I was born in 1964, am single and work in Bradford in West
Yorkshire, England. I live in Shipley. My interest in Borley was first triggered by a children's annual I got when I was 10 or 11 and which had a feature on The Most Haunted House in England and a colour shot of the cottage and also some pig pens which, the article claimed, were built from salvaged Rectory materials (I still have the annual!).
I haunted my local library (no pun intended) and devoured everything I could find on the place. I wrote to "The occupiers" at the cottage asking for information and had the letter passed on to Borley Place, where a kind resident (in those quieter days) answered my questions with uncalled-for patience.
The formative librarian in me (I later qualified as one) kicked in and I started writing to archives and libraries in search of more information. The Harry Price Library in London was, obviously, a happy hunting ground, though I plagued the librarians in Colchester, Chelmsford and elsewhere equally! Alan Wesencraft at the HPL welcomed me warmly when I visited and I spent the whole of one September day looking through the cuttings books Price had doggedly accumulated and also ordered several reprints of the superb photographs (internal and external) the HPL hold.
I started an interesting correspondence with Ivan Banks (later author of The Enigma of Borley Rectory, to which I contributed some of my findings), Paul Kemp (Chairman of the putative Essex and Suffolk Society for Psychical Research) and Geoffrey Croom-Hollingsworth (of cassette fame), among others. I corresponded for quite a long while with Peter Underwood and contributed a report from my brother's group, following a night spent in the church porch when unexplained sounds were heard and recorded, to the Ghost Club. I have visited the village maybe 4 or 5 times and have shot video film there (nothing ghostly to report though, I'm afraid!)
My personal piece de resistance was, I think, in tracing the surviving sons of the late Capt William Hart Gregson at different ends of the world and securing from each of them correspondence and recollections of the Rectory fire from their teenage days.
Occasionally I receive letters from students new to the story and once or twice even TV companies (though their plans usually founder in the meanwhile), but am always pleased to speak to people about the haunting and, of course, contribute to Vince's excellent web site (how I wish that had been going when I was younger - what a marvellous way to trade information!).
I remember, with some joy, reading James Turner's novel based on the haunting (My Life with Borley Rectory) and also the chapter in Far from Humdrum: a Lawyer's Life dealing with the loss adjustor and Gregson's insurance claim. Good and interesting reads.