SCARY STORIES... BEWARE!

Humans Can Lick Too

My great-grandmother lived alone up in the mountains at her cabin. Her husband had died, so she was there all alone. She only had one companion, and that was her loving dog. They both loved each other very much and the dog loved her and comforted her. Every night when she went to bed, the dog would lick her hand to let her know that he was there to protect her.

One night, she had gone to bed and the dog had licked her hand like he had done routinely every night since her husband died. But this night was different. She had woken up in the middle of the night because she heard her dog whimpering. She wanted to comfort him and let her know she was there for him, so she stuck her hand out by the bed and she felt the dog gently lick her hand like always. She figured he was just cold so she went back to sleep.

The dog's whimpering had woken her up a second time in the night so she stuck her hand out, the dog licked it and she went back to sleep. This happened a third time, and she stuck her hand out and the dog stopped whimpering and came and licked her hand. She stayed awake a few moments afterward and the dog had stopped whimpering. She went back to sleep again.

In the morning, she woke up and stuck her hand out by the bed, but nothing licked her hand. She thought that the dog had already awaken and was just in the front room. She rolled over and got out of bed and heard a drip......drip.....drip.....drip, so she walked into the kitchen and turned the handles on the sink faucet, but it wasn't dripping.

She continued into her bathroom to take a shower. As she walked in, the drips got louder! She turned and looked above the bathtub and SCREAMED! There, hanging from the light by his tail, was her loving companion, with his blood dripping into the bathtub. She screamed and began to cry. Wiping her eyes and sobbing, she turned around and looked at the mirror. In the mirror she saw the dog hanging and written on the mirror with a finger, in her dog's blood with drips and streaks hanging down from each letter, were the words... HUMAN'S CAN LICK TOO!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Graveyard Wager

A group of young girls were having a slumber party one night and began to exchange ghost stories. One girl claimed that the old man who had been buried earlier that week in the graveyard down the street had been buried alive. She claimed that if you tried, you could hear him still scratching at the lid of his coffin. The other girls called her bluff and told her that she wouldn’t do it. They said she was too afraid to go down there to the grave that very night. They continued to challenge her and eventually she gave into the peer pressure and accepted their challenge. Since she was going to go alone, she needed to prove to the others that she actually followed through with the task. She was supposed to take a stake with her and drive it into the ground so the next day the girls would know that she had been to the grave.

She headed off to the gravesite, stake in hand, and never returned. The other girls assumed she had "chickened out" and had just gone home instead.

The next morning as they passed the graveyard they saw her there at the old man's grave. She had accidentally staked her nightshirt to the ground and when she tried to run from the grave, she couldn’t... she died of fright right on the grave!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

China Doll

A beautiful 8 year old girl, Izzy, got this adorable china doll for her birthday. She called her Sam. One day Izzy was playing with her doll until her mom called her for bed. Izzy put the doll in the basement and went up to bed.

In the middle of the night she heard weird noises. Then she heard "China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, now they're dead." Izzy fell back into a troubled sleep.

In the morning she raced to her parents room and they were dead. She cried as her brother planned the funeral. Izzy did not play with Sam that day. She went up to bed early and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night she heard chanting again. China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, china doll, china doll in your brothers room now he's dead." Izzy shivered and fell into another troubling sleep.

In the morning she went to her brothers room, he was dead. She spent the day in her room and wouldn't come out. Night fell again and she went to sleep.

She heard the chanting again. "China doll, china doll in the basement, china doll, china doll on the stairs, china doll, china doll in your parents room, china doll, china doll in your brothers room, china doll, china doll in your room." She gazed up to see the doll. "Now you're...dead!"

The police found her the next day with no sign of the murderer. All they heard was chuckling in the distance. The chuckle of a brown haired, brown eyed china doll, on the hunt for her next victims.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The Boy With The Brass Buttons

A young couple were delighted to purchase the old-fashioned house in the Stuyvesant Square section of Philadelphia. They moved into their dream home in the winter of 1889, bringing their six year old daughter with them.

There was a lot of refurbishing to do, so the little girl tended to go up to the attic to play while her parents were occupied with the house. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, because the previous owners had converted the attic into a playroom. It even had a fireplace at one point, but it was currently boarded up.

After a couple of weeks of hard work, the downstairs rooms were finished. The mother, realizing that she had been neglecting their daughter, attempted to try and spend more time with her now, but the little girl seemed distracted. She kept stealing back up to the attic alone to play.

Exasperated, and perhaps a little hurt the the child was not being responsive to her attentions, the mother finally asked, "What's so interesting up there in that stuffy room?"

"It's the little boy with the shiny buttons," the child replied. "He's so much fun to play with!"

"What little boy?" the mother demanded, wondering if a servant child had stowed away in the room. She went to investigate, but found the room empty.

Certain that her daughter was just being contrary, she urged her husband to discipline the child. At her father's stern voice the little girl became hysterical. She kept repeating that there was a little boy and he wore a blue jacket with lots of shiny buttons on it. As her father listened, he became more and more curious. Formerly a s eaman, he realized his daughter was describing a child's sailor suit, complete with the brass buttons.

The girl's father made some inquires about the Cowderlys, the family that lived in the house before them. He learned that they had come from England, bringing their children with them, two boys and a girl. The youngest child, a boy, was born retarded. The neighbors described the youngest boy as a sweet innocent child, but added that Mr. Cowderly was ashamed of him and tried to prevent him from being seen outdoors.

According to the boy's parents, the neighbors continued, the young boy would often sneak out to go down to the river. The story goes on to say that one day he fell in and drowned. His body was never recovered, but his cap had been found floating in the river. Shortly after the disappearance, the Cowderlys put the house up for sale and, leaving Philadelphia, dropped out of sight.

The former seaman's suspicions were now thoroughly aroused. He accompanied his little daughter to the attic and asked her to show him where the little boy came from. She pointed to the boarded up fireplace. Her father called in workers to open it and then to remove the mortar that cemented up a cavity beside the chimney.

As the mortar was chipped away, the corpse of a small boy was revealed. He was clothed in a little blue sailor jacket with four rows of brass buttons down the front. Further examination revealed that the back of the child's head had been crushed by a violent blow.

The little boy was murdered!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Haunted Doll

In 1897, a family named Otto lived in a nearby house in Key West, Florida. They owned a plantation and had a lot of servants working for them who they treated very badly. One servant girl gave their son, Gene, a present of a doll. What the Ottos didn’t realise was that this servant girl knew voodoo.

Gene's full name was Robert Eugene Otto. His parents had always called him "Gene", so he decided to give the doll his real name, "Robert".

Many Strange things began to occur in the Otto household. Many neighbors claimed to see Robert move about from window to window, when the family were out. Gene began to blame Robert for mishaps that would occur. The Otto's claimed to hear the doll giggle, and swear they caught glimpses of the doll running about the house.

Gene began to have nightmares and scream out in the night, when his parents would enter the room, they would find furniture over turned, their child in a fright, and Robert at the foot of the bed, with his glaring gaze! "Robert Did It".... The doll was eventually put up into the attic. Where he resided for many years.

But Robert had other plans. Visitors that entered the house could hear something walking back and forth in the attic, and strange giggling sounds. Guests no longer wanted to visit the Otto home.

Gene Otto died in 1972.The home was sold to a new family, and the tale of Robert had died do....

But Robert waited patiently up in the attic to be discovered, once again. The 10 year old daughter of the new owners. Was quick to find Robert in the attic. It was not long before Robert unleashed his displeasure on the child… The little girl claiming that the doll tortured her, and made her life a hell. Even after more than thirty years later, she steadfastly claims that "the doll was alive and wanted to kill her."

Robert, still dressed in his white sailor's suit and clutching his stuffed lion, lives quite comfortably, though well guarded, at the Key West Martello Museum. Employees at the museum continue to give accounts of Robert being up to his old tricks still today....

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Basement Room

Years ago, my family went on a vacation in Cape Cod and we rented a small old house to stay in for two weeks. On the main floor was the kitchen, the living room and a bathroom. The bedrooms were on the second floor. There was a basement room downstairs, with a washer and dryer, a sofa and a television.

On the fist night, we were all awakened by a terrible scream from my sister’s bedroom. When my dad burst into her room and turned on the light, he found her sitting up in bed, screaming and crying. My parents sat with her and comforted her until she finally calmed down enough to tell them what had scared her.

She said that she had been awakened in the middle of the night by a horrible stench. When she opened her eyes, she had seen the entire bedroom soaked in blood from top to bottom. There was blood all over the floor, bloody handprints on the walls and blood spatter all over the ceiling.

We all thought that she had just been having a nightmare, but she refused to go back into her bedroom and stayed in our parents’ room for the remainder of the holiday.

One evening, my mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen upstairs and my father had gone out on an errand in a nearby town. My sister and I were in the basement room, watching TV, when all of a sudden, the lightbulb popped and the TV went off, leaving us in complete darkness. The basement was unfinished and had old stone walls, making it a bit of a creepy place. For a few seconds, we just froze, not knowing what to do. Then we started to smell something horrible.

It was a terrible stench and when it hit our noses, we felt nauseous. It smelled like rotting flesh. The smell quickly grew worse and worse and then we just heard a scratching in the darkness. Something seemed to be scratching at the floor or the walls. We screamed and began scrambling around in the pitch black, trying to find the door. Eventually, we managed to open the door and ran upstairs screaming to our mother.

We kept telling her about the disgusting smell and we heard something scratching and scraping around down there. My mother eventually agreed to go down to the basement, replace the bulb and check out the source of the horrible smell. She took a flashlight and a new bulb and disappeared into the darkened basement, as we waited for her at the top of the stairs. We expected her to return quickly but she seemed to be down there for an eternity.

Suddenly, we saw her emerge out of the darkness and come running up the stairs. She slammed the basement door behind her and bolted it as fast as she could. She turned to us and we could see her face had completely drained of color. Her eyes were wide with fear and she just said “I don’t want you going down there again.” Then she went into the kitchen and called the police.

We overheard her conversation on the phone and managed to figure out that she’d seen someone down in the basement room. As we waited for the police to come, we huddled together in the living room, staring at the basement door. At any moment, we expected to hear someone banging on it or trying to break it down. My mother refused to tell us what she had seen.

When the police arrived, my mother greeted them at the front door and ushered them inside. She unbolted the basement door and they went down into the darkness with their flashlights out and their guns drawn. They searched the entire basement room, but found nothing. There was no other way out of the basement, no windows, no doors. Whatever was down there would have had to come up through the basement door.

After the police left, my mother finally revealed what she had seen down there in the pitch black basement room. As she spoke, she became very still and quiet. She said that she had been changing the lightbulb downstairs, when she began to smell the horrible stench we had described to her. Then she started to hear a faint scratching noise. She shone her flashlight around the room and suddenly caught sight of something crouched between the washer and dryer.

It was a man, crouched on all fours. His clothes were tattered, his hair was wild and tangled, and his face didn’t look human. It was twisted in an expression of pure hatred. In that split second, he looked up at my mother, his eyes reflecting the beam from her flashlight. Then he suddenly crawled forward and disappeared through a wall. When my mother saw him simply vanish into thin air, she dropped the flashlight and ran.

After that, none of us would go down in the basement. We kept the door locked and bolted. Every night, we slept in our parents’ room and locked that door too. We cut our holiday short a few days later and just drove home.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The Babysitter

A young girl in need of a job was able to find work as a babysitter for a couple who lived in a large, isolated, old house. They were going out to see a movie that night and left the teenage baby-sitter in charge of their two young children.

The babysitter put the children to bed when it got late and then went downstairs to watch some television. She was just getting comfortable when she heard the phone ringing. When she answered it, all she heard was heavy breathing followed by a man’s voice asking, “Have you checked on the children?”

Freaked out, she hung up the phone, trying to convince herself that it was just someone playing a practical joke on her. She went back to watching television but about 15 minutes later, the phone rang again. She picked up the receiver and heard hysterical laughter from the other end of the line. Then the same voice asked “Why haven’t you checked on the children?”

The babysitter slammed down the phone. The poor girl was frightened out of her wits and immediately called the police. The operator at the police station told the babysitter that if the man called again, she should try to keep him talking. That would give the police time to trace the call.

A few minutes later, the phone rang a third time and when the babysitter answered it, she heard the heavy breathing again. The voice on the line said “You should really check on the children.” The babysitter listened to him laughing hysterically for a long time. She hung up the phone again and almost immediately, it rang again.

This time it was the operator from the police station who yelled, “Get out of the house right now! The calls are coming from the upstairs phone!”

The babysitter dropped the phone in shock and suddenly she heard heavy footsteps walking down the stairs. Without pausing for a second, she ran out of the house as fast as her legs would carry her. Just as she closed the front door behind her, a man’s hand slammed against the glass. She screamed and ran out into the street just as a police car was pulling up outside.

The police searched the house and found the two children upstairs, hiding in a closet, crying uncontrollably. In the parents’ bedroom, they found a bloody axe lying on the floor next to the upstairs phone. The back window was wide open and the curtains were blowing in the breeze. There was no sign of the madman who had made the phonecalls. He had escaped into the night when the police arrived and managed to interrupt his horrible plan to kill the two children and the poor babysitter.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The Nurse

A girl had just finished nursing school and started working in a new hospital. Although she loved her job as a nurse, she found it difficult to get along with the people she worked with. They were mostly young doctors who had just finished medical school. The problem was that they delighted in pulling pranks on each other.

She found it very difficult to live with them in the redsidence next to the hospital, because they stayed up late at night and made too much noise. The nurse worked very long hours and needed all the sleep she could get. Whenever she complained about their behavior, the mischievous doctors just laughed in her face and told her to shut her fat mouth.

The nurse eventually had to report the young doctors to the hospital manager and they got in all sorts of trouble. The doctors began to really hate the nurse and spent days devising a plan to get revenge on her. Finally, one of the doctors came up with a really sick prank they could play on the nurse and the others gleefully agreed to help.

That night, they broke into the mortuary in the hospital basement and sawed the arm off a corpse. Then they sneaked into the nurse’s bedroom and put the severed arm under her bedclothes. They placed it at the bottom of the bed so that when she lay down, her feet would touch it.

Chuckling to themselves, they stood around in the hallway, waiting for the young nurse to go to bed. As the girl went into her bedroom, the doctors had to stop themselves from laughing out loud. The nurse was suspicious of their behavior, but she was too tired to care and went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

The men waited impatiently in the hallway for the nurse to find the severed arm in her bed. But nothing happened. There were no screams, no angry yells. Only silence.

After a while, the doctors got fed up waiting around and decided to turn in for the night. They assumed that they had placed the severed arm too far down in the bed and the nurse must not have felt it.

The next morning, when they woke up, the doctors went to check on the nurse. Receiving no answer when they knocked on her door, they turned the handle and went inside.

The room seemed to be completely empty.

The doctors searched the nurse’s bedroom and when they opened her closet, they were greeted by a horrible sight.

The nurse was curled up in the corner of the closet. Her hair had turned completely white, her eyes were rolled back in her head and she had gone totally insane. Her face looked like it had aged 20 years and, worst of all, she was chewing on the severed arm.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Roomates

Two female college roommates were staying in their dorm room during the University’s Christmas vacation. All of the other girls on campus had gone home so they were completely alone.

The roommates were trying to do some study, but they ended up just spending hours browsing the Internet on their laptop.

Late that night, one of the girls felt hungry so she told her roommate she was going downstairs to get some food. She assured her friend she would be back in a few minutes. Then she took the keys to open the kitchen door and walked off down the hallway.

The other girl sat in her room, using her laptop and waiting for her roommate to return. After a while, she began to feel sleepy so she undressed and got into bed.

As she was about to fall asleep she heard a gurgling moan coming from down the hallway. She froze, lying in bed, her heart pounding. The sound stopped, but it was replaced by a dragging noise.

The girl was terrified. She couldn’t lock the door because her roommate had taken the keys with her. All she could do was lie there, shivering, as the sound drew nearer and nearer.

She listened, shaking with fear, as the dragging sound came closer and closer, stopping right outside her door. Then, something began scratching at the door. Frightened beyond belief, the girl jumped out of bed and hid in the closet.

The trembling girl was afraid to move a muscle. The scratching noise seemed to go on and on. Eventually she managed to fall asleep, curled up in the closet.

The next morning, the girl cautiously stepped out of the closet. The scratching sounds had stopped but she was still too frightened to open the door. Looking out her window, she saw a mailman passing by and shouted to him for help.

She heard the mailman’s footsteps entering through the college dorm and coming up the stairs, into the hallway. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped.

“Is everything OK?” cried the girl.

For a few seconds, there was just silence.

“Yes, everything’s OK”, shouted the mailman. “Just stay in your room. I’ll get the police.”

“What’s wrong?” asked the girl.

“Nothing!” came the mailman’s reply. “Just stay where you are. Don’t come out.”

But the girl was already turning the handle and opening the door. As the door swung open, the girl saw the mailman standing there, his face pale and his eyes wide with fear. Then she looked down and screamed in horror at what she saw.

Her roommate’s dead body was sprawled on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. There was a hatchet buried in her head and her fingernails were worn down to bloody stumps from scratching on the door for help.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Bedroom Light

There were two girls who were the best of friends in school. When they went to college, they decided to live together and became roommates.

One night, they were staying up late, trying to do some last-minute studying for a midterm exam that was scheduled for the next morning.

One of the girls was quite lazy, so she decided to give up studying and went to bed early. The other girl was a hard worker, so she stayed up late because she wanted to do well in the exam.

During the night, the girl who stayed up remembered that she had left one of the books she needed in her bedroom. She didn’t want to wake her roommate by turning on the light so she sneaked into the bedroom and rummaged around in the dark, looking for the book she needed.

She heard some heavy breathing and she whispered her roommate’s name, asking her if she was awake.

There was no answer.

Then the girl heard something moving around in the dark and she whispered, “Can I turn on the bedroom light?”

There was no answer.

The girl cleared her throat and asked again, “Can I turn on the bedroom light? I need to find something.”

Her roommate didn’t respond.

So the girl sighed in frustration and continued to search for the book in the darkened bedroom. Eventually she found the one she was looking for. The girl took the book and felt her way in the darkness towards the door.

She stayed up all night studying and in the morning, raced down to the exam hall to take her test. But she noticed that her roommate never showed up for the exam.

The girl was worried about her friend so when she got home, she rushed upstairs and knocked on her roomate’s door.

There was no answer.

The girl was getting quite anxious at this point, so she opened the door and turned on the bedroom light. She was met with the most horrible sight she had ever laid eyes on.

Her roommate lay motionless, sprawled on top of her bed in a pool of blood. She had been brutally murdered.

Then the girl turned around and saw something that chilled her to the bone. Written on the wall behind her in smeared blood were the words “Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn On The Light?”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Smith Sisters Murdered Anonymously

It’s an urban legend about a boy named John Smith who was very fond of scary emails and popups.

Every day, he would find new ones and post them to everyone he knew. He even started making some himself and sending them to strangers. He loved to scare people on the Net.

John lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin. One day in November 2007, he opened up his Inbox and found a message that appeared to be from two young girls. They called themselves the “Smith Sisters” and told him they were his older sisters, which confused him because he was an only child. They said that years ago, they had lived in his house.

He replied, saying he didn’t have any sisters and told them to get lost and leave him alone. The next day, he received a chilling message with some photo attachments. The first photo was of two young girls. The caption on it said Smith Sisters murdered anonymously.

The girls said in the email that they were indeed his older sisters. They told him that in 1993 they had lived in his house. His bedroom had once been their bedroom. They told him all about growing up and about their lives and how happy they had been until one horrible night.

He opened up the other attachment. It was a scan of an old newspaper article.

“In 1993, two sisters were brutally murdered in the small-town community of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Lisa Smith, 19 and her sister, Sarah Smith, 15 were attacked in their parent’s home on the night of November 17th, around 1:30AM. The Smith Sisters were lying in bed when a crazed killer broke into the house. No-one heard them scream. In the morning, their parents found the dead bodies of the Smith Sisters hidden in the bedroom closet. They had been skinned alive. The killer was long gone and no trace of him could be found. They had been murdered anonymously. Police conducted an extensive investigation, but to no avail. The motives for the attack were never discovered, nor was the attacker ever found. The only lead athorities had was a series of strange emails found in Lisa’s computer. The case was closed in October of 2000.”

In the rest of the email, the sisters said that they were angry that the case was closed and people forgot about them.

They were angry that their parents wanted to forget about them too.

They were angry that their parents decided to start over and had a new baby. A little boy named John.

They were angry that their parents had never mentioned their daughters or their tragic murder to their new son John.

John Smith, sent an angry reply saying he didn’t believe what they were saying. He didn’t believe the Smith Sisters were really related to him and he didn’t believe the newspaper article was real. He told them to go to hell.

Five minutes later, he got another email from them. It said “If you don’t believe us, look in the bedroom closet.”

That was the last email that was found on John’s computer. Police were unable to trace who had sent the messages to him.

On the floor of the closet, the police found a faint message, carved in the wood. It simply read “Lisa and Sarah – 1993″. Underneath that, was another carving that read “John 2007″.

No-one knows what John did next, but in the morning, John’s parents woke up to find their son missing. Then they checked his bedroom closet and got the shock of their lives. There they found the dead body of their son. He had been skinned alive.

No-one knows what really happened that night. Police were only able to piece together parts of the story based on what they found on John’s computer.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bloody Mary Gone Bad: A Person's Experience

"Bloody Mary isn't even a game, Reli," I told my friend.

Yareli made a pouting face. "Is so! You chant it, and then something happens. Not always, okay, I'll admit that, but sometimes. It's been pretty creepy around campfires before."

I rolled my eyes. "Anything is creepy around campfires. Fine -- I'm that bored."

Yareli led the way to the bathroom, and we turned off the light after closing the door. In the pitch blackness, we chanted together, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary..." Five times we said it, but nothing happened.

After a long pause, I fumbled my way into a standing position. "I'm getting out of here."

The door wouldn't open. I frowned as I tugged on the knob. "Is it your stupid brother again?"

"Probably." Yareli got up and tried to assist me, but our combined strength wasn't enough. "Weird..."

"Oh my god. The mirror." I couldn't turn away. Yareli slowly turned around, just as a cold breeze whipped through the room.

In the mirror was the twisted figure of a woman. She was bent over, her hair matted with the same substance that was dripping down her face: blood.

Screaming, I launched my whole body at the door, but it still wouldn't budge. Yareli made a dash for the shower rod, jerking it out of its sockets and slamming it into the door.

It took five tries to push the door open. All the while, the woman hovered, whispering words we couldn't understand as she reached for us.

We made it out of the bathroom in time to run into Yareli's mother, who didn't believe us when we told her why the shower rod was out and the door had a huge dent.

But when she saw the blood streaks running down to the sink, she changed her mind.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Borley Rectory

Unless you've been there, the small village of Borley, near Sudbury, in Essex is not the sort of place one would normally think to associate with ghoulish spectres, yet the area has a sinister reputation known throughout the country. Borley was the site the infamous Borley Rectory, reputedly the "Most Haunted House in England".
Borley Rectory was built in 1863 for the Revd Henry Bull. It was erected on the site of an ancient monastery and the ghost of a sorrowful nun who strolled along the so called "Nun's Walk" was already well known in the villagers at that time. An old story claimed that she was a wayward sister from the nearby nunnery at Bures who had fallen in love with a monk from the Borley Monastery. The two had tried to elope together but had been quickly tracked down. The monk was executed and the nun bricked up in the cellars of the monastic buildings!

Revd Bull had a summer-house put up overlooking the Nun's walk so that he could watch the manifestations. However, the lady soon became something of nuisance: often startled guests by peering at them through the windows of the new rectory. Servants rarely stayed long. The Reverend's four daughters even saw the lady gliding across the lawn in broad daylight. The hauntings increased during the incumbency of Henry Bull's son, Harry. Apparitions now included a ghostly coach and horses seen racing up the rectory drive

1927 saw the death of the last of the Bulls, and the Revd Eric Smith and his wife arrived at the rectory. They had been warned of the building's reputation and took the precaution of inviting the well-known psychic researcher, Harry Price, to visit. Mr. Price's arrival appears to have set in motion an outburst of inexplicable poltergeist activity. Objects were smashed and stones hurled at the investigator by unseen forces. It was all too much for the Smiths and they left after only two years.

The rectory now became the home of Revd Lionel Foyster and his family, and the ghostly phenomena immediately took a turn for the worse. The resident phantom appears to have taken a liking to the rector's young wife, Marianne. She often had objects thrown at her, but even more strange were the messages addressed to Marianne which began to appear scrawled on the walls of the house - even while witnesses watched! However, despite attempts at communication, most remained unintelligible. Though one certainly read, "Marianne, please help get" and another, "Pleas for help and prayers".

Taking the bull by the horns, the Revd Foyster had Borley Rectory exorcised. The result was positive at first and the manifestations stopped. However, it was not long before they reappeared in a new form. Strange music would be heard from the nearby Church, communion wine would unaccountably turn into ink, the servants bells in the house rang of their own accord and the Foyster's child was attacked by "something horrible". The rector had had enough. The family left and all successive incumbents refused to live in the house.

Intrigued by the further reports of psychic activity at Borley, Harry Price returned in 1937 and rented the building himself. He advertised in The Times for trustworthy assistants and, in a prolonged psychic investigation, he attempted to get to the bottom of the hauntings. With a team of forty-eight observers he logged an extraordinary number of psychic phenomena. The most bizarre was perhaps the results of a seance held on 27th March 1938. A ghostly communicant from beyond the grave claimed that the the rectory would catch fire in the hallway that night and burn down. A nun's body would be discovered amongst the ruins. An extraordinary assertion, particularly as nothing happened.

Harry Price's lease ran out later that year, and the building was taken on by one Captain Gregson. He too was subjected to continuing mysterious happenings, including the disappearance of his two dogs. Then, exactly eleven months to the day after the curious ghostly warning, an oil lamp unaccountably fell over in the hall and Borley Rectory burnt to the ground. Witnesses claimed to have seen ghostly figures roaming around and through the flames, while a nun's face peered down from an upper window.

Harry Price returned again in 1943. Digging in the cellars, he discovered the jawbone of a young woman. Convinced that it was part of the body of the spectral nun, he attempted to end the hauntings by giving the bone a Christian burial.

It does not seem to have worked. Supernatural happenings are still reported from the site of the rectory and the nearby churchyard. And Borley has an eerie air about the place that visitors cannot help but remark upon.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The Weir House

Major Thomas Weir lived during The Burning Times, the height of witch hunts, persecutions and executions. Protestant King James VI of Scotland, who was later and better known as King James I of England, detested witches and those suspected of practicing the craft. In Scotland, between the mid-1560s and early 1700s, it’s thought that between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been executed, most of these during King James’ reign. Although his reign was over when Weir was a young child, the atmosphere the monarch created lingered.

Major Weir the Man
He was born in 1596 in Carluke, Lanark, South Lanarkshire. Weir was a Lieutenant in the Scottish Puritan Army, the Covenanting Army of James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose. Weir trained radical Protestants.

After retiring with the rank of major, he held the post of commander of the Edinburgh Town Guard. When the defeated Jacobite General James Graham, Marquess of Montrose was in an Edinburgh jail before his execution, Weir sadistically mocked and psychologically abused him.
Weir was honest and known for his piety which bordered on fanatacism. He lived with his spinster sister Jane, also called Grizel, Jean or Janet depending on the source. The major always carried a black Thornwood staff with heads carved into it. He was a powerful orator, delivering resounding prayers to the vast audiences he attracted. The major was the epitome of the establishment.

All was well for the brother and sister until Weir shocked Edinburgh in 1670.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________