Darkening

We departed for Borley this morning. It was a chaotic beginning; we missed our coach to London by a matter of minutes with the result that we also missed our connecting services, so we had a two-hour wait at Victoria coach station.

The weather deteriorated as we drove into Essex and the coach splashed through a cloudburst near Rivenhall. We reached Sudbury at half-past seven. We lugged our bags through deserted market town streets and across the fields towards Borley, following the course of a now long gone railway line.

Lee had brought along a cassette he’s just bought from Croom-Hollingsworth, an amateur aficionado of the Borley legend, who recorded it at the Church. We listened to this as the sun sank red and bloated to the horizon. On the tape is the clunk of latches, the creaking open of nonexistent doors, unidentifiable bangs, whirs and clicks and, most chilling of all, two unmistakably human sighs. A team of TV investigators also spent a night in the Church and they saw lights in the chancel that changed shape as they began to approach them. An object—never found—was flung at them, too.

It was getting dark as we trudged the road to the church, our heads full of the spirit of the place (no pun intended). I was more apprehensive than last time and as we hurried through the fast darkening trees to the porch, my senses were on full alert, my eyes darting to and fro from shadow to shadow. The thin metallic noises of bats echoed through the air as they fluttered around and around the church between the yews.

The usual carload of local youth arrived for their noisy nighttime thrills so we left & have walked back to Sudbury for food. . . .