An Examination of the 'Borley Report'

Harry Price at Borley

An Examination of the 'Borley Report' by Robert J. Hastings (Reproduced from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 55, Pt. 201, March 1969)

Appendix C The Evidence of Dom Richard Whitehouse, O.S.B. by Peter Underwood, President of the Ghost Club

The reported evidence of paranormal activity at Borley Rectory in the presence of Mrs Marianne Foyster, wife of the then rector, the Rev. L. A. Foyster, and Edwin Whitehouse, later Dom Richard Whitehouse, nephew of Lady Whitehouse, constitutes perhaps the most sensational of all the phenomena stated to have occurred at Borley. It is plain therefore that Dom Richard's evidence is of prime importance. No less an authority than Sir Ernest Jelf, who was then Senior Master of the Supreme Court, studied MHH, which included a whole chapter presenting Whitehouse's evidence, and stated that his conclusions, after making every allowance for witnesses not coming up to their proofs, was that a very strong case existed.*

Over the past twenty years I have personally contacted practically every person who was connected with the Borley hauntings: from surviving members of the Bull family including Miss Ethel Bull, and people like the Rev. Clive Luget, Mr J. Harley, Captain V. M. Deane, Dr Richard Prewer and others who knew the Rev. Harry Bull right up to the present occupants of the cottage at Borley, who have all experienced strange and seemingly inexplicable happenings. My files on everyone who has had anything to do with the Borley case are unique and I open the one on Dom Richard Whitehouse at this time because I feel that it is important that his side of the story be told.

During the course of research for a projected volume on the Borley hauntings I received an unsolicited letter from Dom Richard offering help as far as his evidence was concerned. At my suggestion we met in London and discussed the Borley case in general and Dom Richard's and Marianne Foyster's evidence in particular during the course of a meeting lasting several hours. Afterwards I suggested that he supply me with a written account of his evidence and views and this he did in a letter dated August 6th, 1956. While respecting confidences placed in me by Dom Richard concerning certain facts, I have been glad to permit my friend and fellow member of the S.P.R., Mr R. J. Hastings, to

* Law Times, August 9, 1941

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peruse my correspondence with Dom Richard Whitehouse and Mr Hastings and I have discussed this matter and many aspects of the Borley case on a number of occasions.

The phenomena allegedly witnessed by Dom Richard and Marianne Foyster included bottle smashing, objects thrown about, the materialisation of a bottle in mid-air, door locking, keys disappearing and re-appearing and bell-ringing.

It would appear from the S.P.R. files that the authors of HBR were under a misapprehension concerning Dom Richard and certainly they published their criticism of his testimony without having interviewed him - but they acted in the same way with the evidence of Mr G. P. L. L'Estrange, a person of considerable local standing, and they had to publish an apology. However, to return to Dom Richard, one of the authors of HBR, at least, was uneasy about the matter for Mrs Goldney, at her own expense, she informed Mr Hastings, went to the Benedictine Abbey at Ramsgate and saw Dom Richard in the presence of his Abbot. But this was after HBR was published and Dom Richard told me that the meeting was in no sense of the word an interview; he and the Abbot merely listening to what Mrs Goldney had to say.

There is no need for the present writer to repeat or reply to the HBR authors criticisms of Dom Richard's testimony for this he has done adequately himself, but first it may be of interest to quote briefly from his article 'Why I became a Catholic' which appeared in the Spring, 1956, issue of the Thanet Catholic Review, a quarterly published by the Benedictines of Thanet. He wrote:

. . . I was invalided out from the Navy in 1917. A few years were spent in England and with my family in Lausanne in Switzerland, until 1919 when I returned to Istanbul and joined the family business of J. W. Whittall and Co. Ltd. I returned to England during the Wembley Exhibition of 1924-5 when I spent about three months in a Harrow nursing home being treated far anxiety neurosis from which I made a very good recovery.

My reasons for mentioning my health has its importance as in 1931, six years after, I was investigating the phenomena at the haunted rectory of Borley and my account has been published in the book by Harry Price entitled 'The Most Haunted House in England'. In another book on the same subject recently published [i.e. HBR], the authors attempt to undermine the evidence of facts and the validity of my testimony by ascribing my statements as being unworthy of credence due to my ill health, and even suggest I wrote about phenomena which I may not have witnessed at all. But on this matter I intend to deal fully elsewhere.

His opportunity to do so came when he contacted me and after exchanging a number of letters we met on July 24th, 1956. As

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already stated he was good enough to supply me with a written account of his evidence and views and I gratefully acknowledge his permission to use this letter which is reproduced verbatim.

St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate

6/8/1956

Dear Underwood,

I very much appreciated the tone of your letter of August 4th and you can rest assured that it has not only eased my mind but left me feeling very determined that I shall give you all the help I can when I am able.

You might like to know the following facts. The Borley Report against me is built up on five main props.

(1) That I wrote eight years after the events I witnessed and from memory.

(2) That I had just recovered from a nervous breakdown in 1931 which prejudiced my account.

(3) That I got my information regarding the stiletto, the bottle, and the tumbler incidents from Marianne and was biased towards a paranormal explanation.

(4) That I said in my letter of November 6th, 1940, that I did not witness the tumbler incident (of course a slip).

(5) That Mrs Smith had no recollection of ever meeting me.

Re (1) It is is most significant that the authors make no reference whatever to my notes - surely a revealing suppression!

On p. 93 of MHH I say 'In my notes I have recorded the fact that on one of our visits I found a bed overturned. These observations, I repeat, were made during the period when the house was empty'. This shews I was keeping notes within ten days of arrival at Borley in June, and in actual fact I drew up my Ch. XV in 1939 from the contemporaneous notes I had kept in my possession since June 1931. Why should I have got my information from Marianne seeing I was describing what I witnessed! In one part of the stiletto incident I acknowledge that Marianne told me she saw it rise up from the floor and twist in the air, but I utterly refute the interpretation that 'I based my judgement of the Borley phenomena as a whole on her story' - Nonsense! I based my conviction of the paranormality of this incident on the fact that it was levitated on my lap while I was actually looking at Marianne who had not moved hand or foot.

They omit references to three other bottle incidents occurring on Nov. 13th. These were astonishing and startling phenomena, but they were described soberly and factually and I SHALL NEVER GO BACK ON WHAT I SAID in Chapter XV - re stiletto, bottles and tumbler incidents. I again refer to my notes on pp. 100 MHH - two references (last two paragraphs). Price was wrong to embroider what I said about the bottle poising in mid-air with his own statements about materialising in the air and changing from mushroom

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shape to that of the bottle! (1) He invented that! Evidently he was losing his critical faculty by then and writing over dramatically.

I think I told you that for reasons such as the above I preferred MHH to EBR. It was more scientific and factual. I cannot pretend to have been impressed by Canon P. Adams analysis - ingenious, but not scientific.

Re (2) Mrs Goldney in the presence of my Abbot on Feb. 15 '56 reminded me of our conversation in Oct. 1931 when I made a reference to a Nursing Home in Harrow. She didn't realise, poor soul, that I was referring to 1924/1925 and writes as if I'd had the breakdown about the time of the visit to Borley in 1931! She has already acknowledged her memory was at fault! I was ill in 1937, of course, but I recovered, for I did 2/3 years hard study between then and ordination in May 1940. I was a deacon when I wrote Chap. XV and I drew this up without difficulty, not by consulting Mrs Foyster, but by reference to my notes kept since 1931!

Re (3) They explain the stiletto, bottles and tumbler incidents by saying in all these cases that I got my story and facts from Mrs Foyster. I utterly repudiate this. I hardly if ever wrote to Mrs Foyster after about 1932/33, except to submit the finished article on Borley in 1939 which they [sic] approved. I saw Mrs Foyster once only after leaving Borley - it was in London for a short while during her flower-shop period. I did not know then that it was a partnership with De Arles [sic]. I went to some Convent Chapel with her on this occasion and was also shewn the flower-shop from the opposite side of the road. I cannot recall where or what part of London this was. You might know. (2)

Re (4) If their contention is right, I should be denying in my letter what I affirmed positively and described as a personal experience in [my] published account in MHH. This indeed would prove me unreliable! No, I mixed up Nos. 5 and 6 somehow, but as I had not witnessed the precipitation of objects from No. 6 Room, obviously I was referring to the tumbler incident which I most certainly did witness. Mrs Foyster, too, on receipt of my article would have protested surely if I had described something at which I was present

1 The error to which Whitehouse draws attention here occurs on p. 37 of EBR. In mitigation it may be said that during most of the time Price was writing EBR he was literally without a copy of MHH to refer to, and evidently wrote some parts from memory, intending to check his work later on. His difficulties were brought about by a series of mishaps which could only have occurred in war time. Anticipating a second printing of MHH, he had disposed of all his own copies of this work only to find that there was to be no reprinting after all. It was now impossible to obtain second-hand copies. Later, when he wanted a copy of MHH to send to a firm of publishers with whom he was discussing the possibility of a paperback edition, he resorted to the expedient of withdrawing the copy of MHH he had presented to the University of London library. Then this copy was mislaid by the publisher, and there was a long delay before it was found. In the meantime Price had begun to write EBR. - R. J. H.

2 "Jonquille et Cie" 20A, Worple Road, Wimbledon, S.W.19. - P.U.

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when in actual fact I was not! In a letter one does not write as if every syllable was going to be examined minutely - 'arriving as I did just after it had happened' (HBR 102) just means that I arrived soon after the precipitation of objects.

(5) Mrs Smith certainly did meet me. I am in good company, for she said the same about not recollecting Mr Glanville either! She shewed me (the dressing table that became animated) at Sheringham and gave me no impression whatsoever that she disbelieved in the phenomena at Borley. She shewed no disinclination about discussing the phenomena, either, that I can recall. Amnesia and dichotomy, as HBR indicates! Re the wall writings, I should have to reserve judgment. The word 'LIGHT' about which so much was written presented no problem to me at all. I regarded it, rightly or wrongly, as an answer to prayers for 'special guidance', which was the intention of the Novena.

If a Mass by an R.C. priest had been offered at Borley, which it never was, I felt 'light', that is, guidance, might have been vouchsafed.

When I wrote my letter to Price on March 2nd, 1941, I must have been influenced, I think, by that part of the message I had not myself seen in June 1931 - Viz. See following page which I thought might mean THERE (ibi-latin) Mass by Boy (I was called Boy as a child by Whittall relatives in Istanbul).

I need hardly add that I never felt convinced that the whole message or any part of it was a genuine and reliable answer to prayer. My mind always wavered between the possibility of it being a diabolic trick or a genuine answer to prayer. Any Catholic priest would suspect a message written in this kind of way.

I felt, however, that a Mass could have been offered at Borley and perhaps should have been.

I had no reason to believe that Marianne had CONSCIOUSLY done that herself. She certainly COULD NOT have made all those bottles arrive on Nov. 13th, or dropped the tumbler on Dec. 14th or thrown the stiletto on my lap. I was first convinced by the stiletto landing on my lap while I was looking at Marianne that I was dealing with something preternatural and to my Catholic mind it was diabolic. That is why I said the Rosary and sprinkled Holy Water. E. I. Watkin suggests she is mediumistic. There might be some quality in her, wielded unconsciously, which precipitates and makes possible such phenomena.

I never cast suspicion on Marianne and I defended her, because I knew after the stiletto incident, bottles tumbler and so forth (bells, knocks, key disappearances, etc.) that whatever other things - such as the pills being placed in my pockets - she may for some obscure reason have done herself, she certainly did not manufacture the stiletto landing on my lap, the bottles and tumbler.

When one is convinced that she hadn't manufactured the major physical phenomena of the stiletto, bottles and tumbler I find it less

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likely that she would have reason to perpetrate the lesser things fraudulently and consciously.

The authors make some interesting and significant slips. Psychological implications especially when they say on p. 105 'it is in considering most of the Foyster "phenomena", it is in the details that the whole point lies'!

(a) Line 14 p. 105 HBR `. . . the Foysters should stay for periods' I only suggested this once, when they came down on June 8th after Marianne was thrown out of bed.

(b) p. 101 line 18 '. . . several mistakes'. My letter says 'a curious mistake'.

(c) HBR 113 line 7 from bottom '. . . up to the Rectory each day'. In MHH I say `frequent visits'.

R.W.

In his New Light on Old Ghosts (Duckworth, London, 1965) T. H. Hall recounts how Marianne's son, who is referred to as `X', approached the University of London after publication of HBR and how, through him, Marianne Foyster was traced in America. In due course a 'legally qualified investigator' visited her in Jamestown and she was persuaded to visit the Parapsychology Foundation in New York where a statement was recorded on tape. It is stated that most (my italics) of what she had to say was corroborated by 'X' who admits to finding anything 'spiritualistic' anathema. Marianne Foyster now says she does not believe in ghosts or poltergeists and that Borley was not haunted when she lived there. She states that she never saw a monstrosity or apparition of any kind on any occasion and she has no recollection whatsoever of any incident involving a stiletto.

It has already been pointed out by R. G. Medhurst in a review of New Light on Old Ghosts, published in the S.P.R. Journal dated June 1967, volume 44, number 732, that neither the 'confession' nor T. H. Hall's own researches into the lady's affairs appear to be available for study and if this is so it must diminish the evidential value of an abbreviated paraphrase of Mrs Marianne Foyster's alleged remarks to an unnamed interviewer. T. H. Hall's collection on Marianne Foyster and a tape, which he presented to The Harry Price Library at the University of London, was returned, I am informed by Mr A. H. Wesencraft, Librarian in charge of The Harry Price Library, because it was felt that it was not a suitable addition to the collection there and could not have been made available for consultation.

It might be suggested that Marianne Foyster's 'confession' shows that none of the phenomena associated with her was genuine and hence that the approach taken in HBR to the Whitehouse testi-

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mony is basically sound. Several comments are relevant concerning this argument.

There is a great deal which could be said about the 'confession', the circumstances in which it was obtained, its content, and the abridged paraphrase of them which T. H. Hall gives, and it would have to be said if the present purpose were to discuss the genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena. I was in contact with Marianne Foyster and the Foyster family before HBR was published and it is interesting that the Foyster family have always been on friendly terms with her; and still keep in touch. For the time being perhaps it is sufficient to remark that although Whitehouse's testimony is apparently contradicted by Marianne Foyster's 'confession' (made thirty years after the events concerned), his account was based on notes made at the time (notes of which contents are partly confirmed by contemporary letters from Lady Whitehouse in the S.P.R. files); he was not in the throes of a nervous breakdown at the relevant time; and his sincerity and integrity have not for one moment been questioned by anyone. Those who believe phenomena of the kind to be impossible may well wish to side with Marianne Foyster.

Even if Marianne Foyster's 'confession' were accepted at face value the arguments levelled against Whitehouse in HBR are still quite unsound, as his own handling of them amply demonstrates. Bad arguments are not made into good arguments simply because the position they are intended to support happens to be valid. This point is no trivial one in the present instance for the following reason: if Whitehouse really had been the hopeless dupe that HBR makes out, Price, as a shrewd investigator, must have realised this. If Price could see that Whitehouse had obviously been duped by Marianne Foyster, Whitehouse's testimony could not possibly have helped to change Price's mind about Marianne Foyster and have induced him to believe that some at least of the phenomena associated with her were after all genuine. In that case it would follow that he must have been dishonest in his later statements of belief in the phenomena. But R. J. Hastings has already presented evidence in his present work to show that Price's change of attitude to the phenomena was sincere. There is nothing in HBR's criticisms of Whitehouse's testimony to make it seem even likely that Price could not have honestly believed in it.

One further point: regarding the 'wall writing' Marianne Foyster is quoted by T. H. Hall as blaming these 'on the village youngsters, who freely used the rectory bathroom and toilets after the church service, and frequently scribbled on the passage walls'. This is in direct contradiction to T. H. Hall's contribution to HBR

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where he cites the evidence of Miss Mary Braithwaite, J.P., who has said regarding the 'wall writing', categorically: 'undoubtedly Mrs Foyster's, as she makes some letters in a funny way.' We are told that the Braithwaite family was acquainted with the Bull's, the Whitehouses, and the Foysters. Furthermore, Miss Braithwaite's brother, Sir John Braithwaite, stated in a letter in the S.P.R. files that the 'wall writing' was 'obviously done by Mrs Foyster. Soon after Price's death when I was working on a projected reexamination of the Borley Rectory hauntings I intended to include a detailed analysis of the 'wall writings' by a professional graphologist, Mr Lewis T. Ackermann, and his considered opinion was that all the Borley writings were executed by the same personality with the single exception of the word, `Edwin'. Whatever the origin of these 'wall writings' Mrs Marianne Foyster's present 'explanation' of them seems unlikely, to say the least.

The Society for Psychical Research does not hold or express corporate views. Any opinions expressed in its publications are those of the authors alone.

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