Fake Haunting in Italy

So, this one is unique..well, probably not in the general situation, but the person being caught is unique.  Someone faked a hauntin at a medieval castle...for revenge, apparently.

From the Article:

A real-life Scooby-Doo villain has been jailed in Italy for four months for pretending to be a ghost.

She spent weeks terrorising her husband's employer at the 15th-century Castel Coldrano near the border with Austria, slamming doors, haunting hallways and making things go bump in the night.

For once, I have no commentary.  This one is pretty straightforward in the telling, though no doubt somewhat weirder when the details come out, as the eventually will.  The woman, a 42-year old Polish national, was caught by police after the property's owner (her husband's employer, according to the article) called the police and asked for their assistance.

It is somewhat reminiscent of the situation at the Rispin Mansion in Capitola, except in Capitola, the goal was to scare off vandals and here it was, apparently, to terrify the castle's owner.


Source:  Newspaper

Allegedly Haunted House Party, Hull, England

Neighbors of a rented house in Hull, England, have long complained of the noise of partiers and loud music cranked up late into the night.  Worse, the garden of the house has been covered in trash (largely empty alcohol bottles) which had a tendency to end up in other people's yards as well. 

When confronted by neighbors, Leanne Fennell, the 20-year old woman who rented the house and resided there with her young daughter, claimed that the loud noises were the result of a poltergeist.  She claimed that she would be in bed at night, only to hear the stereo turned up loudly, and that her attempts to get the ghost under control resulted only in further mischief.

the young woman was cited, and ordered to pay 875 pounds to the council, which she failed to do.  She has now been taken to court.

While I get the desire for a poltergeist to turn up the stereo - after all, the term poltergeist is a German word meaning "noisy ghost" - it's tendency to empty alcohol bottles and dump them in the yard is rather more confusing.  Perhaps it is unclear on what the term "intoxicating spirit" is supposed to mean.

Commentary:  History is full of examples of people concocting ghost stories to cover up for their own misdeeds.  The Amityville Case is probably the most gruesome and notable, but more minor cases are not uncommon. 

While this particular story seems especially silly (honestly, it wasn't me making the noise...it was..the...um...poltergeist!  Yeah, it's a haunted house party, that's the ticket!), it's no more so than the Amityville case (it just seems sillier because of the relatively trivial nature of the infringement: loud parties vs. multiple murders), nor is it really all that different of the many non-newsworthy cases where people blame missing car keys or other items on impish spirits. 

Although it is likely that this is just an example of Fennell being in a tight spot and coming up with the first excuse that came to mind (a very stupid excuse, really), there is always the possibility that she has managed to convince herself that it is true.  Weird thing about human memory, we can convince ourselves of the truth of all manner of outlandish things, no matter how absurd. 

Incidentally, I once lived next door to two kids attending the local community college who would have all-night, loud parties, and never seemed to grasp that their neighbors might object.  I kind of wish they had claimed that ghosts were responsible - it wouldn't have kept me from calling the police, but it would have at least given me a better story to tell my friends.

Sources:  IO9, This is Hull and Reading

Phizzel Goblin

Make sure to read the commentary after you read the story...

The Phissel family originated in Germany, and were caught up in the religious wars that caused chaos in Europe during the 17th century. It is said that, at some point, the family became cursed because of their involvement in the religious wars. The family was forced to leave Germany, and moved to Ireland, but the women of the family died during the journey. The men established themselves in Ireland, and eventually re-married and produced a few new generations of Phissels. By the 19th century, the spelling of the family's name had changed to Phizzel, and they found themselves in the midst of the potato famine. What remained of the Phizzel family, one man, his wife, and his son and daughter, headed for the Americas. The curse struck again, and the wife and daughter died during transit.

Settling initially in New York, the Phizzel men eventually headed to Missouri, finding a home in Cape Girardeau. Eventually, the elder Phizzel died, and the younger Phizzel, Jeremy, maried and had two children of his own: a son and a daughter. The family moved into a house near the river (which some stories say that Jeremy Phizzel won in a card game during which he might have shot one of the other players dead).

One night, Jeremy's son ran from the house, terrified. He had just witnessed his father killing his sister and mother, and had barely escaped himself. Jeremy ran after his son, shouting "come and join your sister!" The son led Jeremy on a chase to the edge of the river, where, thinking quickly, the boy through a branch in, making it look as if he had jumped into the water. His father dove in afterwards, surfaceing a moment later, still shouting "come and join your sister!" The river's strong currents quickly overcame the man, though, and he began to sink. The last sound that the boy heard his father make was a gurgling noise as he drowned, that sounded something like the word "goblin."

The boy, scarred from this experience, began wandering the river banks, subsisting on whatever food he could find. Although generally reclusive, he would sometimes jump out at people walking by on the river and shout "Come oand join your sister! Goblin, Goblin" and thus became known as the Phizzel Goblin. Though he must have died long ago, his father having chased him to the river's edge over a century ago, people still claim to encounter his spirit on the riverbank.


Commentary: The Phizzel Goblin is an April Fools Day joke concocted by Gene Fitzpatrick and Bryan Minogue of the excellent Hometown Tales podcast. Absolutely nothing in the story above is true, it was written for the April 1, 2006 episode of the podcast. However, if you didn't look at the date that the episode dropped, there is nothing in the podcast that would tip you off immediately. The story is a bit sillier than normal, admittedly, but it makes use of tropes from well-known urban legends and ghost stories: a family that has been cursed (a'la Dudleytown), a child with developmental disabilities (in this case probably purely psychological in nature, due to emotional trauma) growing up without parents (similar to a story known as "The Retarded Farmer"), and a location where one is likely to see a creature that wishes to get you (similar to La Llarona). Although someone listening to the episode may think that Gene and Bryan are "winking" at the audience, and they may very well have been trying to, the show is similar enough to their usual episodes, in which they discuss actual urban legends, bits of local history, ghost stories, etc., that it's not at all clear that they aren't simply recounting an actual urban legend in their usual delightfully goofy style. Even a few things that should be tip-offs (such as the fact that, despite settling in an area and presumably producing several generations, there was always just on Phizzel nuclear family) are common enough to ghost stories and urban legends that they didn't stand out as cues that the story was a joke.

In other words, if you were going to try to design an urban legend, you wouldn't be able to do much better.

And so, if one types "Phizzel Goblin" into Google, you will find message boards, urban legend sites, and Q&A forums where people are trying to find more information about the Phizzel Goblin. Enough people figured out that it was a joke that there aren't too many people who believe otherwise, but there are still occasional people who go looking for more information on this "legend" of the Mississippi River. In other words, the Phizzel Goblin is the funny cousin of the Blair Witch.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, Mr. Minogue...well played, sirs.


Sources: Hometown Tales Podcast...and as evidence that some people bought it, look here, here, and here

The Blue Lady of the Moss Beach Distillery

In 1927, a restaraunt called "Frank's Place", named for it's owner Frank Torres, opened in Moss Beach, California. By all accounts a glamorous place with great food, a wonderful atmosphere, and a steady supply of prohibition-era liquor, Frank's Place attracted the hoi polloi of the Bay Area.

One of the regulars, a young woman, found herself attracted to the piano player, who returned her affections. It wasn't long before the two were making time to see each other. As one might expect, the young woman's husband did not take this situation well. One night, as the pianist and the young woman were walking on the beach together, they were attacked. Nobody ever reported quite what happened, and the management's connections to local law enforcement kept the story from being looked into, but what is known is that the pianist was injured, but returned to play the piano the next night, the husband vanished and was never heard from again, and the young woman was dead from knife wounds, the blue dress that she had been wearing now soaked in her blood.

Since that time, numerous strange events have been associated with the locale, now known as the Moss Beach Distillery. The young woman is said to be routinely sighted, usually wearing a cut, torn, and bloody blue dress, but occasionally said to be seen looking healthy and with her dress intact. In the women's restroom, people have reported hearing laughter and a woman speaking when nobody was present. Guests sometimes report seeing the face of the woman appear in a mirror, also in the women's restroom. Throughout the establishment, lamps are said to swing or otherwise move on their own, it has been claimed that objects have been seen levitating, and furniture has been reported to move. Women have reported losing ear rings only to have them to be found stashed together in various parts of the building. Phones have rung, but when answered nobody was on the other line. People report having been touched by an unseen force, sometimes lightly, sometimes more forcefully, and often playfully. And rooms have been locked from the inside without anybody within them who could have locked them.


Commentary: Shortly after I graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1998, I obtained a car and began routinely driving up Highway 1 to San Francisco - the long-way to get there, but the most scenic route. On these trips, I passed through Moss Beach and always saw the signs for the distillery, several of which advertised the presence of the Blue Lady. Naturally, I was curious, but being as how I was always making the trip on my own, and I have never been particularly comfortable eating at a nice resturaunt by myself, I never did stop in to see what was up.

I never did forget the place, though, and have been intending to look into the ghost story for some time. Two years back, my girlfriend ended up looking into it for me, rather accidentally. I had been working on a very stressful project for several months, being out of town for ten days, home for four, and then out again for another ten. My client was hostile, the working conditions were physically tough, and the job itself was extremely boring*. She felt that I needed to relax, and thought that I would enjoy going up to the distillery for a nice dinner out and a bit of time in an allegedly haunted building. We ended up not going because, after having driven five hours to get home, I didn't want to drive another four-hour round trip to go to dinner. After we had decided not to go, Kay told me that she had gathered some information about the place from people who had lived in the area, and that these folks all claimed that the distillery made the story up in order to attract more customers, especially tourists driving up California's portion of the Pacific Coast Highway (AKA Highway 1).

I didn't know how true this was. While there was no doubt that the distillery was playing up the "haunted house" angle to draw customers, it is also not uncommon for an establishment to do this with existing ghost legends. So, the fact that the distillery was going out of its way to make people think that it was haunted did not necessarilly mean that there wasn't an existing ghost story prior to the current advertising campaign.

Since then, I have found out a bit more. When a group of people from the show Ghost Hunters arrived to do an episode, they found speakersm trick mirrors, and lamps with motors that were made to move seemingly on their own. Considering that the Ghost Hunters folks have been known to engage in their trickery and showmanship to make their television show more exciting (and to make mundane evenings look like exciting "ghost investigations"), I was rather surprised that they, of all people, were the ones uncovering this (I also have wondered if the distillery management might have had something to do with the stuff beign uncovered as part of a publicity stunt, but I really have no idea). Still, there you go.

So, was there truly a legend of the Blue Lady, prior to the distillery getting into gadgetry and showmanship? Perhaps, I don't know. However, there can be little doubt that they have done a good deal to provide the experiences via technology that people were wanting through supernatural activity.

Alot of people, I have noticed, are bitter about this sort of thing, viewing the distillery owners as frauds. I don't agree. I view this as being something akin to telling a story around a camp fire, but on a grand scale. If someone experienced these weird haunting symptoms and decided to look into it, the trickery would eventually come out. Speakers, trick mirrors, and motors all have tell-tale elements that would eventually be revealed to a real investigator. People coming to the distillery were either coming for a good meal, or a good scare, and the distillery clearly treated this as entertainment and not a serious matter to be dealt with. I have a hard time seeing this as being anything but a good business person providing some fun to people who desire to play out a ghost story.





*I've noted before that I am a professional archaeologist. Basically, when someone is doing environmental review to get permits or government money, they hire me to help keep them in compliance with federal and state historic preservation laws. In this particular case, we were dealing with hundreds of historic-era archaeological sites that consisted entirely of broken glass and early 20th-century cans. It was amazingly boring. Oh, and the tempuratures were usually well over 100 degrees fahrenheit before noon.

Sources: Wikipedia, Wikipedia, again, Moss Beach Distillery Website, Mindreader.com

The Aztec Skull

Updated May 12, 2010

There is a curious artifact sitting in the British Museum in London: a skull carved of rock crystal (a clear and colorless variety of quartz) that is purported to be from an Aztec site in Mexico. The skull was bought by the British museum in 1897 from Tiffany and Co., New York, who had bought it from French antiquities collector Eugene Boban, who in turn claimed to have bought it from an english collector who had bought it from a Spanish officer who had served in Mexico in the 1850s and 1860s. Like other similar crystal skulls, people claim that the British Museums Aztec Skull gives off energy and likely has psychic powers or properties, and may have healing powers. None of this makes it appropriate to a ghost story blog, though.

What does, however, make the Aztec Skull appropriate to a ghost story blog is the fact that it is claimed to move on its own, that museum personel allegedly insist that the skull be covered when the museum is closed because it freaks them out otherwise, and that various odd sounds and eerie feelings are tied to the skull. In other words, leaving aside the baggage that comes with it being a mystical crystal skull, it's also a haunted object.

If you look up "aztec skull british museum" via Google, you'll find all manner of web sites that, in addition to promoting the usual stories associated with crystals skulls (claims of ties to Atlantis, or aliens; claims of healing power; claims of magical properties) also tell of vague but eerie stories concerning this particular skull. These stories are consistent with what people describe when talking about haunted houses: the skull allegedly moves on its own, sometimes when nobody is looking and sometimes when someone is watching it through the glass of its display case. Nobody has ever caught this on film or video, but the stories persist. It is also claimed that museum employees insist that the skull be covered at night, when the museum is closed, in order to not see it move and to stave off creepy feelings often associated with it, though getting confirmation of this claim from the British Museum seems impossible. Also, it is claimed that museum employees, working after closing, report symptoms typical of those in haunted houses - feelings of being watched, unexplained sounds, sudden fear or general creepiness - when working in the vicinity of the skull.

Although the skulls are usually viewed as either odd baggage of the New Age movement's crystal power claims, or as elaborate hoaxes, the Aztec Skull, sitting in its display case at the British Museum, should be viewed as an object of interest for ghost story enthusiasts.


photo from the British Museum

Commentary: The story of the Aztec Skull is fascinating in and of itself. Bought by the museum in the late 19th century and documented as coming from a well-known French antiquities collector, the skull was thought to be a pre-Columbian artifact from the Americas. As time went on and more crystal skulls came to light, archaeologists and socio-cultural anthropologigists began to get suspicious.

Many of the cultures of Central and South America did manufacture carved skulls out of locally available stones. People living in the Americas during the 19th century discovered that European and North American museums were hungry for pre-Columbian artifacts, and would also carve many new ones, possibly including small skulls, out of whatever materials were at hand (sometimes including authentic, but less beautiful, ancient stone artifacts). These skulls were usually highly stylized in keeping with local traditions, however, and were quite different from the style of the crystal skulls of modern fortean lore.

The crystal skull craze began to pick up when Anna Mitchell-Hedges, daughter of adventurer and shameless self-promoter and teller of tall tales F. A. Mitchell-Hedges, produced a skull that she claimed to have found at an archaeological site in Belize while working with her father. The skull was mentioned very briefly in F.A. Mitchel-Hedge's 1954 autobiography, but it dodn't become well known until the late 1960s, when Anna began to tour it for profit. It, along with other crystal skulls that began to be better known, increased in public attention and popularity throughout the 1970s as a result of the New Age movement's belief in the alleged powers of crystals.

Many of the crystal skulls, including the Aztec skull, have been subjected to tests by numerous research institutions. The popular narrative holds that these tests have routinely shown that the skulls don't have toolmarks, that they are carved in such a way that would have been impossible without destroying the crystal, etc. etc.



Photos of the skull on display, taken May 2010


The truth is rather different. The tests have consistently shown that the skulls do have tool marks, and that these tool marks are consistent with European crystal-carving tools dating from the late 19th century through the modern day. Some folks claim that different researchers have performed tests on crystal skulls but are refusing to release the results or acknowledge that the tests have been done - which is usually code for "this is all nonsense, but we have to say something unfalsifiable as a way of saving face". In other words, the crystal skulls are fakes. Several, including the Aztec Skull and the Mitchell-Hedges skull, appear to have come from Eugene Boban, who probably bought them in Oberstein, Germany, where such crystal work was routinely done in the late 19th century. The others either are not submitted for proper study or have revealed similar results.


Me, looking dissaprovingly towards the Aztec Skull


Okay, so much for the legend of the crystal skulls. what about the Aztec Skull as a haunted object? Well, that's more interesting.

As said above, most of the symptoms of the skull's haunting are typical of haunted house symptoms - something with which Lononders would be very familiar. If I have to venture a guess, I'd say that, as the crystal skulls became the manifestation of the creepy side of the crystal power craze, the Britons working at the museum began to attribute the same sorts of symtpoms to the skull.

One thing that is missing, though, is the true and detailed history of the Aztec Skull. Yes, it was probably bought in Olberstein by Boban, but were there any interesting stories involved in its creation or existence prior to purchase? Probably not, but a ghost story collector wants to know.

Note: the skull is on display in the museum, but is hidden away in a corner, hard to find without help. If you'd like to see it, ask museum personnel to direct you towards it.


Sources: The British Museum, How Stuff Works, The Smithsonian Institute, Hometown Tales Podcast, Podcast, Internet, Internet

Himuro Mansion, Tokyo, Japan

Edited 2-2-2012

In a rocky area on the outskirts of Tokyo, there is a large house, a mansion of traditional design that hosts many malevolent spirits due to its dark history. The story is, at this point, best known to video game fans in the U.S. because a video game Fatal Frame was created based on the tale.

Legend holds that the Himuro family had a gruesome responsibility - every 50 years they had to perform an ancient and occult Shinto ritual that involved raising a woman in secret (to prevent her from forming attachments to others) and, late in the year, brought to an elemental seal from which evil forces might enter the world where each limb and her neck were tied to oxen who then pulled the woman apart.

The last woman to be killed, sometime within the last 80 years, somehow came into contact with a young man, with whom she fell in love. Her feelings for the young man essentially negated the sacrifice, and so the members of the Himuro family who were responsible for the ritual became distraught. Taking a traditional sword, the patriarch murdered his entire family, feeling their death by the sword was preferable to the evil that he believed was coming.

Since then, people have reported a wide variety of weird happenings at or near the house. Apparitions of family members have been seen both at night and in broad daylight. Bloody hand prints and sprays of blood, as if from a drenched sword, mysteriously appear on the walls. People who enter the house are occasionally found dead, with rope marks on their arms and legs indicating that they had been bound and pulled.

In addition, there are three smaller houses on the same property that had some connection to the ritual. There are reputed to be tunnels under the houses that connect them to each other and the mansion, but it is not known who built these tunnels.

A few photos have been found on the internet that may be from this house, but nobody knows for certain.


Commentary: A short while back, I began looking into ghost stories in Japan. I kept coming across references to Himuro Mansion, and the impression that I got was that it was essentially the Japanese equivalent of the Borley Rectory, except for one thing: while the location of most allegedly haunted houses is known, nobody knew where Himuro Mansion was. Also, the story of how the mansion came to be haunted seemed so over the top that it struck me as obviously false. Add to that the fact that the story is said to have inspired the video game Fatal Frame, and I was suspicious as to the nature of this story. Still, I know little enough about Japanese culture that I though I should look into it further, and that's how I eventually began stumbling across the last couple of bits of information that made the whole thing clear.

The tale behind this haunted house story is an interesting one. There is no Himuro Mansion. Himuro is, in fact, a fairly normal Japanese name (think "Smith Mansion"), and the story is not one likely to be known by many Japanese people. This is an American urban legend about Japan, not a Japanese one. And what's better, it was a consciously created urban legend!

The game Fatal Frame was originally designed and released in Japan, and following it's Japanese release, it was prepared for a North American release. It is not clear when the story of the haunted mansion began, but by the time of its North American release, the tagline "Based on a true story"* was added to the title, and the claim that the game was based on an actual story concerning a haunted house in Japan was circulated. The presence of the internet, probably the best tool for spreading false information and claiming rumor as true ever, made it easy to spread the story, and many people in both the video gamer and paranormal enthusiast communities shared the tale of the haunted house with others. Whether the alleged photos of the house come from the game company or from outside hoaxsters on the internet is not clear.

So, it appears possible that the story primarily exists in North America, and only exists because it was part of a marketing campaign for a video game. As a result, we now appear to have an urban legend about events that allegedly happened in another country, but the legend is primarily in circulation in the U.S. This has to be one of the most convoluted marketing/hoax-based urban legends ever. And I really dig it.

Edit to add:  As you can see if you look down in the comments section of this site, there are a whole lot of people who really want this story to be true, which makes this entry the most commented-on of all of those that I have posted to this site.   The comments section is something of a microcosm of the sorts of weird-ass arguments that people make regarding claims that are demonstrated false, but that they wish to keep believing: you have the people who are unwilling to do their own background research accusing me of not having done mine, you have the people making frankly racist assertions regarding the "superstitious" and "secretive" people of Asia, you have the pseudo-profound ramblings of people who are trying to claim that the fact that this house has never been found is somehow evidence of it's existence, the people who produce weird-ass stories about alleged visits to the house, and you have the people claiming that there is some sort of vast cover-up that would have to include Google, several governments, and more than a few people and companies involved in software development.  It is deeply, deeply strange.

For most of the people posting here who are claiming that the story is true, it seems to be partially a devotion to the game (which I am told is a fantastic game, though I have personally not played it) and partially a desire for a supernatural story to be true.  Regardless, this particular entry seems to get the passions up like nothing else on here...likely this is at least partially because the fact that this is tied in to a video game gives the players of the game a feeling that they have somehow experienced the events, and therefore a deeper investments than they otherwise might have.  I suspect also that the culturally pornographic view that many have regarding the "exotic" nature of Japan makes them invest this story with more meaning than a ghost story set in, for example, New Jersey.  Regardless, it is interesting to me that this one entry gets so much attention when, frankly, it's not even one of the better entries on this site.


*What is it with people routinely falling for this line? I have seen otherwise sane, rational people fall for really tall tales because they were supposedly "based on a true story". My favorite example, though, is that a cousin of mine was convinced that the events depicted in Return of the Living Dead really happened because the opening screen of the film had these words emblazoned across it.


Sources:  Fatal Frame Wiki,   Wikipedia, Internet, Internet, The Illustrious Internet

The Borley Rectory

In 1863, the Reverend Henry Bull had a rectory built in Borley, Essex to house himself and his family. The land on which the rectory was built was rumored to have been the site of a Medieval monastery, and the locals told stories of a ghostly nun who was often seen in the area. Bull ignored the stories and built his home in this location anyway.

After the home was built, strange things began to happen. Footsteps with no clear source were heard, the Bull children reported seeing a phantom nun walking about the grounds, and stories of a phantom coach with a headless driver began to circulate in the area. These stories squared with local legends concerning a nun who fell in love with a monk at the local monastery. The two chose to elope, and both were executed, along with the driver of the get-away carriage.

Two generations of the Bull family maintained residence at Borley Rectory until 1927, when reverend Guy Eric Smith became the rector of the church and took up residence.

After moving in, Smith's wife discovered a paper package containing the skull of a young woman in one of the cupboards. Shortly thereafter, the sounds of servant bells ringing (even after their strings had been cut) and sourceless footsteps became common. Lights appeared in the house (presumably in unoccupied rooms), and the phantom coach was again seen (though whether or not the driver was headless this time is unknown).

At the Smiths' request, the Daily Mirror newspaper put them in touch with the Society for Psychical Research. The newspaper also arranged for a paranormal investigator by the name of Harry Price* to come to the house.

After Price arrived, new phenomenon were observed, including tappings from spirits (often referred to as "spirit messages") and objects began to be thrown.

The Smiths left in 1929, and were replaced in 1930 by Reverend Lionel Foyster and his family. The old phenomenon continued, and were accompanied by even more violent throwing of objects, shattering windows, people being locked into rooms, people were physically thrown by unseen forces, and Adelaide Foyster, Reverend Foyster's step-daughter, was once attacked by something that was described only as "horrible."

Reverend Foyster twice tried to conduct exorcisms, but to no avail. A stone was thrown at him during his first attempt, and the second simply brought no result. The Foysters eventually left the home in 1937 due to the Reverend's poor health.

Harry Price continued his investigations during this time, and rented the house in 1937. He built a group of observers who would visit the house, often spending several days there, and keep track of their observations. During seances conducted during this period, contact was made with the spirit of a nun who had been killed on the grounds where the house stood. She claimed to have been murdered by Henry Waldengrave, who had owned the 17th-century manor house that had previously stood at the rectory's location.

A second spirit, going by the name of Sunex Amures, was contacted and announced his intention to set fire to the house in order to reveal the remains of a murder victim. In 1939, nearly a year later, the house's new resident, one Captain W. H. Gregson, was unpacking boxes when an oil lamp overturned and started a fire, severely damaging the house. After the fire, Harry Price returned to the rectory, and began exploring the basement, where he found bones, which were interred in holy ground at Liston Churchyard, putting the wronged nun's spirit to rest.


Commentary: ...and you thought that the howling cabin in Harry Potter was the most haunted house in England.

Although much of the legend that has been built up around the house implies that it was built at the abandoned site of a former monastery, it was actually built on the grounds of the previous rector's home, and the story of the monastery, eloping couple, and executed carriage driver was invented by the Reverend Bull's children and only later became part of the legend surrounding the place.

Harry Price's investigations at the house are what "made" him as a paranormal investigator, but have themselves been the source of much controversy. The Society for Psychical Research, once one of the most prominent paranormal investigation groups in the world, performed their own study of the house, and not only came to different conclusions than Price, but also accused Price of Fraud in his investigations. Later biographies of Price have portrayed him as a con-man who made a supplemental income by performing "psychical research."

However, Price also has his defenders, though their case typically seems rather weak. Nonetheless, it can be argued that he was not quite the cunning, cynical force that his opponents made him out to be, though he may still have been a con man. Indeed, his discovery of the bones of an alleged murder victim both seem rather remarkably convenient (especially seeing as how his spirit contact had said that he would burn down the house nearly a year before it actually happened), and the bones were buried in Liston churchyard rather than Borley churchyard after the authorities of Borley established that the bones were from a pig and not a human.

Childhood stories and possible hoaxing aside, it is still difficult to figure out what, if anything, actually happened at the Borley Rectory. As noted, some of the stories appear to have come directly from the imaginations of the Bull children, others may have been due to a hoax, and still others may have come from other non-paranormal sources. For example, after the fact it was revealed that Marianne Foyster was having an affair with a lodger, and used the well-known ghost story to create distractions and cover up some of her activity. In addition, the media attention focused on the house likely resulted in "bigger fish" stories being created, turning natural phenomenon into larger-than-life (or death) ghostly happenings in order ot feed the ravenous media creature.

Unlike the rather similar Amityville case, the media of the time was more limited, producing fewer reports to be examined, and there was no legal proceedings involved, further preventing the generation of publicly available information. As a result, this case can not be examined as exhaustively as the Amityville case.

So, in the end, what happened at Borley Rectory? Did something truly strange and unexplainable happen in the midst of the made-up stories and the media blitzkrieg? Or was the haunting simply a series of hoaxes?

I have no idea. I do know that those who advocate for proof of spirits would do well to steer clear of the Borley Rectory simply because there is so much confusion surrounding the place. Whether or not there is something strange sitting underneath the surface is an open question, but one that we would do well to consider somewhat skeptically.

SOURCES: Prairie Ghosts, Brittania.com, LLc, Ghost-Story.co.uk, Podcast, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet



*Irrelevant to most people, but funny to me - I used to work for an archaeologist named Barry Price, and so I keep having to go back and change my "b"s to "h"s when I write Harry Price's name.

The Amityville Haunting

Most of us are familiar with the outlines of the story, after all, it has been part of our collective pop culture since the 1970s. On the morning of November 13, 1974, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. murder his entire family while they slept. He then attempted to hide the evidence but was eventually caught and convicted. He remains in prison to this day.

In 1975, George and Kathy Lutz bought and moved into the house with their children, but they stayed less than a month. After they left, they had a litany of eerie to terrifying encounters to recount. It started small, with objects moving, and sounds without sources, but eventually moved on to much larger and more menacing manifestations. George Lutz heard a phantom brass band marching through the house, the walls began to “bleed” a viscous slime, and the family began to see apparitions of ghostly people.

After a time, the manifestations went from ghostly to demonic. The family reported seeing a devil-like figure with glowing red eyes peering into the windows of their house. The youngest daughter had an imaginary friend named “Jodie” who she reported as looking like a cross between a devil and a pig. One day, after seeing the demonic figure peeking into the windows, George and Kathy found cloven hoofmarks in the snow outside of the house. George began to become violently angry, out of character for him. And clouds of flies would appear out of nowhere even on the coldest of days. A priest came to the house to perform and exorcism, and was told by a disembodied voice to “get out!” The priest was then followed back to the church by a menacing specter, and suffered from a number of different physical ailments.

The final straw came when a mysterious and unseen force began to rip doors and windows out of the walls, and the Lutz family fled in terror.

After they had left, the George and Kathy contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren, as well as the local television station, and asked them to investigate. The Warrens were considered by many to be the pre-eminent paranormal investigators of the day (but see commentary below), Lorraine was a psychic and Ed was a demonologist. The entered the house, took photos, looked about, and made careful notes of what they saw and, in the case of Lorraine, her impressions as a psychic. They concluded that evidence indicated that the family had left suddenly (for example, the fridge was stocked with food, not what you would expect if the family had planned on leaving), and that the house was definitely possessed by a demonic entity.

Further research showed that the ground on which the house was built was thought to be the home of evil spirits by the local Native American tribe, and prior to the colonization of the area by whites, this location was used as a dumping ground for the insane and diseased of the tribe.

And from there, the rest is history. Jay Anson wrote a book, chronicling the experiences of the Lutz family, and the book was made into a hit movie, which spawned numerous sequels that weren’t even claimed to be based on actual events (my favorite for sheer silliness has to be Amityville Dollhouse).
And with that, the true story of a real haunted house became known to the public, and the skeptics predictably refused to believe what was obvious right in front of them.

Commentary: What is written above is the story that most of the public knows, whether from Jay Anson’s book, from the movies, or from the fact that this story has been a big part of our pop culture for the last 30 years. And the story has many firm believers. In preparing for this entry, I came across numerous websites, essays, and articles in which supporters of the Lutz’s version of events rant about the “faithless” closed-minded skeptics who refuse to see what is in front of their face if it doesn’t jive with their pre-conceived ideas of how the world works.

But when you look into the story more, the truth is rather different than the commonly believed version of events.

For starters, William Weber, the defense attorney for Ronald DeFeo Jr., had contact with the George and Kathy Lutz, and even sued them for non-compliance on a book agreement that he had with them. Over time, a story came out that the Lutzes and Weber developed the haunted house story over a few bottles of wine in order to provide Weber with something to use to persuade a jury in a hoped-for new trial for DeFeo (remember, he doesn’t have to scientifically prove that ghosts or demons exist, just persuade a jury), and to allow the Lutzes something that they might be able to use (or sell in the form of books) in order to get out from under a crippling mortgage.

In addition, many of the details just didn’t work out. There are conflicting reports of how long the Lutzes stayed in the home, there are reports from neighbors that the night after they left “for good” they were back to hold a yard sale, there was no snow on the ground on the days when the cloven-hoof prints were said to be in the snow, and all of the original hardware was present and intact on the doors and windows that had allegedly been torn apart. Also, the police were never actually called, contrary to claims made by the Lutzes. Oh, and the priest who had attempted the exorcism? He says it never happened. And many of the elements that made it into Anson’s book seem to have been lifted from the film The Exorcist, which was quite the sensation at the time.

None of the subsequent owners or tenants of the house have had any supernatural experiences (though many have reported trouble with tourists coming to see the house (the house address has even been changed and the windows remodeled to hide from would-be curiosity seekers), a rather strange lack of behavior for a home supposedly ruled by diabolical forces.

What of the Warrens? While they were certainly a popular resource for those wishing to investigate the paranormal, and had a level of celebrity themselves, their methods were generally riddled with problems, and not reliable. In general, tracking down gaps in their logic and holes in their work has not proven difficult even for firm believers in the paranormal, and has proven very easy for those who question the existence of the paranormal.

In fact, the Warrens weren’t even the first investigators contacted by George and Kathy. That would be Stephen Kaplan of the Parapsychology Institute of America, who told the Lutzes that he’d be happy to look into the matter, but that if the story was a hoax, he would report it as such. He never heard back from George or Kathy.

And what of the claim that the house was built on a place of evil that had been used to house the sick and insane? Well, this seems to be an interesting riff on the “built on an Indian burial ground” chestnut that gets kicked around a lot. This part especially interests me because I am, by both training and occupation, an anthropological archaeologist and I work in North America – in other words, this is my turf. There certainly are areas that were considered “evil” or at least unwelcoming by the native peoples of the Americas, but there is no evidence that this location was one of them. And while it is not uncommon in many cultures to isolate the sick, there is little indication that this happened here. Moreover, what of the insane? The separation of the insane into separate “asylum” areas is not uncommon across the world, but neither is it necessarily the norm, and those asylum areas usually have things to keep the insane in – what I like to call “walls” – and there is no evidence of such a thing at this location. In other words, this part of the story appears to be complete fiction that takes advantage of the fact that most people have such a poor understanding of how the Native Americans lived that such a story sounds plausible to everyone except for actual Native Americans and anthropologists – who all regard the story as nonsense.

So, at the very best, being as charitable as possible to George and Kathy Lutz, a fair-minded person would have to conclude that whatever actually happened at the house, the story became heavily embellished afterwards, and the media circus that ensued pushed people to become more entrenched in positions that they took publicly.

On the other hand, many elements of the story contradict facts that can be verified, and those that don’t contradict verifiable facts are of the sort that they cannot be tested at all. There is a clear motive for a hoax, and evidence of an intentional push on the part of Weber and the Lutzes to do just that. I can no more prove that the story is a complete hoax than I can prove that there is not a teapot in independent orbit around the sun. However, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well…

In fact, even among those who firmly believe in hauntings and who investigate these matters, there seems to be a growing consensus that this story is a hoax. For most of these folks, the most interesting thing about the story is that something as flimsy as this has gotten the attention of the nation in the way that it has.

While it is sometimes true that those who are skeptical of something unusual are simply refusing to accept it because it doesn’t fit their world view, the facts of this case are pretty clear, and those who continue to espouse the “true haunting” account after sifting through the information that is widely available can be fairly said to be the closed-minded ones here.

To my mind, the most interesting thing about this story is not the alleged haunting, but the way in which stories spread through the media took on a life of their own and became "established fact" in the minds of many people regardless of what the true facts of the case were. In a purely logical/rhetorical sense, this is no different from how a particular political party's views become "obvious facts" for the party faithful despite evidence to the contrary, or how other news events become twisted in the public mind. The main difference is that this sotry is generally treated as nothing more than a "scary story", and as such belief in it is pretty harmless. However, it's good to keep in mind that the same things that got many people to believe in this rather obvious hoax also get people to believe things that can have a much bigger effect on their lives.

Personal Account: No, I don’t have personal experience with the house, and I have never been to Amityville. However, as a kid, my older sister loved horror movies, and I hated them. To be more specific, I was terrified of the movies.

On day, she and I were at home alone. Our parents had rented some movies for us – I don’t remember what I had, but she had Amityville 3 (AKA Amytiville 3-D , part of the early-80’s 3-D fad). She put the movie on, and seemed to enjoy it. I, on the other hand, cowered in my room, waiting for the movie to be over, occasionally slipping out to see what horrors were unfolding onscreen (these movies terrified me, but also kinda’ fascinated me), and what I saw when I ventured out left me feeling very frightened and disturbed.

Fast forward two decades, and I am now in my late 20’s, and have made my dark pact with Jabootu, demon prince of crappy movies. Amityville 3 is on the Sci-Fi channel, so of course I have to sit down and watch it. And, wow, it was bad. I mean, really terrible, not scary or creepy in the least, and nearly unwatchable due to poor performances and even worse writing.

All I could think as I turned off the television towards the middle was “THAT scared me? The only thing scary about this piece of cinematic offal is that someone was stupid enough to think that it would be a good idea to waste money making it!”

SOURCES: Internet , Magazine, Internet , Published Book , Internet , Internet , Snopes