Ghost hunting at 'haunted house' that sparked Hollywood interest

By Peter Shuttleworth

BBC News

A child’s gravestone in the garden, a monk-like figure supposedly appearing over a sleeping baby and words carved on walls… all reported at a house once known as the UK’s most haunted.

About 300 apparent paranormal phenomena was documented at a remote 17th Century house that had national media coverage because of supposed spooky goings-on.

The multiple claims of the unexplained was a tale that interested Hollywood.

It came after a family started to speak about their Penyffordd Farm nightmare.

Reports of muffled voices in empty rooms, figures appearing, hearing children singing and carvings and stains appearing on walls were brought to national attention by mum-of-four Rose-Mary Gower who said she was desperate for answers.

There were also claims of a huge wooden owl moving across the house on its own, and a pregnant girl appearing on the patio of their farmhouse in north Wales and then vanishing.

Rose-Mary documented what she believed to be unexplained experiences, and was so spooked that she got a psychologist into her home in Treuddyn, Flintshire, to do a study – and he found no rational explanation.

Now those reports of supernatural stories have been investigated in a new BBC documentary fronted by Radio 1 presenter Sian Eleri, who heard from those who say multiple spirits were doing stuff at Penyffordd Farm that no-one could explain.

“One day I was moving some dried flowers that had started to look a bit manky so I decided the throw them away,” Rose-Mary wrote after she started documenting the goings-on in the late 1990s.

“I took them from the lounge to the kitchen and put them on the counter, dropping petals all the while.

“Somebody came to the door and I was about 30 seconds, and when I came back every single petal had disappeared. They had been replaced by dead or dying half-drowned wasps.

“There was no sign of a wasps nest and all of the doors and windows were shut. Inexplicable.”

The Paranormal documentary hears the spooky claims started when the Gower family say they found a Welsh word written on an inside wall of their empty home, after they had returned from a New Year’s Eve party at their daughter’s house.

The family said it read “tangnefedd” which is Welsh for peace, in a religious context.

The Gowers claim this started a flurry of Welsh words appearing, like “hir am aros”, which means long-suffering – and “erlidiau”, which means persecutions.

Rose-Mary documented that the words appearing on the walls were uncommon Welsh words – and they, as a family from England, didn’t speak or understand Welsh.

The family feel the catalyst for the supposed paranormal events was moving a gravestone of a 15-year-old girl that had been propped up at the front of their home.

Image source, BBC | Twenty Twenty | Rory Jackson

Jane Jones’ headstone had been on the front path since the Gower family moved in during 1997, but they moved it to a more discreet place for a garden reception after eldest daughter Nicolette’s wedding.

The documentary found Jane was born to Morgan and Mary Jones in 1763, before she died in 1778 and was buried in a field.

“We looked into it and she was actually our relative,” said local resident Maurice, who once lived at Penyffordd Farm, who told the documentary about why the gravestone was in the garden.

“She died in childbirth and they wouldn’t allow her to be buried in consecrated ground because of the disgrace of having a baby at 14. It is plausible Jane is on that land.”

Image source, BBC | Twenty Twenty | Rory Jackson

Nicolette told the Paranormal documentary that after the gravestone was moved “all kind of strange stuff kicked off”.

“One night I awoke and saw a figure standing over the cot in the corner where my child is,” she said.

“It was leaning over looking into the cot where Quinn was sleeping. I couldn’t see its face – it had a hood, like a habit a monk would wear.

“I sat bolt upright and it had just gone. It creeped the life out of me.”

Paranormal: The Girl, The Ghost and The Gravestone features exclusive video footage, audio interviews, photos, and eye-witness accounts from the house once known as the UK’s most haunted.

The four-part box set, presented by Radio 1’s Sian Eleri, is available now on BBC iPlayer.

Nicolette, her husband and son Quinn lived at Penyffordd Farm for a while when Rose-Mary relocated to Eastbourne in 2002 for David’s job.

“It was a constant daily thing of weirdness, like words appearing on the wall when you’d be sat watching a programme,” occupational therapist Nicolette said.

“Quinn’s name appeared on the wall and I really didn’t like that. How can you sit in a room and words appear on a wall?

“There were brief moments of children singing and being in the bed and hearing the latch lift, a pause and the latch would go down again.

“I could feel this tension. There were figures in the corner of your eye. It was creepy.”

Nicolette’s husband Ewan also recalled two occasions the Gower family’s enormous wooden owl had moved on its own.

Adrienne, the Gowers’ younger daughter, also claimed to have seen the monk during a stay at Penyffordd Farm, and Rose-Mary documented her waking up in the middle of the night screaming.

“I was asleep and woke up and felt this presence of something standing over me – and I say it was a monk,” she told Paranormal.

Image source, BBC | Twenty Twenty | Rory Jackson

The family understand many do not believe their supernatural story, but Rose-Mary and her daughters are adamant this was not an attention-seeking hoax.

“I think some people thought we were doing it to make money out of it. Well, I assure you we weren’t,” Rose-Mary told the documentary.

“John-Paul has Down’s syndrome and learning difficulties and I had to look after him so I was quite busy, to put it mildly. We thought somebody was playing silly beggers.”

Daughter Nicolette added: “It couldn’t have been my siblings because when things happened they weren’t at the house.

“My parents couldn’t have had anything to do with it – they were in Eastbourne hundreds of miles away.

Her sister Adrianne admits she’s “not one to say I believe in ghosts”, but she said: “I know what I experienced.”

“We never got to the bottom of it,” she told the documentary.

“Even talking about it now, I think ‘do I want to talk about it? Do I look a bit mad?’ But it’s what happened to me.”

Whatever the truth may be, mum Rose-Mary says American film directors wanted their story as an inspiration for a blockbuster movie.

“We did have Hollywood,” she told the documentary.

“They got to hear about it and they wanted to do a film, and were going to pay us goodness knows how many thousands of pounds.

“[But] when we heard exactly how they were going to do it we said ‘no thank you, go away, goodbye’.

“They were going make up a load of stuff based on a true story and it was going to be ridiculous. I would not ever sanction that. You either have a true story or you don’t have it at all.”

The Gower family moved out of Penyffordd Farm in 2012. Current owner Michael told the documentary he does not believe that his home is haunted.

“The chances of the paranormal being something real is just zero,” he said

“This wall was flooded with damp, and if you have a damp wall you have stains. If you’re creative, you could look at it and say ‘my gosh it’s a picture of a person’s head’.”

It would seem that with the Gower family’s departure from the farm, their paranormal experiences seemingly left with them.

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