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Borley rectory Companion

The Borley Rectory Companion : The Complete Guide to ‘The Most Haunted House in England’ by Paul Adams, Eddie Brazil and Peter Underwood
The Borley Rectory Companion is the definitive book on the unique Borley Rectory haunting, detailing all the evidence, exploring all the participants and including a wealth of new evidence and hither to unpublished material and illustrations. Between them the three authors have personally met or contacted practically everyone living who has any connection with this remarkable case of haunting – including many of the important characters in the Borley drama who are now dead.

The book will be copiously illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs and illustrations. The three authors are exceptionally suited to produce this volume. Paul Adams and Eddie Brazil have studied the case for many years and Peter Underwood has authored two previous studies of the haunting - The Ghosts of Borley and Borley Postscript. David Holloway writing in the Daily Telegraph said “Mr. Underwood writes with great knowledge” and Colin Wilson said “Mr. Underwood is a good writer who knows his subject”.

The illustration shows the front entrance of Borley Rectory photographed during Harry Price's investigation in 1937; colour restoration by Steven Wiltshire.

OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

Foreword An original introduction by Colin Wilson, philosopher, criminologist and international best-selling author of over eighty books including The Outsider (1956), The Occult (1971) and A Criminal History of Mankind (1984).

Part 1 - The Haunting of Borley Rectory – A Concise Overview from 1862 to the Present Day 

A self-contained extended essay that covers the entire history of Borley Rectory and its ghosts from the earliest times up until the present day.  For those unfamiliar with the Rectory case this is the place to start.  In sequential order the principle events and characters are introduced beginning with the building of Borley Rectory in 1862 by Henry Bull and the incumbency of the Bull family up until 1927; the brief and eventful tenancy of the Rev. Guy Smith between 1928 and 1930 including the first visits to Borley by psychical researcher Harry Price; the turbulent five year incumbency of Lionel Foyster and his wife Marianne that ended in October 1930 and from which many of the most notorious aspects of the ‘most haunted house in England’ sub-title are drawn; the pioneering year-long on-site investigation of the building and its phenomena by Harry Price from May 1937 to May 1938, and the eventual destruction of the Rectory by fire in February 1939.  In all of the above the alleged paranormal phenomena is concisely introduced and described including sightings of apparitions such as the famous Borley ‘nun’, mysterious lights and wall writing, eerie noises, footsteps and spectacular poltergeist effects.

The second half of the overview covers the events and happenings following the demolition of the Rectory ruins in 1944 and the death of Harry Price in 1948 including the experiences of poet and author James Turner who bought the Rectory site in the late 1940s; the excavations undertaken by investigators including Len Sewell and Philip Paul during the 1950s and the critical re-appraisal of the haunting by members of the Society for Psychical Research that appeared in 1956.  The essay continues with accounts of the experiences of visitors to the former Rectory site in the 1960s and 1970s and the investigations carried out in Borley Church by Geoffrey Croom-Hollingsworth and his team.  Many aspects of these ‘later Borley’ incidents are enhanced by personal recollections of the times from one of the present authors, Peter Underwood, who began his unique involvement with the Borley haunting in 1947, corresponding with Harry Price and began to personally interview virtually all of the surviving witnesses to events from the preceding seventy-five years of reported ghostly activity in and around the Rectory and Borley village.  The essay concludes with accounts of reported happenings and experiences from the 1980s and 1990s.

Part 2 – The Borley Haunting – An Encyclopaedic Dictionary

The main part of the Borley Rectory Companion is a unique A-Z compendium of people, places, events and phenomena connected with the 150-year history of the Rectory haunting.  Containing over 250 entries, this is the result of the extensive involvement the three authors have had with the Borley case - personal interviews with many witnesses; original research at the University of London Library involving examination and reappraisal of historic documents including Harry Price’s correspondence and the reports written by his official observers during the 1937/1938 investigation, as well as access to Peter Underwood’s own unique personal collection of Borley material.  The entries are extensively cross-referenced to one another and contain essential factual information on all aspects of the Borley haunting together with in-depth analysis and objective discussion of certain critical areas including the reported phenomena and in particular the Foyster period, Harry Price’s investigation including his year-long tenancy of the building, the excavations carried out in the cellars in 1943 and the allegations of fraud and deception levelled against Price in the years following his death; biographies of the major characters in the Borley drama including Harry Bull, Lionel and Marianne Foyster, Trevor Hall and Price’s co-investigators Sidney Glanville and Mark Kerr-Pearse, and an extensive bibliography of published works on the case

Part 3 – A Borley Rectory Chronology

The most extensive and complete chronological record of the Rectory haunting ever compiled containing over 900 separate date entries.  Date events have relevant people, places and phenomena cross-referenced with the Encyclopaedic Dictionary and each separate date entry has a further reference by page number(s) to the event as listed or described in several of the major Borley Rectory books such as Price’s ‘Most Haunted House in England’ (1940) and The End of Borley Rectory (1946), the Society for Psychical Research’s ‘Borley Report’ (1956) and our own Peter Underwood’s Ghosts of Borley (1973), enabling any enthusiastic reader or student of the case to carry on with their own research in these and several other works. 

Part 4 – Borley Rectory – Conclusions & Summing-Up

The final part of the Borley Rectory Companion comprises a summing-up of the whole Borley case by the three authors including sub-sections on the more sensational side of the haunting that has been prevalent since the case first became general public knowledge at the end of the 1920s; the longevity of the Borley case and the way it has lasted in the public consciousness; and some conclusions from the position that the present writers have taken in preparing the book, although by our own admission supportive of paranormal phenomena at Borley, but free from the personal intrigues that were prevalent in the SPR investigation of Price’s working methods during the 1950s, and with the benefit of both much original research from original and rare documents and the now unique fifty-year association of Peter Underwood with the ‘most haunted house in England’.

Illustrations

The Borley Rectory Companion will be copiously illustrated with 100 previously unpublished photographs both historical and modern, the latter being taken especially for the book by Eddie Brazil; there are also new layout plans of the building by Paul Adams together with perspective drawings of the Rectory commissioned from architect Victor Elkington. 

The Borley Rectory Companion - The Complete Guide to the 'Most Haunted House in England' will be published by Sutton Publishing, a divison of NPI Media Group in September 2008. Pre-Order The Borley Rectory Companion now.

For more information visit The Borley Rectory Companion Website