Born in Letchworth Garden City in 1923, Peter Underwood is a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and is Patron of the Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford in 1992). His unique relationship with Borley Rectory is the result of more than half-a-century’s study and personal investigation of ‘the most haunted house in England’ of which he is recognised as the successor to Harry Price in the chronicling of this world famous case.

Some Thoughts on Borley Rectory

Sometimes it seems that my life has been centred on Borley and perhaps The Borley Rectory Companion is the grand finale!

Can it really be over sixty years ago that I paid my first visit to Borley?  And I was interested in the story long before then.  Over the years I have always found it difficult to discard items: letters, cuttings, photographs, notes and records of all kinds, and I have kept them stored away (and not always neatly!) much to the dismay of my family but I am glad I have thrown little away for everything that I have hoarded now has a now lease of life.

Soon after my first visit I found myself deeply involved in Borley and its mysteries and when I became known as a psychic researcher, a ghost hunter and a writer, I received letters and reports from far and wide, from people in all walks of life who had one great interest: Borley.  I tried to answer all correspondents and one day I had a letter from a youngster of sixteen who had visited Borley and had taken some excellent photographs and already he seemed very knowledgeable on the subject: his name was Eddie Brazil.

Some thirty years later I was informed that Eddie and a friend Paul Adams (whom I had also corresponded with in relation to Sidney Glanville, one of Harry Price’s chief investigators at Borley, whom I knew quite well) had plans for a book about Borley and asking me a few questions.  I responded as fully as I could, quoting chapter and verse and they responded by saying I had been so helpful, would I consider joining them as co-author of The Borley Rectory Companion!  Frankly, I was delighted.  I would have the opportunity to live again those halcyon days when I was visiting, broadcasting, talking and corresponding with the leading actors in the Borley drama and with a hundred-and-one enthusiasts who taught me that the Borley Rectory haunting had everything: it was the one haunted house that everyone knew something about.

Along the way I had been fortunate enough to have had given to me several items from the Rectory in its heyday including the Great Bell that had hung in the courtyard; the boundary stone engraved ‘H B’; a hand-written message from the ‘ghost’; one of the ‘materialized’ bottles; some of the bell wires; a miniature blue-and-white plate; a wooden inkwell carved by Harry Bull and the brass cup used by the repertory company when they re-enacted the legend of Borley in the Rectory grounds.  And I had recently completed and published Borley Postscript which contained a quantity of hitherto unpublished material and photographs that I came across while moving house after nearly thirty years, and I was looking for something to fill my mind and my days.  Meeting with Paul and Eddie convinced me that here were two reliable and responsible and dedicated men who would make a really good job of The Borley Rectory Companion.  And I was right!

For more information on Peter Underwood visit his website http://www.peterunderwood.org.uk