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Nights in Haunted Houses

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For over thirty years, in his position as President and Chief Investigator of the Ghost Club of Great Britain, Peter Underwood has been actively involved in undertaking night vigils and carrying out research into ghosts and paranormal activity in controlled, scientific conditions. In this unique volume of largely unpublished accounts of nocturnal investigations, he guides son a chilling tour of the most haunted houses in Great Britain:

The strange disembodied voices, footsteps and unnatural coldness of Newark Park

The tragic young man who returned to his former home and the site of his suicide, drawn by his love of the daughter of the house's latest tenant

The evil, invisible presence at Eton Vicarage that gripped the vicar's wife tightly by the throat and almost strangled the terrified woman

The horror of the spirit of nine-year-old Isabelle of berry Pomeroy Castle, whose power was so strong that she followed investigators home...

Paperback

First published November 3, 1994

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About the author

Peter Underwood

91 books16 followers
(1923/2014): Author, broadcaster, historian of the occult; investigator of the paranormal.

Born in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Underwood wrote prolifically on ghosts and haunted places within the United Kingdom, and was a leading expert on ‘the most haunted house in England’, Borley Rectory.

An early formative experience came at the age of nine, on the day he learnt of his father’s death; that night, he awoke to see an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed.

Around the same time, he was fascinated to learn of a ghost story associated the old house at Rosehall - where his maternal grandparents lived for a time; it contained a bedroom where guests claimed to see the figure of a headless man..

It was at this young age that Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root.

On January 1942, Underwood was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, a serious chest ailment was diagnosed. He was discharged, and returned to his employment at the publishing firm J.M. Dent & Sons.

One of his early investigations was the Borley Rectory haunting, where, over a period of years, Underwood traced and personally interviewed almost every living person who had been connected with the mysterious events surrounding the place.

Underwood built upon the legacy of the work of Harry Price, who had investigated Borley before him. Together with Paul Tabori (literary executor of the Price Estate), Underwood was able to publish all his findings in The Ghosts of Borley (1973).

In his autobiography No Common Task (1983), Underwood remarked that ”98% of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other 2% that have interested me for more than forty years”.

Having joined The Ghost Club back in 1947 - at the personal invitation of Harry Price, Underwood was to become its President for over thirty years: from 1960 to 1993.

Underwood was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Savage Club. In 1976, a bust of him was sculpted by Patricia Finch - winner of the Gold Medal for Sculpture in Venice.

In recognition of his more than seventy years of paranormal investigations, Underwood became the Patron of The Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford), which termed him the King of Ghost Hunters.

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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Author 15 books17 followers
June 18, 2019
Great book containing a number of cases of haunted properties that Peter Underwood took part in.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews