A public domain photo of Borley Rectory in 1892, showing a large stone house with a shaded front deck and a wide yard with several people standing in it. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BorleyRectory1892.jpg

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Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Borley Rectory: Haunting or Hoax?

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re headed to another World’s Most Haunted House (sure are a lot of those), this time in Essex, England. Borley Rectory’s claim to fame is a years-long investigation by professional parapsychologists. So what did they find out about this spookiest of houses? Let’s step inside and see…

Okay, so first of all, we can’t actually step inside, because Borley Rectory no longer exists. The house was torn down in 1944, after being largely destroyed by a fire in 1939. But before that, the rectory led a full life.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Pious fraud. Pious fraud is when a believer in a paranormal phenomenon is engaged in faking that phenomenon. The classic example is that of a church with a weeping statue of a saint: a certain congregant truly believes the statue miraculously weeps, but when observers come to test it, the statue remains dry. The believer is thus tempted to fake the crying, just this once, if it’s necessary to make others believe. So in a haunted house, this would be someone who believes there is a ghost, but fakes the haunting when the researchers are around, in order to prove what they think is the truth. As author, you get to decide: is there a ghost or not? If there is, why does the ghost not perform for the researchers? If not, what (or who) convinced your pious fraudster so completely?

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