Bravado and expectation

I visited campus and did some work for my extended essay, looking up references to the Beats in magazines and periodicals, seeing if they were in the library: nine of my forty two were. It was another hot day, the sun burning even at ten when I walked for the bus with Barry—no wind, the sky a limpid, bleached out blue, the colours of the trees and buildings tired in the heat.

I got back to Westdorgan Road at about three and a couple of hours later Stu’s friends arrived—Paul East and Stan, the former tall and thin with a face somehow reminiscent of Ivan Lendl’s, when not talking staring hard with dark eyes under a frowning brow. Both were dressed fairly similarly in pointed boots adorned with buckles and studs, black canvas jeans and leather jackets.

Next weekend Lee and I have planned a trip to Long Melford and the site of Borley Rectory. We plan to spend a couple of days and nights with tape recorders and ciné and still cameras. When the Rectory burned down in 1939, the ‘hauntings’—whatever they are—moved next door to the church where a TV crew filmed mysterious pin pricks of light on the choir screen and recorded chilling sighs and shuffling footsteps. July 28th is reputed to be the date on which the Borley Nun walks the Rectory grounds, so Lee and I—full of bravado and expectation—plan to use the full battery of our visual and audio equipment to record whatever it is that’s there.

In the evening I fell to talking of it with Stu, Barry and Stan. The darkness felt heavy and thick beyond the curtains and the little pool of light from the lamp. The wind was blowing a gale and I got a tiny taste of what might be the real gut-freezing fear to come. Stan said he’s been to Borley but there isn’t much there apart from the Church. Where the Rectory once stood is wasteland, and the whole village consists of a couple of houses. It made him wonder why there’s such a big church for such a small village.

I tried to imagine staying overnight in one of the most haunted churches in England and found I could imagine it quite well, especially at night. Come daylight, the familiar sounds and sights reassure and it’s hard to capture the state of utter apprehension and animal fear, of a kind I’ve never experienced.

My daylight rational self knows that if ghosts exist they’re simply undiscovered natural phenomena behaving according to unknown but predictable principles and says ‘Go! It will be interesting’ But in the dark, the primeval fears surface, especially in the musty ink-black inside of a church, the night concealing who knows what, and my midnight animal mind says ‘Why have a potentially horrible experience?’

But as Stu says, most likely nothing will happen.