Borley Rectory: The Most Haunted House in England, the Phantom Nun, and the Fire a Seance Foretold
There are houses that are merely old, and there are houses that seem to have been built as a wound in the world. Borley Rectory, a graceless red-brick pile squatting in a quiet corner of Essex, was the second kind. It stood for only seventy-four years, from 1863 until the flames took it in 1939, and in that short span it gathered around itself such a weight of terror that a whole century later people still make the pilgrimage down that narrow lane at night, hoping to see something move among the trees. The rectory itself is gone. Not one brick stands upon another. And still they come, because some places do not need a building to remain haunted. It was Harry Price, the most famous and most controversial ghost hunter England ever produced, who gave it the name that stuck: the most haunted house in England. Whether he found that haunting or manufactured it is a question that has been fought over ever since, and we will come to it honestly before the end. But first the house must be all...
