Borley Rectory revisited

Often remembered as the most haunted house ever, Borley Rectory celebrated the 68th anniversary of its own death this year. In 1939, this beautiful, but thoroughly frightening red brick home burned to the ground after a ghost identified as "Sunex Amures" claimed he would set fire to the building on the night of March 27, 1938. He apparently waited until February before starting the fire, when it was claimed that an oil lamp inexplicably fell over and torched the place. As it was burning, someone watching the spectacle claimed to see the figure of a nun in one of the upper windows of the fire-engulfed rectory. An investigation by the insurance company, however, concluded that the fire was intentionally set. Unfortunately, it didn't elaborate on just who set the fire.  Borley rectory was host to numerous paranormal events, including ghost writing on the walls, poltergeist activity that went so far as to throw a large rock at a man and injure his shoulder, and a spectral nun that was frequently seen around the home. Even after the place burned, sightings of the ghostly nun continued. Claims that the ghost has been seen hovering in the air, as if standing on the long-gone upper floor of the rectory, are still occasionally reported.   Borley seems to have been haunted from the beginning. Built in 1863, stories immediately surfaced of people hearing unexplainable footsteps coming from upstairs. Presumably, something about the ground itself was causing the hauntings. After the fire, excavations under the rectory did turn up a few human bones, and a female skull was also supposedly found in the rectory hidden in a paper bag.

Unfortunately, Borley Rectory is also tainted with claims that the investigations done there were questionable, particularly in the case of that done by the somewhat discredited paranormalist Harry Price. Further, legends about the ghostly nun's history appear to have been completely fabricated by the daughters of one of the early residents.