Borley Rectory passed from father to son for 64 years, drew ghost hunters for a decade, and burned in 1939 with the insurers suspecting arson

Kind 1 and kind 2. Rev. Henry Dawson Ellis Bull built Borley Rectory in 1863, a 23-room house on nearly four acres. His four daughters said they saw a nun in daylight on 28 July 1900. When he died in 1892 his son Harry became rector and kept the house until his own death in 1927. It stood empty for 18 months. Rev. Guy Eric Smith and his wife arrived in 1928, asked for help over strange events, and left in 1929 after Harry Price's first visit on 12 June 1929. Rev. Lionel Foyster and his wife Marianne lived there from 1930 to 1935, with the events centred on Marianne. Price rented the house from May 1937 and recruited 48 volunteer observers. Captain W. H. Gregson bought the rectory from Queen Anne's Bounty for £500^† and took possession in December 1938. On 27 February 1939 it burned; Gregson said an oil lamp fell over. The insurers concluded the fire seemed to have been started deliberately. In 1943 Price dug in the cellar and found fragments of a woman's jaw; Borley parish refused them burial, and they were buried in Liston churchyard. The ruin was demolished in 1944. In 1956 the Society for Psychical Research published a report by Dingwall, Goldney and Hall concluding Price gave a "deliberately distorted account". Marianne Foyster said in 1977 that Lionel faked some incidents.