Peter Underwood

Peter Underwood (16 May 1923 – 26 November 2014) was an English author, broadcaster and parapsychologist. Underwood was born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Described as "an indefatigable ghost hunter", he wrote many books which surveyed alleged hauntings within the United Kingdom - beginning the trend of comprehensive regional 'guides' to (purportedly) haunted places. One of his well-known investigations concerned Borley Rectory, which he also wrote about. Early life Born into a family who were Plymouth Brethren, Underwood had his first paranormal experience at the age of nine, when he claimed to have seen an apparition of his father, who had died earlier the same day, standing at the bottom of his bed. During his childhood, his maternal grandparents lived for a time at Rosehall, a seventeenth century Hertfordshire house which it was claimed was haunted, supposedly having a bedroom in which guests claimed to have seen the figure of a headless man. Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root at that time. At the beginning of the Second World War, Underwood joined the publishing firm of J.M. Dent & Sons in Letchworth Garden City. In January 1942 he was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, Underwood was diagnosed with a serious chest ailment which rendered him unfit for active service. He was discharged from the army and returned to Dents. On 15 July 1944, Underwood married at St. Mary's Church in nearby Baldock (his wife, Joyce, died in 2003 after having suffered with Parkinson's disease for 14 years). Underwood was much influenced by the work of Harry Price - the grandfather of ghost-hunting - and was particularly struck by Price's ‘The End of Borley Rectory’, which he read immediately when it was first published in 1946. Investigating Borley himself, he corresponded with Price about it. Price then invited Underwood to join the Ghost Club, of which he would later become president.