Is The Banishing based on a true story? (Yes! These 6 things!)

On April 15 a new haunted house horror movie of sorts started streaming on Shudder: The Banishing. I say “of sorts” because it falls into the same category as The Conjuring. Both are set in haunted houses, yes, but both also possess strong religious horror movie overtones.

Another thing both movies share in common is that like The Conjuring, The Banishing is also based on a true story: the case of England’s most haunted house, Borley Rectory. Specifically, it’s inspired by a certain family who once resided there and reported experiencing paranormal activity.

Although, some of the claims they made have since been debunked. The wife also admitted to falsifying a few things.

The movie doesn’t really concern itself with any of that though. As is the case with most fictionalized accounts based on a true story, the writers took a nugget of fact and allowed their imaginations to run with it.

Here are six things The Banishing is based on though.

1. The House: Borley Rectory Becomes Morley Rectory

The fictionalized house in the movie, Morley Rectory, is based on the real-life Borley Rectory.

It even incorporates the fire that leveled Borley in 1841. A new house was built on the same spot in 1862. In the movie, they talk about the fire and why that ground is now cursed and causing the family grief.

However, while some families who lived there did claim to experience activity, none of the reverends were possessed to commit murder-suicide in the house like one does in The Banishing.

In real life, Borley Rectory caught fire again in 1939. Its ruins were torn down in 1944.

2. The Hauntings: Nuns and Monks

The movie also draws on the haunted history of Borley Rectory for the ghosts that haunt Morley Rectory.

In real life, the nave of the nearby church in Borley dates to the 12th century. Allegedly a Benedictine monastery was built in the area around 1362.

Some say an affair between a monk and a nun explains the phantom nun some have claimed to see roaming the property —and even the house when it was still standing. The story goes that when their relationship was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun was bricked up alive in the convent’s walls.

But in 1938, researchers confirmed the legend “had no historical basis and seemed to have been fabricated by the rector’s children.” Likely the daughters of Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull. In 1900 his girls claimed they saw a nun at twilight who vanished into thin air when they tried to talk to her.

Also in 1938, Price had a woman, Helen Glanville, conduct a remote “planchette séance.” (She was in Streatham at the time, not in Borley). Glanville claimed that among the two spirits who came through, one was a young woman named Marie. She had been a French nun who had left her order to marry one of the Waldegraves. (The family who owned the rectory.) However, like the nun in the other story, she’d been murdered and her body had been disposed of in either a cellar or a “disused” well.

In the movie, the writers translate these ghost stories into three scary monks, as well as a ghostly woman with bloody bandages covering her eyes because they’ve been gouged out. She roams the house but especially haunts the basement, where she had been kept.

3. The Family: The Foysters Become the Forsters

In real life, the Foysters lived in Borley Rectory from 1930 to 1935. Lionel Foyster and his wife, Marianne, had an adopted daughter named Adelaide.

The movie keeps the wife and daughter’s names the same, and keeps the “L” in Lionel’s name but changes it to Linus. Their last name is also tweaked slightly by changing the “y” to an “r.”

In The Banishing, Adelaide is partly adopted. It turns out movie-Marianne is her real mom who had Addy out of wedlock, but she was taken from Marianne. Bishop Malachi, who is essentially Linus’s boss, ends up finding Adelaide and reconnecting her with Marianne, which Linus has no choice but to accept.

4. The Time Period: Early 1930s Becomes Later 1930s

The time period the movie is set in also closely mirrors that when the Foysters lived in the house, except it’s set in the late 1930s. Likely 1938, judging from the newsreel about the Nazis invading Austria that’s played when Marianne and Adelaide go see a movie.

5. The Affair: Frank Pearless Becomes Frank Peerless

The movie flirts with the fact that in real life Marianne Foyster admitted to having an affair with one of their lodgers, a man named Frank Pearless. She later also confessed to blaming the “ghosts” for things to help hide their dalliance. (So cheeky!)

The movie’s nod to Frank and the affair comes by way of a driver named Frank Peerless who Marianne exchanges knowing looks with as he drives her and Adelaide to the rectory where they’ll be reunited with Linus. She also engages in conversation with Frank on a trip into town.

However, nothing untoward comes of it. Movie-Marianne doesn’t have an affair with movie-Frank, even though her husband suspects she does.

6. The Occultist: Harry Price Becomes Harry Reed

In real life, British occultist Harry Price spent considerable time researching the house, including during the time the Foysters lived there. However, it was the family before them, the Smiths, who had attracted Price’s attention to the house to begin with.

Reverend Smith and his wife moved into the rectory in 1928.  Mrs. Smith claimed she found the skull of a woman after cleaning out a cupboard shortly after moving in. Soon after that, she claimed she saw a phantom horse-drawn carriage at night.

The Smiths contacted the Daily Mirror about being put in touch with the Society for Psychical Research. The paper sent a reporter and then arranged for Harry Price to investigate too.

After the Smith’s moved out and the Foysters moved in, Lionel documented the weird activity he was noticing and sent it to Price, who returned to study the house more.

However, once Price showed up, Marianne noted new activity happening, such as things being thrown and “spirit messages” being tapped out from a mirror. When Price left again, the activity stopped, so Marianne suspected Price of faking it. She also suspected her husband was working with some of the other researchers who came to the house to create activity too. (Maybe she was projecting because she was guilty of doing the same thing, as she would later admit?)

In the movie, Harry Reed is the occultist. He’s a local bohemian obsessed with the rectory, but in a lot less disciplined way than Price was.

Also, unlike the Foysters, the Forsters don’t solicit his help —at first— and don’t appreciate his presence. The bishop especially feels threatened by Reed and warns the Forsters that he’s a dangerous heretic they must ignore.

But eventually, Marianne turns to Reed for help, even though it’s not entirely clear if he’s a good guy or a bad one. Which some may argue might be art imitating life.

In real life, you can judge Harry Price’s motives and methods for yourself. He wrote a book about his time investigating the rectory called The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years Investigation of Borley Rectory.

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Do you think Borley Rectory was as haunted as Harry Price claimed or do you think it was a lot of hype? Or do you not know enough to feel comfortable passing judgment either way?