The Ghost Hunters (58 page)
Authors: Neil Spring
‘
Help
you?’ I slammed the leather pouch containing the manuscript down in a puff of dust. ‘Help you with what?’
‘Please sit down, Dr Caxton.’
I did so reluctantly, keeping my eyes on the curator’s wary features.
‘Dr Caxton, I’ve preserved this odd collection my entire life. But now I’m retiring’ – his gaze dropped sadly on a box already packed full of rare books – ‘the University wants to close it down, be rid of old Harry’s legacy for good.’ His chest rattled with another cough. ‘Someone must ensure that never happens, that these great questions about the occult and the mysteries of the universe aren’t left unopposed and unchecked.’ He darted me an expectant look. ‘You.’
I couldn’t help scanning my surroundings even as I recoiled at his suggestion and feeling, in a peculiar way, joined to them now; I could hear the artefacts whispering to me. There was something unnervingly compelling about those voices. They spoke, rustling and seductive, directly to my soul, directing their enticements at my secret interests. Like my father before me, I could lie to the academic community, to this man before me, to the whole damn world – but not to myself.
If the infamous Harry Price really was my father, then who
else was better fitted to carry on his work? Work which would vindicate my own clandestine research and resolve the questions that had obsessed me all my life or take me to the brink of ridicule and professional ruin.
‘It’s out of the question,’ I blurted, scrambling for reasons to refuse him. ‘If Sarah Grey and Harry Price learned anything, it’s surely that these things are evil, better left alone. Borley Rectory took the better part of them both.’
I turned my head away only to find myself staring directly at the stone bust of Harry Price.
‘You can’t run from yourself, Dr Caxton. It’s in your blood – Harry Price’s passion, his quest. You were conceived in that house by the original investigators of the case; you are the child of the Rectory. It is your duty now to continue what your parents, your father, started.’
He was a tactician of truth, this gnarled and wily man. His exhortations pierced my feeble protests and thudded like arrows into the bullseye of my secret heart.
‘Sarah Grey,’ I said firmly. ‘Why are you so certain? Where is your proof?’
‘We’ll get to that,’ he said with a conviction that obviated the task. The proof was in his pale transfixing gaze. In his cracked and antique voice.
‘Then tell me where she is buried. I shall need to say goodbye, to pay my respects.’ I held his gaze defiantly even as my lip trembled. At last the doubts burned off like morning mist and golden rays of certainty came blazing through.
‘Your respects? Oh, my dear man.’ Wesley raised his eyebrows and the faintest trace of amusement crinkled the corners of his mouth. ‘Sarah Grey is alive.’
The words jolted me to my feet and for a dreadful moment I felt the truth of his remark. The room swayed with me. I gripped
the ladder-back chair to brace myself, in a surreal echo of that day in Yorkshire, decades away, at the kitchen table.
Behind his half-moon spectacles, Wesley’s eyes narrowed with shrewd watchfulness. ‘You
will
help me,’ he commanded with gentle menace, ‘if you want to know the truth.’
Against my inner reluctance I could feel myself nodding. No sooner had I returned to my seat than he reached beneath his desk for a battered briefcase. Buckles snapped and the case flipped open, releasing bundles of old papers – among them, a faded photograph of Sarah in a slim black dress standing next to Price on the doorstep of the Laboratory in Queensberry Place.
‘Was she mad?’ I asked.
‘She was in love …’ shrugged Wesley. ‘The same thing, perhaps.’ He slid something towards me across the desk: a small envelope, which I took and proceeded to open.
The note within, seven months old, was scrawled in black ink:
Overhurst Farm
Broad Haven,
Wales
6 March 1977
Dear John,
I wanted to thank you for your prolonged efforts to keep interested investigators at a distance from us both. We appreciate your discretion more than you’ll ever know.
It’s odd. Sarah always said she believed that the curse of Borley Rectory fell upon those who deceived others; but after she wrote the manuscript she entrusted to your care, her spirits lifted. Her
confession exonerated her, somehow, from whatever dark punishment she believed was waiting for her.
Although life has been very kind to us here in Wales, I do worry for my Sarah; that when I am gone she will be left behind, alone with her fears. When that day comes, and if it is within your power, please do your best for me and ensure she is not neglected.
You see, John, there are mysteries here, in Wales, too. Odd things. Something very strange happened at a local school just recently. The children witnessed something most bizarre, something predatory. It needs the attention of an expert … you will know the sort of expertise I mean.
Although I think Harry Price did psychical research a disservice with his occasional tricks, I do believe that, so long as mysteries endure, there should always be someone like him following in close pursuit. For all our sakes.
Yours in trust,
Vernon Wall
Wesley was at my side, laying a bony hand on my shoulder. ‘Afterwards, she spent her life with Vernon in the one place she felt safe, the farmhouse she ran to in 1933.’ He gave a pained sigh. ‘And all these years I did as they wished … I kept Vernon and Sarah hidden – kept their location secret.’
I tracked his gaze down to the weighty leather pouch resting in the glow of the table lamp, then looked again into the old man’s face. His eyes revealed a quiet expression of hope.
‘It was you,’ I ventured finally. ‘You brought them together. Vernon and Sarah.’
He shrugged. ‘What else could I have done? Some ghosts haunt buildings; some we carry around with us. When Sarah entrusted her manuscript to me, I saw the weight of the thing had taken its toll upon her – she was haunted …’
‘By the Borley curse?’
He nodded and, pausing for thought, added, ‘That and the rest: her own false hopes, her squandered desires. Well … I knew where to find Mr Wall …’
‘So you ensured they found one another.’
‘My good deed. Although I’m sorry to say it did not go unpunished …’
He reached into his cardigan pocket, then held out a trembling, clenched hand and opened it.
‘Oh God …’ I stepped back, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck prick up. In the palm of his hand lay a small brass medallion.
‘The lies have their price,’ said Wesley, before breaking into another frightful bout of coughing.
‘You took it from her? Why? Why did you keep it?’
‘I can’t get rid of it,’ was his next remark. ‘It always comes back. And helping Sarah was my calling. I answered it, as you must answer yours now, Robert. Vernon Wall died seven months ago and Sarah is alone. She needn’t be.’ He gripped my shoulders, studying my face. ‘The ghost hunter’s son! His quest passes to you now.’
I glanced again to my right, to the stone bust of Harry Price, the man who was supposed to be my father, the collector and discoverer. And then, another thought struck me: ‘There must be more … other stories Sarah never shared. The places she
and Harry went to together, their investigations into the supernatural, other adventures.’
Wesley’s eyes glinted. ‘Oh yes, Robert. And if you’re willing to listen – if you’re able to find her – Sarah will tell you.’
*
I looked up ahead and through the rain-soaked windscreen saw the gloomy lane open into a small clearing beyond which wide fields sloped down towards the cliff edge. Directly ahead was an old well, and immediately to the right, behind a low, crumbling stone wall, was the farmhouse. Once, perhaps, it had been gleaming white, but now its walls were weathered yellow and the paint around the windows had peeled.
No phone calls. A chain of letters, lengthening, culminating. Eventually a meeting. Here in West Wales.
Her handwritten notes described me as a ‘beautiful child’. They told me how much I had weighed, that I had been a strong, happy baby. The nurses had smiled when they saw me.
Her last note:
After you were born, I went to a convent which stood on the outskirts of Ilkley Moor. You slept in my arms all the way from the hospital. When the time came to say goodbye, I froze. The waiting nun had to prise you from my arms. She walked away with a part of me, and from that day I wondered – every year, every birthday, every day – what had happened in your life, who you had become and what you looked like.
And at that point, I had known that John Wesley was right: I had to find her, not just to learn about my father and myself but to show her what I had done with my life. To explain that what
ever torment she had endured by giving me up, I had been all right. Had done well. Become a respected academic. She needed to know that she could be proud of me.
My mouth was dry with the unconscious fear of rejection, and as my car rolled to a halt I caught the movement of a curtain at the closest window. I reached for the glove compartment and clicked it open. Inside were the photographs I had brought to show Sarah Grey: my beautiful girls and my wife, posing together in the earlier summer outside the Colosseum in Rome.
I waited, my chest tightening around a thundering heart, mentally rehearsing everything I would ask the woman who had brought me into the world. I was about to meet someone who had only ever been a name to me. What would she be like? I pictured a frail, elegant woman in a wool cardigan. Any time we had left would be painfully limited. There would be smiles. There would be tears. And I would embrace her in a hug that lasted fifty years.
My eyes roamed as I climbed out of the car. Beyond the farm house, out to sea, which was wild and black and forever, lightning shredded the sky. And somewhere, beyond the curtain of rain, in another place, I imagined Harry Price was watching.
THE END
The haunting of Borley Rectory and Harry Price’s investigation are legendary. Rumours and stories abound and have fuelled many books on what might – or might not – be lurking in that bleak and isolated hamlet perched on the Essex–Suffolk border. But what is the truth?
During my first visit to Borley in 2010, I was unable to find anyone willing to admit to any unusual experiences on or near the site of the old Rectory. The few residents I did meet were keen to emphasise that any stories of ghosts were fictitious and that the legend of the Rectory was nothing but an elaborate hoax. I even wrote a letter to every resident in the village, requesting that they share any personal experiences of haunting. None did.
But then came a curious and unsettling development.
An old friend who accompanied me to Borley on a later date revealed in confidence that he had heard strange noises as we approached the churchyard. In his words, ‘the sound of a coach and horses pounding the road’.
The odd thing was, we hadn’t seen any coach or horses.
When I mentioned this to an elderly woman living close to
the site of the old Rectory, she became serious and said quietly, ‘Yes, people do keep reporting that … But if strange things
do
still happen here, I’m hardly likely to tell you. Don’t expect anyone else here to discuss it, either.’
Whatever the truth about that mysterious, out-of-the-way place, it is the legend of Borley rather than its historical detail that I have sought to re-imagine. This novel is certainly not a faithful retelling of Harry Price’s association with the house, but a fictional representation of what might have happened. I owe a debt of gratitude to the source material in Harry Price’s original books,
The Most Haunted House of England
and
The End of Borley Rectory
.
The following elements in the story are true:
The Harry Price Magical Library was looked after for forty-two years by the late Alan Wesencraft, who died on 3 December 2007. For many years, the collection was stored in a room on the eighth floor of University of London’s Senate House Library, which is itself reputedly haunted. Yes, there really are rumours about the eighth floor, and the collection is one of the largest and most important of its kind anywhere in the world. More information is available at
www.neilspring.com
The National Laboratory for Psychical Research was based on the top floor of 16 Queensberry Place, the headquarters of the London Spiritualist Alliance. Whereas the setting remains consistent for my story, in reality Price’s lease with the LSA expired in 1930. The following year, the Laboratory was relocated to 13 Roland Gardens in South Kensington. It was dissolved in 1934.
In 1927, at Church Hall in Westminster, Harry Price staged a sensational public opening of Joanna Southcott’s ‘locked box’.
The Bull sisters observed the apparition of a nun in the Rectory garden on 28 July 1900. From that day, 28 July became known in Borley as ‘the nun’s day’.
The Borley case came to Harry Price’s attention in 1929 via Alexander Campbell, the editor of the
Daily Mirror
, after Mrs Smith wrote a letter to the newspaper asking to be put in touch with the Society for Psychical Research. Vernon Wall did not lock horns with Harry Price. He resigned from the
Mirror
in 1932 and became a freelance reporter.
According to Harry Price, the title of his book –
The Most Haunted House in England
– came from a labourer whom he stopped and asked for directions on his way to Borley Rectory.
Price’s arrival at the Rectory on 12 June 1929 coincided with a range of unusual happenings; stones and mothballs were thrown, bells rang, a candlestick came hurtling down the stairs and a brick crashed through the verandah roof. Vernon Wall also reported that he had seen a dark shape moving in the garden and caught his foot in a rotten well cover in the Rectory cellars. The order of these events has been altered significantly in my story.
The Blue Room seance on the night of 12–13 June 1929 lasted three hours and was attended by the Bull sisters, Mr and Mrs Smith, Vernon Wall, Harry Price and his real secretary at the time, Lucy Kay. During this seance, a cake of soap was indeed thrown at the wall and raps were heard on the back of a mirror, spelling out names and messages by an entity purporting to be the spirit of the late rector, Harry Bull, who claimed he had been murdered.
Many people working at the Bull Inn, near Borley, claim to have experienced paranormal phenomena. Interviews with some of these witnesses are available at
www.neilspring.com
Harry Price sat with the Austrian medium Rudi Schneider many times, and in May 1932 obtained an incriminating photograph which he later claimed was his revenge for Rudi associating with the Society for Psychical Research. During another seance in his Laboratory, Harry communicated with a medium who appeared to be speaking with the voice of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. These seances were entirely separate events, and on neither occasion did events transpire as the Rudi seance is presented in my story.
Although the scenes involving Harry Price and Sarah Grey with the Reverend Lionel Foyster and Marianne are imagined, it is true that Price returned to Borley Rectory in October 1931 with a group of interested colleagues. It is also true that he was persuaded to return to Borley by Ethel Bull; that Lionel Foyster sent Price a copy of his
Diary of Occurrences
, which Price did not return; and that Price signed an agreement of confidentiality with the rector. He left the house with the impression that the phenomena in the house were caused by Marianne, but paradoxically later wrote up the case as an apparently genuine incident of poltergeist phenomena.