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For King and Country
Who was Harry Price, Ghost Detective?
Featured in the For King and Country bonus documentary is a short interview with Richard Morris, author of the marvellous Harry Price biography Harry Price: The Psychic Detective. Below is the unedited text of the interview.
Q: Who was Harry Price?
A: Harry Price was a character that came to prominence investigating spiritualism and ghosts in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a bit of a charlatan, but extremely clever at hiding his amateurism. He aped himself as a scientist, and everybody accepted this, but in reality he was a paper bag salesman. People tended to think he was a scientist because he put on a white coat, inhabited a chemistry laboratory three days a week and went out hunting ghosts, but in reality he was selling paper bags for the Co-op.
Q: People were perhaps less sceptical about the paranormal in the '30s?
A: The 1930s were an interesting period where there was still a lot of interest in paranormal activity. It was soon after the First World War, and there were a generation of people who had lost loved ones. There was a lot of interest in Harry Price because he had exposed one of the more famous spiritualist photographers in 1922, and Conan Doyle was also backing a lot of investigation into paranormal activity. Price was really a person that seemed to bridge that gap between science and scepticism. But interestingly enough with Harry, he was never really on the side of either. I suppose really because he wanted people to believe the things he was investigating were real, but also believe that whatever other people were investigating weren't real.
Q: What was Borley Rectory?
Borley Rectory was reputed to be the most haunted house in England. Price came across Borley after being asked to go down there by the Daily Mirror, because a rector was feeling ghostly hands on his shoulder, footprints and all the rest of it. Harry started investigating this, and he realised that this was the thing that he'd been looking for. Borley Rectory would be his great step to fame and also towards making a great deal of money.
Q: And the Rectory was haunted by a ghostly nun?
A: Yes, the haunting was supposed to be a diaphanous nun who had popped up in Borley Rectory garden, and been seen by one of the Bull sisters, who were the family of the Rector. There was some debate about this, because nobody had actually seen the nun except for one of the sisters, who had come back from a late night party after a bit of boozing. The Daily Mirror reported on it and soon found that people were hooked on the story. Harry's investigation of Borley was the great news event of 1929.
Q: He was rumbled by a journalist though, wasn't he?
A: Charles Sutton was a journalist for the Daily Mail, who was being escorted round Borley Rectory by Price. Price first of all showed him the outside of Borley Rectory, and they were looking up a window when suddenly a plane of glass smashed. And Sutton was rather suspicious of this because he heard a swooshing sound behind his head, just as the window broke. But disregarding this he went around the Rectory with Harry, and strange things started to happen. Doors would slam, things would fall down the stairs, and suddenly as they came down the main staircase half a brick tumbled down it. Charles Sutton grasped Harry Price, searched his pockets and found that he was carrying a load of bricks and stones.
Q: Stone-throwing aside, did his investigations have any scientific worth?
A: I suppose what he did was realise that if he had a scientific edge to things, he could make them so much more believable. And that strangely enough has come down to the present day, with people using meters and other electrical equipment to measure temperature, electrical activity and gravity. So I suppose that's why people see Harry price as the father of modern ghost-hunting. Perhaps erroneously, but they still do.
Q: You've written a book about him, he pops up in The Scarifyers – what do you think he'd make of all the attention?
A: He's be enormously excited by all the attention being paid to him. That's what he lived his life for, really. He started out as a journalist, but wasn't much of one because he started copying other people's work. Then he became an archaeologist, and started faking various finds, including a silver bar that was a rather crude copy of one in the British Museum. At the end of the day he wanted to be famous, he wanted to be wealthy, he wanted to be recognised for his academic worth, and if he knew that people were still discussing him today he'd be highly delighted.
Many thanks to Richard for the interview. And if you'd like a signed copy of Harry Price: The Psychic Detective for just £11.00, including postage and packing - a saving of £7.99 off the RRP - then e-mail Richard direct at harry-price@hotmail.co.uk
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