I read ‘Testimony’ about Heol Fanog, which was definitely interesting. Not sure what to think about it really. We stay in the area fairly regularly and so I was reading up about it when there.
I’m not sure that the electricity bill being horrendous is supernatural; it happened to my partner’s daughter last year in a distinctly non-haunted bungalow, although it is enough to cause massive stress of course. As to the rest quoted from
Spooky Isles.com
‘
When searching for help, Liz contacted a number of mediums, spiritualists, and clergy.
When they visited, they picked up on some unnerving history that occurred on the property.
According to them, the cause of the haunting came from three sources.
One was the desecrated gravestones, which they were already aware of.
Second, a vicious murder took place on the property in 1848. A young farmhand was killed by a friend who hit him in the head with an axe and buried him on the property.
The third piece of dark news was easily the most disturbing.
Apparently, satanic rites, including animal sacrifice, were carried out on the property. And it would seem it was still occurring as many of the Riches’ animals died mysterious deaths.’
I don’t know if the grave theory has been looked into as Heol Fanog wasn’t a chapel was it, or consecrated ground? Or were people permitted to bury on their own grounds?
And ‘satanic rites’ gets thrown around quite a lot and is impossible to prove. I’ll have to read the book again as I loaned it out.
On the other hand, the family never seemed to turn this into a cash cow; the Enfield Poltergeist and The Pontefract case had a tremendous amount of publicity, and I’d never even heard of Heol Fanog until a few years back (on this site).
The location yes, is quite remote but it’s not Cape Wrath remote, not very far at all from Brecon town (11-15 mins on AA Route Planner) Tiny roads of course.
I’ve stayed in far more hard-to-get-to places and lived further from a main town, so the idea that the family really regretted the move, which I’ve seen posited (though with a massive electric bill, maybe they did!) doesn’t make much sense to me but then I was born in the country.
The Ghost Trail series video apparently shows Heol Fanog as abandoned, as in ‘family fled in the night and didn’t even take their books’ kind of thing. Well, you try parting me from my books , undead thing or not.
But Google Earth shows the place as having a car parked outside. Granted, you can’t see the house well as there are trees around it, but it doesn’t look abandoned and it’s unlikely, unless it had been derelict a very long time, to remain abandoned because thare’s a massive demand for holiday cottages and it’s a peaceful place to live.
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I think this is the right place. If you Google the location, you get told it’s next to Cilwhybert Motte but that is a big farm complex, lots of barns and outbuildings so I don’t think that’s the right place. This is not far from a place called Penstar Bunkhouse and fits the bill a lot better. So I’m not sure if the Ghost Trails people were using a ‘stand-in’ for poetic license or what. (E.T.A: I suppose the place next to Cilwhybert Motte could have had the barns thrown up within the last 30-odd years and it might be there, but from the air, the house looks the same shape on this image as some of the pics of Heol Fanog)
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I find it a fascinating case and on the Ghost Trails the son of the Rich’s commented.
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