Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff, the very special Halloween edition of Short Stuff. Chuck, what about the Borily Rectory? And I have to say this one's good, but I think it still doesn't hold the candle to the one you put together that kicked off our Halloween content. But which is the most sterile way of putting it? Um, the two parter of jack O Lanard's and Sleepy Haller. It was like we even got a message from Dave the producer saying like this is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. I'm paraphrasing, but that was basically it. Well, thank you, Dave. Yeah, so this is I like this one too though, because this is about um, the most haunted house in England. Yeah, which, uh, A lot of people automatically know what we're talking about just hearing that phrase Boriley Rectory, which a rectory, by the way, is a place where a pastor lives. Leave for the Anglican Church, maybe for just Protestantism in general, but you know, pastors are allowed to marry and they have a family, so you gotta put them somewhere. You can't just make them sleep under the pews in the church. So they get their own house, and that's called the rectory. And it just so happened that the one in Boordly, which is this little village an hour and a half northeast of London that no one would have ever heard about had it not been for the rectory, there was a very very haunted place, that's right. And by the way, do you know what we call those in the Baptist church at my church? What the preacher's house the sinbox? No, we called it that crappy little house next to the church. No, that's what they get dedicating themselves. So the rectory was built in the eighteen eighties. Uh. It burned down in the nineteen thirties. But that property itself has a long history of haunting, supposedly going way way back to the thirteen sixties when there was a monastery there and allegedly a headless monk would roam the fields and a nun i would haunt the place who had been walled up alive inside the monastery walls. Yeah, there was another nune too that would have come later. Who was I guess who ran away from the nunnery and tried to join the Waldgrave family who owned this property and instead was like strangled and buried in a cellar there. So you've got at least three good ghosts wandering around the site that the Reverend Bull, the first Reverend Bull and his family come along in the eighteen sixties and say this will be a fine place to build our rectory. And of course the townspeople were like, this is a really bad idea, but we're just gonna sit back and not say a word, because you know, we really could use them the addition to our tax base here at the town. And then they thought it through a little further and like, darn, it is that true in England too. I don't know. It's a great American joke though. Uh. They would hear certain things in the night, like servants, bells, ringing, keys flying out of the locks. Uh, always a little tinkling of the keyboard with no hands nearby. Yeah, phantoms. There was a phantom stage coach that supposedly used to arrive. And the townspeople were like, of course this is a really haunted site. It makes sense that this house would be haunted too. Um. And so the rectory itself is built in eighteen sixty two, and within a year there were reported sightings. Um, but it wasn't until the nineteen thirties and over time like between it. It wasn't like this just started in eighteen sixty two and then stopped in the nineteen thirties. Like every family that lived there reported something, some more than others. In some cases the family there was just clearly afflicted by a terrible poultry geist or horrible ghost activity, just constant stuff. Others were not quite as bad. But um, it was every family that lived there reported something, and so the house itself got a reputation even before it was known as the most haunted house in England. That's right, And you know why all this stuff is happening. The old German phrase geist is kind of geist pretty great, you know. So Poulter means loud. Isn't that what Poulter guist means loud? I don't know. Is that what it was. I'm pretty sure I should know that with my vast German knowledge base, but I don't remember. But I think another another translation is Toby Hooper didn't actually direct this, it's the other translation. Do you think it was Spielberg gut pulling the strings? Yeah? Uh yeah, yeah, don't get me started. Uh so, yeah, the nineteen thirties, I believe. In nineteen nine, the Daily Mail sent Harry price who was sort of the foremost paranormal investigator of the day. He worked with a Society for Um Psychical Research, and he was like Houdini and that he was a debunker of mediums of fraudulent meat ums. But he was also sort of a probably a bit of a self promoter and below hard. And the people at the spr were like, I don't like you so much, and he went, well, I don't like you either. I'm gonna go find my own jam and he founded the National Laboratory of I said physical before Josh corrected me, psychical research. Yeah, it'll trip you up for sure. I was raised on this stuff, Like I used to want to go to Duke and study parapsychology when I was a kid. Do that in retirement one day, my friend, maybe I will one day. I don't think they have that that research anymore. But anyway, um, like Mr Clark, we discontinued that program, Well could you just start it up again? So Harry pricey was because he was such a good self promoter. He wrote a lot of books and he wrote his books to be easily consumed by the public, like they were very readable. I saw um. And so he became a very very well known debunker of mediums and and well known skeptic. So when he went to inspect Borley Rectory himself at the behest of the Daily Mail, and he came out of there and said, yeah, this actually checks out. This place is a haunted house. People definitely took notice, like he lent his credibility to it, and not because he was a fraud or sham necessarily, Like he seemed to have really been convinced, at least at first maybe always all right, I think it's a good spot for a break, and uh, we'll talk a little bit more about this rectory right after this. So one entry thing thing that happened at the Boorly Rectory was it burned down. Uh this is a nineteen thirty nine and you know, if you believe the story, then it seems very suspicious. But the owner at the time, Mr William Gregson, said that he saw with his own eyeballs a stack of books that were sitting there on a shelf flew off on their own and ended up knocking over a lamp a paraffin wick lamp and that ended up burning the house down. Yes, and fortunately that happened after Harry Price had spent the previous year there, so he leased the place in nine Yeah, he went and lived there for a year with forty eight assistants that he hired, um, so that they could all work basically around the clock studying and recording all the ghostly phenomenon that was there. And he made his career like even further. This cemented Harry Price and the Annals of paras Psychology where his studies on Borly Rectory, and he published two books, um, the most Haunted House in England, which coined that phrase I believe, I don't think he used it before then um, and cemented in everyone's mind like, yeah, Borily Rectory is proof positive there haunted houses. And then after the fire I believe he wrote a second book of follow up book called The End of Borrey Rectory. And so for years until Price's death in a few years beyond, Uh, anybody who believed in the world basically in ghosts had probably heard of Borily Rectory and considered it as like I was saying, proof that haunted houses can exist because of the work of Harry Price, but then his work was kind of undone later on, right, Yeah, so his old I don't know about enemies, but it's at least his rivals. Yeah. Friend of me is at the Society for uh Psychical Research, said, you know what, this guy is dead. Uh he was a bit of a jerk to us, and so let's go undo the work that he did. Let's debunk the debunker. Yeah. So they like they explained, they gave alternative explanations rather than ghosts for some of this stuff. But the thing that really kind of like pull the pull the wool down or the curtain down on the whole thing was apparently these guys found in Harry Price's unpublished notes UM he implicated a woman named Mary Ann Foyster who was the Reverend Foyster's wife who lived there for several years, and she apparently was at the center of carrying out a lot of these ghost hoaxes. And Harry Price knew it too, So that was a really he definitely buried it. And also the SPR researchers suggested, I don't know where they found this out, but they suggested that Harry Price was also not um not shy to do things like throw pebbles in a dark and seance room to just scare people and make noise and just kind of add to the whole thing. So the book really kind of cut the legs out from under the idea that Harry Price had discovered a real haunted house. Not entirely. There's plenty of people who still believed, but it definitely put a dent in the whole thing. Then there was another book. This one came out in two thousand and this was a memoir by a man named I don't know if it's Louis or Louis Marling, who said, you know what, I lived at that home a couple of times. I lived with the family of Reverend Henry Bull in the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties, and then uh and with Bull in the tens and twenties, then the Foisters that Foister Mrs Foister in the nineteen thirties. And he said, I worked with both of these families, and we did a bunch of these hoaxes. We would tickle the piano strings behind a hole in the wall and stuff like that, and it was kind of really all us. But here's a twist of that story, A twist he said he could explain everything save one that in Easter Nive, he and the aforementioned Marianne Foister and some other folks attended a seance there and it went to an underground seller about midnight. Sat there in the dark, in the quiet, and someone gave a little nervous cough, as if they were about to speak, and all of a sudden, all those kitchen bells start clinging together at once, which is supposedly impossible to ring all those things at once, and supposedly no one else was there. Yeah, so Mrs Foyster was there at the time too, And um, Louis Maryland suggests like they looked at each other, like, what's really going on? These hoaxters were suddenly or overcome with ghostly phenomenon. Right, But then, chuck, there's another twist. That's right. It turns out that the Louis Maryland, who wrote this book in two thousand um was researched themselves and found that there was nobody by the name of Lewis Maryland who has ever recorded living at Borley Rectory, let alone twice. Wow. Yeah, which I mean technically could just mean that that book is a work of fiction or whatever. But still it's a great extra twist, don't you think. Sure you thought the ghost twist was it? And then bam, bam bam, there's like the anonymous book twist. And then m night Chamelain delivers flowers to the front doors, and that's very nice. You got anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everyone, thank you for joining us on the scariest short stuff of the year, the short Stuff on Borderley Rectory, which is now out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff, the very special Halloween edition of Short Stuff. Chuck, what about the Borily Rectory? And I have to say this one's good, but I think it still doesn't hold the candle to the one you put together that kicked off our Halloween content. But which is the most sterile way of putting it? Um, the two parter of jack O Lanard's and Sleepy Haller. It was like we even got a message from Dave the producer saying like this is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. I'm paraphrasing, but that was basically it. Well, thank you, Dave. Yeah, so this is I like this one too though, because this is about um, the most haunted house in England. Yeah, which, uh, A lot of people automatically know what we're talking about just hearing that phrase Boriley Rectory, which a rectory, by the way, is a place where a pastor lives. Leave for the Anglican Church, maybe for just Protestantism in general, but you know, pastors are allowed to marry and they have a family, so you gotta put them somewhere. You can't just make them sleep under the pews in the church. So they get their own house, and that's called the rectory. And it just so happened that the one in Boordly, which is this little village an hour and a half northeast of London that no one would have ever heard about had it not been for the rectory, there was a very very haunted place, that's right. And by the way, do you know what we call those in the Baptist church at my church? What the preacher's house the sinbox? No, we called it that crappy little house next to the church. No, that's what they get dedicating themselves. So the rectory was built in the eighteen eighties. Uh. It burned down in the nineteen thirties. But that property itself has a long history of haunting, supposedly going way way back to the thirteen sixties when there was a monastery there and allegedly a headless monk would roam the fields and a nun i would haunt the place who had been walled up alive inside the monastery walls. Yeah, there was another nune too that would have come later. Who was I guess who ran away from the nunnery and tried to join the Waldgrave family who owned this property and instead was like strangled and buried in a cellar there. So you've got at least three good ghosts wandering around the site that the Reverend Bull, the first Reverend Bull and his family come along in the eighteen sixties and say this will be a fine place to build our rectory. And of course the townspeople were like, this is a really bad idea, but we're just gonna sit back and not say a word, because you know, we really could use them the addition to our tax base here at the town. And then they thought it through a little further and like, darn, it is that true in England too. I don't know. It's a great American joke though. Uh. They would hear certain things in the night, like servants, bells, ringing, keys flying out of the locks. Uh, always a little tinkling of the keyboard with no hands nearby. Yeah, phantoms. There was a phantom stage coach that supposedly used to arrive. And the townspeople were like, of course this is a really haunted site. It makes sense that this house would be haunted too. Um. And so the rectory itself is built in eighteen sixty two, and within a year there were reported sightings. Um, but it wasn't until the nineteen thirties and over time like between it. It wasn't like this just started in eighteen sixty two and then stopped in the nineteen thirties. Like every family that lived there reported something, some more than others. In some cases the family there was just clearly afflicted by a terrible poultry geist or horrible ghost activity, just constant stuff. Others were not quite as bad. But um, it was every family that lived there reported something, and so the house itself got a reputation even before it was known as the most haunted house in England. That's right, And you know why all this stuff is happening. The old German phrase geist is kind of geist pretty great, you know. So Poulter means loud. Isn't that what Poulter guist means loud? I don't know. Is that what it was. I'm pretty sure I should know that with my vast German knowledge base, but I don't remember. But I think another another translation is Toby Hooper didn't actually direct this, it's the other translation. Do you think it was Spielberg gut pulling the strings? Yeah? Uh yeah, yeah, don't get me started. Uh so, yeah, the nineteen thirties, I believe. In nineteen nine, the Daily Mail sent Harry price who was sort of the foremost paranormal investigator of the day. He worked with a Society for Um Psychical Research, and he was like Houdini and that he was a debunker of mediums of fraudulent meat ums. But he was also sort of a probably a bit of a self promoter and below hard. And the people at the spr were like, I don't like you so much, and he went, well, I don't like you either. I'm gonna go find my own jam and he founded the National Laboratory of I said physical before Josh corrected me, psychical research. Yeah, it'll trip you up for sure. I was raised on this stuff, Like I used to want to go to Duke and study parapsychology when I was a kid. Do that in retirement one day, my friend, maybe I will one day. I don't think they have that that research anymore. But anyway, um, like Mr Clark, we discontinued that program, Well could you just start it up again? So Harry pricey was because he was such a good self promoter. He wrote a lot of books and he wrote his books to be easily consumed by the public, like they were very readable. I saw um. And so he became a very very well known debunker of mediums and and well known skeptic. So when he went to inspect Borley Rectory himself at the behest of the Daily Mail, and he came out of there and said, yeah, this actually checks out. This place is a haunted house. People definitely took notice, like he lent his credibility to it, and not because he was a fraud or sham necessarily, Like he seemed to have really been convinced, at least at first maybe always all right, I think it's a good spot for a break, and uh, we'll talk a little bit more about this rectory right after this. So one entry thing thing that happened at the Boorly Rectory was it burned down. Uh this is a nineteen thirty nine and you know, if you believe the story, then it seems very suspicious. But the owner at the time, Mr William Gregson, said that he saw with his own eyeballs a stack of books that were sitting there on a shelf flew off on their own and ended up knocking over a lamp a paraffin wick lamp and that ended up burning the house down. Yes, and fortunately that happened after Harry Price had spent the previous year there, so he leased the place in nine Yeah, he went and lived there for a year with forty eight assistants that he hired, um, so that they could all work basically around the clock studying and recording all the ghostly phenomenon that was there. And he made his career like even further. This cemented Harry Price and the Annals of paras Psychology where his studies on Borly Rectory, and he published two books, um, the most Haunted House in England, which coined that phrase I believe, I don't think he used it before then um, and cemented in everyone's mind like, yeah, Borily Rectory is proof positive there haunted houses. And then after the fire I believe he wrote a second book of follow up book called The End of Borrey Rectory. And so for years until Price's death in a few years beyond, Uh, anybody who believed in the world basically in ghosts had probably heard of Borily Rectory and considered it as like I was saying, proof that haunted houses can exist because of the work of Harry Price, but then his work was kind of undone later on, right, Yeah, so his old I don't know about enemies, but it's at least his rivals. Yeah. Friend of me is at the Society for uh Psychical Research, said, you know what, this guy is dead. Uh he was a bit of a jerk to us, and so let's go undo the work that he did. Let's debunk the debunker. Yeah. So they like they explained, they gave alternative explanations rather than ghosts for some of this stuff. But the thing that really kind of like pull the pull the wool down or the curtain down on the whole thing was apparently these guys found in Harry Price's unpublished notes UM he implicated a woman named Mary Ann Foyster who was the Reverend Foyster's wife who lived there for several years, and she apparently was at the center of carrying out a lot of these ghost hoaxes. And Harry Price knew it too, So that was a really he definitely buried it. And also the SPR researchers suggested, I don't know where they found this out, but they suggested that Harry Price was also not um not shy to do things like throw pebbles in a dark and seance room to just scare people and make noise and just kind of add to the whole thing. So the book really kind of cut the legs out from under the idea that Harry Price had discovered a real haunted house. Not entirely. There's plenty of people who still believed, but it definitely put a dent in the whole thing. Then there was another book. This one came out in two thousand and this was a memoir by a man named I don't know if it's Louis or Louis Marling, who said, you know what, I lived at that home a couple of times. I lived with the family of Reverend Henry Bull in the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties, and then uh and with Bull in the tens and twenties, then the Foisters that Foister Mrs Foister in the nineteen thirties. And he said, I worked with both of these families, and we did a bunch of these hoaxes. We would tickle the piano strings behind a hole in the wall and stuff like that, and it was kind of really all us. But here's a twist of that story, A twist he said he could explain everything save one that in Easter Nive, he and the aforementioned Marianne Foister and some other folks attended a seance there and it went to an underground seller about midnight. Sat there in the dark, in the quiet, and someone gave a little nervous cough, as if they were about to speak, and all of a sudden, all those kitchen bells start clinging together at once, which is supposedly impossible to ring all those things at once, and supposedly no one else was there. Yeah, so Mrs Foyster was there at the time too, And um, Louis Maryland suggests like they looked at each other, like, what's really going on? These hoaxters were suddenly or overcome with ghostly phenomenon. Right, But then, chuck, there's another twist. That's right. It turns out that the Louis Maryland, who wrote this book in two thousand um was researched themselves and found that there was nobody by the name of Lewis Maryland who has ever recorded living at Borley Rectory, let alone twice. Wow. Yeah, which I mean technically could just mean that that book is a work of fiction or whatever. But still it's a great extra twist, don't you think. Sure you thought the ghost twist was it? And then bam, bam bam, there's like the anonymous book twist. And then m night Chamelain delivers flowers to the front doors, and that's very nice. You got anything else? I got nothing else? Well, everyone, thank you for joining us on the scariest short stuff of the year, the short Stuff on Borderley Rectory, which is now out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.