In the news

My last Haunted Wales blog intimating that Wrexham may be the most haunted town in Wales was picked up by NWN Media journalist Rob Bellis, who, with colleague Joanne Shone, turned it into a double page spread in the 'Evening Leader' on May 15. You can see an extract of it here.

Rob found the blog through his Google Alerts setting, which immediately highlighted the key word 'Wrexham'. Very decent of them to create so much from so little! The article was a handy plug for the new and improved version of my website Uncanny UK, which has moved to a new home at http://www.uncannyuk.com/

This new version of the site is fully content managed, which means there should be no excuse for me not updating the site with at least one new article on a weekly basis. It's on a much better server, too.

Recent posts include a piece in the Ghosts section on Paul Devereux's book 'Spirit Roads' (of which more in a future blog) and a 'More Uncanny' article on the weirdest of many weird phenomena encountered at the infamous Borley Rectory on the Essex/Suffolk border. You'll have to register to read the latter feature, but that's just a case of typing in your email and getting a password in return.

So, if you haven't already done so, please visit http://www.uncannyuk.com/ and let me know what you think.

The Carmarthenshire Ghost train

The most recent ghost story on Uncanny UK concerns a poltergeist that caused mayhem in an old farmhouse near St Asaph over the Christmas period of 1812. I took the story from a manuscript letter that describes the disturbances first-hand. The exceedingly rare nature of this source material makes it a favourite of mine and I have mentioned it in many of my books as well as on the Uncanny UK website.

Another recent article describes a few 'ghost trains', apparitions of locomotives that have long since shunted into the Great Beyond. Briefly, I mention a phantom train that was seen in Carmarthenshire. This ghost was recorded by the folklorist J C Davies, who got it first-hand from the witness, 'an old man named James'. Here I repeat the story verbatim from his book 'Folklore of West and Mid Wales', which was published in 1911:

'Some years ago when he [James] happened to be out about midnight once, he saw a train passing, which came from the direction of Carmarthen, and went towards Llandilo, and as no train was to pass through the station of Nantgaredig at that hour, he enquired of the Stationmaster next morning what was the special train that passed at midnight. In reply he was told he had been either dreaming or had seen the spirit of a train, as no train had passed at that time of night.
'A few days after this a special train passed through the station conveying a large funeral from Carmarthen to Llandilo; and James and his friend were convinced that the train he had seen in the night was nothing but an apparition of the real train with the funeral!'

James's belief was that the ghost train had taken the form of a - for then - hi-tech version of the phantom funerals that commonly reported as shuffling through Welsh lanes at twilight to warn of real funerals to come.

To read about the Christmas poltergeist, please visit: http://www.uncannyuk.co.uk/article.php?id=47 ; to read more about phantom trains: http://www.uncannyuk.co.uk/article.php?id=46 ; and to read more about phantom funerals, visit: http://www.uncannyuk.co.uk/article.php?id=22

Spooky limerick

Alan Daulby came across an odd litle book that he thought might help him with his dauntless efforts to learn Welsh. It's called 'Cerddi Dwli' (which means something like 'Nonsense Verse') and is by Leslie Harries, with sketches by E. Alwyn Lloyd.

It's general style gave it the appearance of having been published at any period from the 1920s to the '50s, although a scanning of the introduction made it clear it appeared sometime post-1960.

Among the many sub-Edward Lear limericks (llimericau?) in Welsh is one about a ghost at Llansannan in Denbighshire. Here it is:

'Roedd bachgen yn byw yn Llansannan

Yn gweled ysbrydion ym mhobman;

Nes gwelodd un nos

Un yn codi o'r ffos, -

Mae e' heddiw fel ysbryd ei hunan!

Mr Lloyd's cartoon shows a classic bwbach grinning under a tree. Welsh ghosts seem to enjoy haunting the countryside more than stately homes and castles, as they do over the border. Anyone able to translate the rather old-fashioned and perhaps provinicial Welsh of Mr Harries' verse will perform a kindness by uploading it here.