The scent of time

The latest article on http://www.uncannyuk.co.uk/ is about ghostly smells. These are quite common phenomena, although not as common as I would expect considering how evocative the sense of smell is.

A recent blog tells the story of a female apparition seen in Flintshire: she appeared near the turning to a medieval farmhouse, Brithdir Mawr, and she may possibly be the same ghost of a woman reportedly seen in one of the bedrooms there. When I visited Brithdir Mawr when researching my book 'Haunted Clwyd', I spoke to the then owner, a Jane Mould, who told me that the most prevalent spook was the unmistakable smell of cooking stew.

'It's wonderful, very savoury,' Jane told me. 'It makes you hungry just to smell it! I often come across it in the passageway.'

Considering the house dates back to the 14th century, this could be somebody's dinner that was cooked one day six hundred years ago.

A more sinister aroma, though equally pleasant to the uninitiated, was the smell of thyme emanating from some old cottages near Llanasa, in the north of the county. Elias Owen, in his 'Welsh Folklore' of 1896, reports this phenomenon, stating that no thyme then grew there, but that many years ago there had been a bed of thyme, under which had been laid the bodies of two murdered children. The ghostly aroma was a supernatural reminder of this horrible deed.

Makes you wonder about that savoury stew - perhaps it was poisoned!

The ghost of Brithdir Mawr

In my 1992 book 'Haunted Clwyd' (ISBN: 0-86381-218-X), I described the fascinating Brithdir Mawr, a house nestling on the lower slopes of Moel Fammau, near the hamlet of Tafarn-y-Gelyn, in Flintshire. This wonderful old place has hardly changed since the 16th century, as you can see from the picture.

The then owner, Jane Mould, told me about several ghosts seen in or near the house, including that of a femal figure she believed to date from the Middle Ages. Recently, Liz Ledsham, of Mold, told me she saw a ghost near the turning for Brithdir Mawr. She wonders whether it was the same ghost, with a wider 'circle of activity' than previously realised. Liz was on her way back from a night out in 1994. She was sitting in the front seat of a taxi; it was about 2am.

Liz told me: 'We were driving along the Loggerheads Road towards Cilcain and we passed a property called Llais Llyn Lliw, which is located by the telephone box just before the turning for Brithdir Mawr. As we drove by I saw this figure of a lady with long hair in a light grey, flowing gown, on the left-hand grass verge; she was very distinctive. As we approached the figure, I made a comment to my friend and she laughed, saying I had had too much to drink, but then the ghostly figure just passed inf ront of the taxi and we drove straight through her.

'I said that I had just seen a weird thing and commented to the taxi driver that we had just driven through a ghost. At that moment the taxi driver slammed on the brakes and asked if I had seen it too as he couldn't believe his eyes, and he described the exact same thing which I had seen. He appeared to be shocked and was in a cold sweat. A couple of weeks later we had the same taxi driver and he said that he had not driven down the Loggerheads Road at night since the sighting as it had frightenend him so much.

'I thought nothing much of the sighting until I saw the story about the ghost in your book and thought it was too much of a coincidence to be nothing.'