark and unmodernised, was once described as ‘like Borley Rectory’.
Judging by this long ‘story of a ghost story’, the place showed its true nature from the beginning. Many of the incumbent rectors, their families, servants and guests heard and felt ghosts, always malevolent. Crockery flew about and hit people; candlesticks tumbled down stairs; there were whisperings, cries, thumps and bumps. The usual.
Well, odd things do happen in old houses. I have entered rooms which I was immediately desperate to leave. When rumours abound, especially in remote rural places, visitors are primed to expect a haunting; but I have even felt uncomfortable when viewing an anonymous house for sale.
Objects took off across rooms in plain sight, and pictures hung on strong cord suddenly crashed down
There are still plenty of people who believe in ghosts – cloudy, bodiless phantoms, glimpsed, usually by just one person, before they vanish.
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