Welcome to the Nightwalks…

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This week we’re diving into humanoid objects, their bizarre powers, and why humans are so fascinated with them.

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Dolls might be the most ancient toy in existence but they were also used in religious rituals. The earliest ones were made from clay, wood, stone, bone, leather, ivory, or wax.

The ancient Egyptians had flat, paddle-shaped dolls carved out of wood as early as the 21st century BC. Dolls with articulated limbs and removable clothing were in existence in roughly 200 BC. Greek clay dolls were articulated at the hips and shoulders and stories from 100 AD provide evidence that little girls were playing with them. They were sometimes worked with strings or wires.

There were wooden, clay, and ivory dolls in ancient Rome and these dolls have been found in the graves of Roman children. There were rag dolls in Rome in at least 300BC. In both Rome and Greece, boys would dedicate their toys to the gods when they reached puberty, and girls dedicated their toys to the goddesses once they got married. If they died before marriage, the girls’ dolls were buried with them.

But why did human beings have this urge to create small figures out of inanimate materials and why were they so attached to them? And why are dolls so creepy despite this attachment?

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Magic

In some cultures, dolls that had been used in rituals were then given to children as playthings. In other cultures, the dolls used in rites were taboo – too infused with magical powers for children to touch.

The idea of sticking pins in voodoo dolls to affect a person through sympathetic magic is a well-known one and is often stereotypically associated with the Vodou religion of Haiti, even though that religion doesn’t use them. The voodoo doll belief is likely influenced by the European poppet or kitchen witch. The use of effigies to magically affect someone has been noticed in African and Native American cultures as well.

The Hopi Native American tribe made dolls out of cottonwood representing each Kachina or ceremonial masked spirit.

In Inca mythology, Sara Mama was the grain goddess. She was associated with maize that grew strangely or in bunches. This maize was sometimes dressed as a doll of Sara Mama.

Similarly, Native Americans used corn husk dolls, made from the dried leaves of a corn cob. These dolls had no faces.

In Japan, Hina dolls were used to deflect misfortune or absorb spiritual harm, protecting the families that owned them. However, hina dolls could be corrupted and supposedly turn malicious, thereby becoming objects to dread and avoid!

The urge to create miniature versions of gods or goddesses, or even of other humans, seems to come from the basic human desire for control.

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Voice and Movement

Doll-making also seems to be an outlet for self-expression and giving voice to the forbidden.

The artist, Hans Bellmer created surreal dolls with interchangeable limbs in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany, protesting the Nazi party’s idea of the perfect Aryan body.

The East Village artist, Greer Lankton was famous in the 1980s for creating theatrical window displays of drug-addicted, anorexic, or mutant dolls.

In Iran during the Qujar era, people criticised the politics and social conditions of Ahmad-Shah’s reign using puppets in order to escape punishment for speaking out. According to Islam, women are not allowed to dance in public, but dolls and puppets are often free in a way that human beings aren’t, in spite of their attached strings. Layli (a hinged, dancing doll) is popular among the Lur people of Iran.

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Loving Longevity and Easing Isolation

The people of Guatemala used “worry people” – tiny dolls half the length of a finger, dressed in various materials – to ease their anxieties. They would tell their worries to these tiny figures and put them under their pillows before going to sleep, with the belief that, in the morning, the worry people would have taken the worries away.

Dolls were used in ancient Egyptian funeral rites. These dolls would be buried with the deceased and often represented servants or family members.

In the Victorian era, “memorial dolls” were made out of wax representing children who had passed away. They were quite lifelike, often dressed in the child’s clothing and adorned with locks of the child’s hair. They would be displayed in the home to provide a source of comfort to the child’s parents and relatives.

Until the middle of the 19th century, most dolls were made in the image of adults. Child-like or baby dolls didn’t make an appearance until about 1850. By the late 19th century, dolls of babies and children had flooded the market. The dolls had painted eyes, mouths, and hair, and they had a voice box sewn into them that cried “Mama” when the body was tilted. During 1923, 80% of dolls sold to children in the U.S. were “Mama dolls” (named after the sound they made).

Here was the best approximation of a child, something vulnerable that you could hold onto and cherish for ever because it couldn’t die. Something with no opinions of its own that couldn’t contradict or abandon you. (Perhaps this is why much of humanity is currently reliant on talking to AI chatbots.)

Starting in the 20th century, most porcelain and plastic dolls were made for the adult collectors’ market.

In the modern era, this phenomenon of subconsciously trying to freeze-frame our children has gone one step further with the invention of Reborn dolls. These are vinyl, silicone, or a mixture of both. They are customised, painted, and have realistic hair sewn into their scalps by Reborn artists so that they are visually indistinguishable from real babies and children. Some even have heartbeat sounds and breathing simulators as well as weighted bodies. These intricate creations are sold to collectors (and parents suffering from the emotional aftermath of losing a baby or a child), often for thousands of pounds.

Reborn dolls are sometimes also given to elderly people suffering from dementia, to ease loneliness, give them something to care for that is external to themselves, and perhaps to help them remember looking after their own flesh and blood children in the past.

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Education

Dolls have also been used for instructional purposes, and still are (e.g. for learning CPR). Lifelike dolls are used by health professionals, medical schools and social workers to educate doctors and nurses about health procedures or investigating cases of child sexual abuse. Artists sometimes use articulated, posable wooden mannequins to help them draw the human body.

Dolls have been collected for historical importance, and they have been used – perhaps not consciously nowadays – as a way to indoctrinate children into gender stereotypes. Plastic action figures and superhero figures are predominantly marketed towards boys, indirectly giving them an image of strength, risk-taking behaviour, and stoicism to try to live up to. Girls are usually given fashion dolls and dolls of babies, which subconsciously insinuates that they ought to be caring for others and looking visually appealing.

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Pediophobia and the Uncanny Valley

The fear of dolls and similar objects is known as pediophobia (literal translation: “fear of children”) or glenophobia. The psychologist Ernst Jentsch said that uncomfortable feelings arise when there is uncertainty as to whether an object is alive or not.

The Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, expounded this theory and came up with the “uncanny valley” hypothesis – if something is obviously non-human, its human-like characteristics stand out and are endearing… but if that thing reaches a certain threshold of human appearance, its non-human characteristics stand out, making it disturbing. Talk to any AI chatbot and see the weird maelstrom of irrelevant emotions passing over its eyes and mouth without quite landing, like a kaleidoscope of imitative feeling, and you’ll experience the uncanny valley effect.

The fear of dolls may have started around the time that dolls began to look just that little bit too realistic, perhaps when porcelain dolls with glass eyes were invented. There is something oddly corpse-like about those glass eyes as they stare into the hollows of your soul… and something that feels wrong about skin that’s so… cold… and shatters easily.

In modern times, the fear of dolls is influenced by pop culture, for example horror movies including Chucky, Annabelle, and M3gan. Stories passed from generation to generation could also have portrayed dolls as vehicles for evil powers or evil entities. (Dolls can be seen as vessels for spirits when they are used in rites or for protection.)

A linked fear is automatonophobia or the fear of non-human figures which imitate human behaviour.

Humans tend to anthropomorphise objects, even animals, as a way to make sense of and relate to the world. The common psychological quirk known as pareidolia leads us to see faces and figures in patterns such as clouds, wallpaper, tiles, and knots in wood. We are born with the instinct to find a face, our eyes automatically triangulating between anything that looks like two eyes and a mouth.

However, we aren’t born with the uncanny valley propensity. Research has shown that children under age 9 don’t experience the uncanny valley effect.

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Haunted Dolls

…And then there are stories concerning dolls that could be seen as legitimately, well, concerning.

Annabelle

In the 1970s, a nursing student named Donna was gifted Annabelle, a Raggedy-Ann doll with red hair and a flat triangle for a nose. Her mother gave her the doll as a birthday present. Soon afterwards, Donna and Angie (her roommate) noticed the doll seemed to change positions and move from room to room of its own accord when they weren’t looking. They also kept finding cryptic messages scrawled on bits of parchment paper, even though neither of them owned any parchment. In the end, their mutual friend Lou was attacked by an unseen entity that left claw-marks on his chest. They contacted Ed and Lorraine Warren (two well-known paranormal investigators) who concluded that there was a demonic being controlling the doll with a view to gaining possession of a human body. The Warrens removed Annabelle the doll and placed her in a glass case in their museum of the occult. Annabelle is still in her glass prison to this day.

Robert

Robert is a three-foot-tall straw doll dressed in a sailor suit, residing in Key West, Florida for over 100 years. In the early 1900s, a little boy named Robert “Jean” Eugene Otto got the doll as a present from his grandfather. “Jean” named the doll after himself and was very attached to it. Soon the household was experiencing strange occurrences such as objects being moved on their own and eerie giggles. When something happened, the boy said it was the doll that caused the mischief. Neighbours said they had seen Robert the doll moving from window to window when the family wasn’t at home. After Robert died, the doll was donated to the Fort East Martello museum, where he is still on display. He is surrounded by hundreds of apology letters because those who visit him and show disrespect towards him pay for it with bad luck later. Robert became the basis for the doll “Chucky” in the horror movie Child’s Play.

Okiko / Okiku

In Japan in 1918, three-year-old Kikuko Suzuki was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Her seventeen-year-old brother Eikichi travelled to Sapporo city in search of a present to help cheer her spirits. He bought a traditional Japanese doll as a souvenir from a maritime exhibit. It was dressed in a kimono with a hairstyle known as “okappa” (a shoulder-length cut with bangs sweeping across the forehead). The doll was about forty centimetres tall, with black porcelain eyes.

Young Kikuko became emotionally attached to the doll as soon as she saw it and named it Okiku. She died of her illness a year later, and spent the final months of her life clinging to the doll. The Suzukis put the doll on the altar of their family shrine.

Shortly after Kikuko died, the Suzuki family noticed something odd. The doll’s hair had begun to grow, the ends becoming uneven. It was almost imperceptible at first, but within weeks the doll’s hair reached its knees!

Every time they cut its hair, it grew back. The Suzuki family came to believe that their daughter’s soul was now inside Okiku, and they began a monthly ritual where they cut the doll’s hair.

The Suzukis had to leave their home during World War II, and they were afraid of the doll and Kikuko’s ashes falling into the wrong hands. They decided to bring the urn and the doll to the Mannenji Buddhist temple in the Hokkaido region, and the monks took over responsibility for caring for Okiku and keeping her hair cut.

The monks witnessed how the doll’s hair carried on growing even under controlled environmental conditions, and they published photographs of the doll sporting different length haircuts. Scientific analysis has found that the doll’s hair originally came from the head of a young human female.

Numerous reports say that – upon close observation – Okiku’s hair shows natural growth with visible roots and realistic texture. Some visitors and monks have even seen subtle changes such as moisture in the doll’s eyes, subtle movements in its lips, and even in recent years the perception that the doll’s mouth is half-open and teeth can be spotted inside. Some have seen subtle movements in the doll’s hair or even changes in its facial expression depending on their emotions and the time of day.

Mandy

This porcelain doll in Canada causes disturbances and weird sounds in the Quesnel Museum in British Columbia, where she is on display.

She arrived at the museum in 1991, after her previous owner found her among her grandmother’s belongings. The woman gifted her granddaughter Mandy to give to her newborn daughter. The doll had been incarcerated inside a chest for many years and the woman decided it was too creepy to be near her baby.

Local legend has it that the woman heard the doll crying in her attic before she decided to give it away.

Since arriving at the museum, Mandy got up to all kinds of tricks. After being left alone in the museum lab overnight, the next morning the lab was in disarray as if a small child had had a temper tantrum. Another night a reporter was alone in the museum developing photographs of Mandy in the basement and heard footsteps on the floor above him. His equipment malfunctioned.

There were other incidents of Mandy somehow defeating recording equipment when people tried to film or photograph her.

A woman from Surrey claimed her house was broken into shortly after she saw Mandy, and the only thing stolen from her house was a porcelain doll.

A family came to see Mandy in her case and as they stood in front of it, the young daughter fainted. Her blood pressure was so low she had to be taken to hospital for overnight monitoring.

More information here: https://www.curiousarchive.com/mandy-canadas-most-mischievous-haunted-doll/

Letta Me Out

This is a marionette doll in Australia which was reportedly discovered beneath a house in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and seems to move on its own. It is believed to be inhabited by the restless spirit of a young boy. The doll is cared for by a man named Kerry Walton.

In 1972, Kerry was attending his grandmother’s funeral in Wagga Wagga. While staying there he explored a nearby abandoned house which was said to be haunted. Ever since he was a child, he had heard disturbing stories about the building, including that of an old man seen moving about the property dragging a sack of human heads. One night, Kerry grabbed a torch and decided to investigate. As you do.

He explored deep into the basement and was shocked to find what appeared to be a child’s dead body with its bright eyes entrained on him. On closer viewing, it was merely a child-sized, distorted, wooden doll. It had large, brown eyes, a sharp nose, and a twisted smile full of tiny, carved teeth. Kerry felt somehow that he must take the doll out of the house with him, so he did, placing it in a sack and locking it in his car boot.

Then Kerry left his grandmother’s house with his brother and returned home to Queensland. It began to grow dark when he and his brother heard faint movement and a scream from the rear of the car. Convinced they had imagined it, Kerry’s brother joked that the doll must be trying to escape the sack, screaming “Letta me out” and so the doll was named.

At home, Kerry put Letta in his living room. Soon his family became uneasy with it. Some of them maintained the doll’s expression would change when no one was looking. They said its eyes would change colour. The doll started moving around inside the house of its own volition – the family found footprints across the floor every morning. The footprints supposedly matched the shoe-soles of Letta.

One night, Kerry’s son woke up screaming after seeing the doll inside his bedroom. He said the doll had been talking and moving its head on its own. From that point, things got weirder. Objects close to the doll would break, picture frames near it would crash to the ground. Light bulbs exploded suddenly. People, even visitors, experienced discomfort whenever they were near the doll – nausea, vomiting, and faintness, often followed by fear then extreme sadness.

One group of women who came to see the doll all began to scream and cry then fainted simultaneously. Cats and dogs would behave strangely and try to attack the doll. Whenever Letta doll was placed inside a moving vehicle, it would start to rain.

In one instance of financial need, Kerry tried to sell Letta doll. However, after he drove to the prospective buyer’s home, he physically couldn’t remove the doll from the car, as if an unseen force was controlling him.

Kerry took Letta doll to the Australian Museum in Sydney for examination by experts. From the nails in its feet, they determined the doll was about 200 years old. They were convinced the doll was made in Eastern Europe. Its style was similar to that of the Traveller community in Romania. The doll’s hair was real human hair and the structure underneath it was built similarly to a human brain.

Kerry then took Letta doll to a psychic. The psychic said the doll was possessed by the ghost of a young boy. Years ago, the doll was made by a gypsy dollmaker in a Romanian village. He made it for his son. The son died from drowning, aged six. The father laid the doll on his son’s grave and either the boy’s soul entered the doll naturally or the father used black magic to make it happen.

Another Traveller boy took the doll from the grave and kept it. One day, he was riding a horse with the doll on his lap and accidentally dropped it. He reached down to pick it up from behind the horse, and the horse kicked him straight in the head, killing him instantaneously.

A rich man was visiting from Australia with his two daughters. The two girls found Letta doll and took it back to Australia with them. Not long after that, their father died in an accident and the two girls somehow lost the ability to speak ever again. However, no one knows how the doll managed to end up in a basement of a house in Wagga Wagga.

The Island of the Dolls (La Ila de Los Mungiercas)

In the canals of Sochi Milko near Mexico City, there is an eerie island festooned with thousands of hanging dolls in various stages of decay. They either dangle from trees or are scattered upon the ground, all put there by one man, the island’s caretaker Don Julian Santana. He found the body of a drowned girl in the canal, then found a doll floating nearby which he hung from a tree to settle her restless spirit… but he spent the next decade collecting and hanging dolls, believing the girl’s ghost was still present. Visitors to the island often find it unsettling with all those glass stares, the faint whispers on the wind, and the possibility of slight movement in all those frozen forms.

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Sources

https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-dolls-from-the-ancient-to-modern-industrial-eras/

https://thedollhistory.com/doll-history/

https://diariopsicologico.com/en/doll-phobia/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/social-issues/why-so-many-people-find-porcelain-dolls-unsettling/ar-AA1S9P0H

https://en.uniproyecta.com/Okiku%3A-The-Disturbing-Story-of-the-Japanese-Doll-Whose-Hair-Grows-Back/

https://youtu.be/3zkckblJMKM?is=OmhXseoWrLf4WBww

https://www.curiousarchive.com/mandy-canadas-most-mischievous-haunted-doll/

https://youtu.be/cyHk0nlfFAA?is=n4bkTjEJoKeqa1eK

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Paranormal enthusiasts will likely have heard of Borley Rectory, one of the most haunted old buildings in Essex, England. However, very little remains of it today. What was its story, and whatever happened to it? Read on to find out.

Described as the most haunted house in England by psychic researcher Harry Price, this Gothic-style Victorian rectory was built back in 1862, on Hall Road, Borley, Essex, for the rector of Borley parish and his family. It was actually the first rector who built it, a Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull.

It was built to replace a previous rectory that had burned down on the site in 1841. The rectory was enlarged by adding a wing to accommodate Reverend Bull’s 14 children.

The house was 35 feet high with four floors and 11 acres of grounds. It had 32 rooms including 11 bedrooms. However, ever since it was constructed, this house had a reputation for being haunted by something.

The nave of Borley church (nearby) was likely built in the 12th century, and there were several farmhouses and the remains of Borley Hall, once the abode of the Waldegrave family.

Legend had it that a Benedictine monastery was erected in the area in 1362, and it was rumoured that a monk from the monastery had had a secret relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. Their relationship was discovered, leading to the monk’s execution and the nun supposedly bricked up alive in a wall of the convent. (However, this legend was debunked in 1938.)

The first paranormal happenings at the rectory were reported in 1863 – a few of the parish locals heard unexplained footsteps in the building.

On July the 28th 1900, four of the Reverend’s daughters saw something that to them looked like the spirit of a nun at dusk, about 37 metres away from the house. They attempted to talk to it, but it vanished when they drew closer.

The local organist Ernest Ambrose later said that the Bull family seemed convinced they had witnessed an apparition on several occasions.

During the next forty years, different people claimed to have experienced a variety of bizarre things, including a phantom coach driven by two headless horsemen!

In 1892, Reverend Bull died and his son Henry (“Harry”) Foyster Bull succeeded him. Reverend Harry Bull died on June the 9th 1927, and the rectory stood deserted for a while.

Reverend Guy Eric Smith then moved in with his wife in October 1928, and soon after, when Mrs Smith was cleaning out a cupboard, she discovered a brown paper package containing the skull of a young woman.

After that, the Smith family reported a few odd incidents: the sound of servants’ bells ringing even though they had all been disconnected, lights appearing in windows, inexplicable footsteps, Mrs Smith seeing a horse-drawn carriage at night.

The Smith family contacted the Daily Mirror newspaper and asked to be put in contact with the Society for Psychical Research. On June the 10th 1929, the newspaper sent a reporter along with Harry Price, the conjuror and paranormal researcher.

The reporter wrote a series of articles concerning the oddness at Borley Rectory.

Reports of haunting in the rectory intensified after Harry Price visited the place, the first visit occurring on June the 12th 1929. Stones, a vase, and other objects were apparently thrown and “spirit messages” were tapped out on the frame of a mirror. As soon as Price vacated the premises, these particular phenomena stopped and later on, Mrs Smith said she thought he might have been falsifying the phenomena. Harry Price wrote two books about his visits to the rectory.

The Smith family left Borley on July the 14th 1929, and the parish had somewhat of a challenge finding a replacement rector.

On 16th October 1930, Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster finally moved in with his wife Marianne and adopted daughter Adelaide. Reverend Foyster was a cousin of the Bulls, and he wrote an account of the strange goings-on between the time they moved in and October 1935, which he sent to Harry Price. According to this account there was bell-ringing, shattering windows, the throwing of stones and bottles, writing on the walls, and Adelaide’s room managed to lock itself with no key.

Marianne Foyster told her husband about a range of poltergeist activity including something throwing her from her bed, and in one instance Adelaide was attacked by “something horrible.” Reverend Foyster attempted an exorcism twice, but failed. In the middle of the first attempt, he was struck on the shoulder by a fist-sized stone.

The multiple reports in the Daily Mirror atttacted the interest of paranormal researchers, who concluded the events were being caused, deliberately or unconsciously, by Marianne. Marianne later admitted she thought some events were being fabricated by her husband in cahoots with one of the psychic researchers, but other events she thought were genuine supernatural occurrences. She also later confessed that she was having an affair with a lodger named Frank Pearless, and that she used paranormal explanations to hide her meetings with him.

The Foysters left Borley in October 1935 because of Lionel’s ill health. The rectory was left empty again.

In May 1937, Harry Price took out a year-long rental agreement for the building, and through an advert printed in The Times, he recruited a team of 48 “official observers” (mostly students) who spent lengths of time, (mainly on weekends) in the house, recording any phenomena that might happen. The investigations found nothing more violent than odd sounds, fluctuations in temperature, and the occasional sighting of a figure.

In March 1938, Helen Glanville, a daughter of one of Price’s team, held a seance in Streatham, London. She apparently contacted two spirits, the first being a nun called Marie Lairre. Marie was apparently a French nun who left her order and travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family. She was said to have been murdered in an older building where Borley Rectory was now situated, her body either buried in a cellar or thrown into a disused well. The writing that appeared on the walls was alleged to be her asking for help – one message read Marianne, please help me get out. Her spirit became the White Lady of Borley.

The second spirit contacted said it was called Sunex Amures, claiming it would set Borley Rectory on fire at 9pm that night (March the 27th, 1938). It also said that the fire would reveal the bones of a murder victim.

On February 27th 1939, the new owner of the rectory – Captain W H Gregson – accidentally knocked over an oil lamp when unpacking boxes in the hallway. Luckily the house was never connected to a gas or electricity supply, and water was taken from a well in the courtyard to combat the fire. However the flames spread fast and the building was very damaged.

The insurance company carried out an investigation and said the fire seemed to have been started on purpose.

A woman named Miss Williams in nearby Borley Lodge said she saw the figure of a spectral nun in an upstairs window during the fire, and demanded a fee of one guinea for her tale, according to Harry Price.

In August 1943, Price conducted a dig in the cellars of the ruined house and found two bones, thought to be from a young woman. The parish of Borley refused to give the bknes a burial ceremony, as locals believed they came from a pig rather than a human, so the bones were given a Christian burial in Liston churchyard instead.

Harry Price died in 1948, and Daily Mail reporter Charles Sutton claimed Price had faked phenomena. While visiting the rectory in 1929 with Price, Sutton got hit on the head by a large pebble and, on seizing Price, he found his coat pockets full of various-sized stones.

Three members of the Society for Psychical Research – two of whom had been Price’s loyal colleagues – conducted a formal study of his claims about Borley Rectory and published The Haunting of Borley Rectory in 1956. They found that Price had indeed been falsifying evidence, manipulating the “ghost photographs” and possibly writing the messages on the walls himself when in the house alone, because the writing showed signs of having been done with pencil or chalk, the handwriting showing signs of being disguised.

The study or “Borley Report” also found that phenomena had been caused by rats and odd acoustics due to the shape of the building.

Marianne Foyster later admitted that she had never seen any apparitions and that the ghostly sounds had been caused by the wind, friends she had invited over, and her own self while playing practical jokes on her husband.

Many of the legends of Borley Rectory had been conjured out of nowhere. Reverend Harry Bull’s children – who were living there before Lionel Foyster – were surprised when told they had been living in England’s most haunted house, and said they had seen nothing.

However, the SPR’s report and a biography of Price haven’t dissuaded the general public from being interested in the house, and there have been quite a few books and TV programmes on its history and ghostliness.

Even the BBC was going to broadcast a documentary on it in 1956, but ended up cancelling it when threatened with legal action by the widow of the last rector to live in the rectory.

In 1975, the BBC aired an episode of The Ghost Hunters that focused on Borley rectory, with a psychic investigation of the church nearby as well.

Recent films include the partly animated Borley Rectory: The Most Haunted House in England in 2017, the film Ghosts of Borley Rectory in 2021, and Borley Rectory: The Awakening in 2025, which is set in 1900 and shows the origins of the ghost story.

The ruins of Borley Rectory were demolished in 1944. The former site is now part of a private garden.

The timber gateposts from the driveway along the North-East of the building (its true front) survived the demolition and stayed there for quite some time before the late Ivan Banks bought them for £20 and took them home with him to Maidenhead, where he applied wood preserver to them and put them in his garden. Shortly after he published his book about Borley Rectory (The Enigma of Borley Rectory) Ivan Banks died. No one knows where those gateposts are now or even  if they still exist.

The rectory had a well in its courtyard, the water from which was pumped into storage tanks in its attic. The pump wheel survived the 1944 demolition, standing there until the rubble was cleared away. The pump machinery was scrapped but it was planned for the pump wheel to be taken to America. The wheel stayed in a garden at Borley for years before someone restored it and it is now owned privately by someone.

The great Borley bell (which hung on the opposite side of the courtyard to the water pump) survived because Harry Price took it as a souvenir when Captain Gregson bought the building in 1938. Price hung the bell outside his workshop in West Sussex, and after he died it was given to Peter Underwood (a ghost-hunter and prolific author) in 1973 by the executor of his estate (the University of London). Underwood hung the bell outside his house in Bentley, Hampshire, before moving to London some years later.

The rectory boundary stone also survived. It was originally positioned on the edge of the upper lawn, which is a slightly odd position for a boundary stone. The poet James Turner (who was living in the former Rectory Cottage in the 1940s) gave the boundary stone to Peter Underwood.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borley_Rectory

http://www.harrypricewebsite.co.uk/Borley/ModernBorley/relics-borley.htm

https://hauntedhosts.com/library/famous-hauntings/borley-rectory-most-haunted-house/

The original rhyme for what number of magpies you see and what “results” from that was published in 1780. The rhyme has its roots in ornithomancy, or bird divination (which was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans).

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Most of you are probably familiar with this poem:

One for sorrow,

Two for joy, 

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy, 

Five for silver, 

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret never to be told

…which is the modern version. However, there are more lines after that going up to thirteen:

Eight for a wish,

Nine for a kiss,

Ten a surprise you should be careful not to miss,

Eleven for health,

Twelve for wealth,

Thirteen – beware, it’s the devil himself!

Magpies, like owls, were seen as a bird of either good or bad omen in some cultures and in Britain since at least the 16th century. Other superstitions about magpies included:

• Scottish people believed magpies were evil and had a drop of the Devil’s blood hidden under their tongues
• It was also believed in Scotland that if a magpie’s tongue was scratched with the sharp edge of an unmilled silver sixpence, followed by a drop of human blood being put into the scratch, the magpie would become able to talk in human language!
• The French believed that evil priests reincarnated as magpies or crows. 
• Early Christians saw the magpie as vain for not having fully black feathers to mourn Jesus’s death. The magpie was said to be the one bird who didn’t sing or offer any comfort during the crucifixion.
• In Sheffield, the magpie is said to be the only bird that refused to enter Noah’s Ark, choosing to sit on the roof chattering about the flood instead!
• In the times of cockfights, fowls’ eggs were sometimes placed in a magpie’s nest so that the chicks would absorb the magpies’ aggression
• Dried and powdered magpie flesh was an old remedy for epilepsy and other bits of the magpie were used variously to cure vertigo, bad eyesight, and melancholy.
• People used to believe that eating the leg of a magpie would help you recover from being bewitched.
• Their chattering calls were thought to signify the arrival of guests in the near future, or if they chattered on the roof, the arrival of “evil tidings.”
• One belief was that the magpie was the offspring of a raven and a dove, and as a result hadn’t been baptised during the flood in the Old Testament.
• A Swedish belief states that the magpie is a witch’s bird, and that witches can take the shape of magpies on Walpurgisnacht, when they travel.
• In Germany, the magpie is a “bird of the underworld.”
• In ancient Rome, magpies were associated with fortune-telling and magic.
• In ancient Greece, magpies were sacred to the god of wine, Dionysus
• In China, the magpie was seen as a “bird of joy” in the Manchu dynasty and was seen as representing the yin and yang, fertility and domestic happiness.
• There is a long-held supposition that magpies love to steal shiny objects. In fact, they are more likely to avoid them according to research done by Harrabin in 2014.

These beliefs may come from the aggressive and territorial behaviour magpies can have when nesting. They have been known to swoop at pedestrians and peck or scratch at people’s heads!

The omens of the rhyme are likely to come from medieval times, but the first version of the rhyme to be published was in a 1780 supplement to the 1778 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens:

One for sorrow,

Two for mirth,

Three for a wedding,

Four for death.

This was in an appendix, contained in a note scribbled by Reverend Henley: “The magpie is called in the west to this hour, a magatipie, and the import of the augury is determined by the number of these birds that are seen together: ‘One for sorrow: Two for mirth: Three for a wedding: Four for death.'”

Another early version appeared in the 1842 edition of John Brand’s Observations On Popular Antiquities. John Brand was a clergyman of the Church of England and spent his time researching and documenting English folklore.

An early version of the poem was extended in Proverbs and Popular Sayings (1846, by Michael Aislabie Denham) with the words “hell” and “Devil” censored out:

One for sorrow,

Two for luck;

Three for a wedding,

Four for death;

Five for silver,

Six for gold;

Seven for a secret never to be told,

Eight for heaven,

Nine for ––––,

And ten for the d–––l’s own sell!

Sometimes “luck” would be changed to “mirth” and “death” would be changed to “birth,” although those last two words are total opposites (or opposing sides of the same coin…)

Another version was in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:

One’s sorrow,
Two’s mirth,
Three’s a wedding,
Four’s a birth,
Five’s a christening,
Six a dearth,
Seven’s heaven,
Eight is hell,
And nine’s the devil his old self.

A tradition in England is that if you see a solitary magpie, the way to ward off the “sorrow” or bad luck is to say Good morning, Mr Magpie, how are Mrs Magpie and all the other little magpies? or to salute the magpie and turn around three times.

One 19th century custom in Shropshire was to say Devil, Devil, I defy thee! Magpie, Magpie, I go by thee! then spit on the ground three times.

Another custom in Westmorland and North Lancashire is to draw a cross on the ground when you see a lone magpie, or say this rhyme instead:

Magpie, magpie, chatter and flee,
Turn up thy tail and good luck fall me.

Other variations include taking off your hat to it, bowing, and wishing the bird a good day, or spitting over your left shoulder, turning around three times, crossing your fingers and saying:

I cross the magpie,
The magpie crosses me;
Bad luck to the magpie,
And good luck to me.

Sometimes, birds within the Corvidae family (crows, jackdaws) are involved with this traditional rhyme in places where magpies aren’t often seen, e.g. in America, or in India, where they apply the rhyme to the myna bird.

The “one for sorrow” idea may stem from the knowledge that magpies mate for life, so a widowed magpie is, naturally, a melancholy bird.

Other Strange Iterations

“1 for sorrow, 2 for mirth,
3 for a wedding, 4 for a birth,
5 for silver, 6 for gold,
7 for a secret never to be told,
8 for the tale that the stars have spun,
9 for a gate that can’t be undone,
10 for a river of forgotten lore,
11 for a key to the spectral door,
12 for a mirror reflecting the night,
13 for a beast that lives in spite,
14 for a heaven that none can reach,
15 for a lesson that none can teach,
16 for dreams trapped in stones,
17 for the gods’ hollow moans,
18 for the abyss that gazes back,
19 for the knowledge that which we lack,
20 for a magpies’ final verse, in a realm where shadows converse.”

“1 for sorrow
2 for joy
3 for a girl
4 for a boy
5 for silver
6 for gold
7 for a secret that’s never been told
8 for love,
9 for marriage,
10 for a baby in a golden carriage.”

“I saw eight magpies in a tree,

Two for you and six for me.

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a wedding, four for a birth.

Five for England, six for France,

Seven for a fiddler, eight for a dance.”

“Ravens perched on a single branch
What do your numbers foretell of chance?
One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a wedding
And for four a birth
Five for rags
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never told
Eight for love
Nine for hate
Ten for a new friend at the gate
Eleven for a house
Twelve for sails
Lucky thirteen for secret spells.”

“…Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a time of joyous bliss”

“Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a letter,
Eleven for worse
And twelve for better”

“…Eight bring wishing
Nine bring kissing
Ten, the love my own heart’s missing!

(from Warwickshire, England)

“…Eight you live
Nine you die
Ten you eat a bogey pie!”

(from Yorkshire)

“One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for rich,
Six for poor,
Seven for a bitch,
Eight for a whore,
Nine for a funeral,
Ten for a dance,
Eleven for England,
Twelve for France”

“One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for rich,
Six for poor,
Seven for a witch.”

“One is sorrow, two mirth,
Three a wedding, four a birth,
Five a sickening, six a christening,
Seven a dance, eight a lady going to France.”

There is also a version by the comedian John Finnemore, which goes up to 1000. You can hear it on “John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme” series 9, episode 6.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_Sorrow_(nursery_rhyme)

https://blog.gardenwildlifedirect.co.uk/magpie-rhyme/

https://www.birdspot.co.uk/culture/one-for-sorrow-magpie-nursery-rhyme

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/country-life/how-to-salute-a-magpie-70304

https://www.hypnogoria.com/folklore_magpies.html

https://www.icysedgwick.com/magpie-rhymes/