Halloween: Ghostly apparitions for Sophie Evans and spooky tales from other Welsh stars

Sophie’s guardian angel…

 

When Over the Rainbow runner up Sophie Evans was a child she would walk in the mountains near her home.

One day after school she and her sister were walking their dog with their father near a property named Pugh’s farm.

The two girls stopped to have their picture taken by their dad.

“The photo was developed, and to our amazement there was something a little extra on our photo,” Sophie said.

“Where we had been pointing at the farmhouse a figure had appeared.”

It was “bright gold.”

“We were all amazed and we couldn’t wait to run home and show our mother,” Sophie said.

“We had the picture made bigger to get a better look at it. It now hangs in the kitchen and we always say that the figure is our guardian angel.”

Ten years ago the ruin was knocked down. New homes were built.

Sophie’s family moved into one of them.

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The picture was unpacked.

“Do you know exactly where this photo would have been taken?” Sophie’s mum said.

Her father looked at the snap.

 

“It was exactly where this house is!” he said.

The family were astonished.

“We like to think we were guided here by our guardian angel,” Sophie said.

Dafydd and the invisible man…

 

Former Plaid Cymru president Dafydd Iwan was chased by an invisible man as he walked home as a teenager.

He, brother Huw and some pals spent the evening doing a Ouija board in a candle-lit cellar in Glan Llyn, near Bala.

The group placed their hands on a glass as one tried to connect with spirits.

“The tumbler kept going in the direction of the three letters S, B and J,” Dafydd said.

Bored, Dafydd and Huw began walking home to Llanuwchllyn.

“We kept to the white line in the middle of the road because when the clouds came it became very dark,” Dafydd said.

“My brother suddenly asked me if I could hear something, and I told him that I felt someone was walking behind us, some distance away.”

They walked on.

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“The footsteps behind us came closer, and we could feel our own footsteps quickening,” Dafydd said.

He turned around.

“As I did so, the clouds closed and I couldn’t see a thing, but there was someone there,” Dafydd said.

“My brother looked as well and whispered to me that he thought he saw three or four people walking in a line.”

Suddenly the footsteps vanished.

“We could see that the road was empty,” Dafydd said.

The pair felt “strangely disturbed.” It was gone 2am by the time they got home.

“Dad had left us a note on the kitchen table,” Dafydd said.

“Uncle Simon has died,” it said in Welsh.

His uncle – poet Simon B Jones – had the same initials as those that had been shown during the Ouija session.

“He had died that night,” said Dafydd.

Owen’s dark dream…

 

Poet Owen Sheers had a dream that foretold he would save his brother from drowning.

In it he was walking across a rickety rope bridge with older brother Dilwyn and his younger brother Hywel.

Dilwyn crossed. Owen followed. He held Hywel’s hand.

“We edged our way along, stepping squarely in the middle of each wooden plank,” Owen said.

He looked down. The river seemed far away. Owen gripped the bridge’s rope.

“I suddenly, sickeningly, felt the full weight of Hywel’s body tug at my arm,” Owen said.

“The plank behind me had given way.”

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Owen was on his knees. Hywel dangled above the water.

The brothers stared into each others’ faces. Owen called Dilwyn for help.

“But this was a dream world where sound no longer travelled,” Owen said.

Dilwyn didn’t come. Hywel’s hand slipped from Owen’s. Owen tried to pull him onto the bridge.

“His fingers slipped further until, with one last, slow slide, they were no longer there,” Owen said.

“As he fell he kept his eyes on mine, wide, shocked, scared.”

Owen woke with the image imprinted on his mind.

That morning Owen went to a beach in West Wales with his brothers. Owen was looking after Dilwyn.

His brother was playing on a plank jammed between two rocks over a natural pool.

Owen called Dilwyn to take his turn with Hywel. He pretended not to hear. Owen shouted again.

He took his eyes off Hywel.

“I felt a strange echo of my dream,” Owen said.

“There was the sudden weight of his body tugging at my arm, his fingers slipping from mine,” Owen said.

He spun around.

“As I turned back I saw Hywel falling off the piece of wood.

“I lunged to catch him as he fell backwards into the pool and, briefly, under the water.”

Owen frantically grabbed him and dragged him out.

“Before I did I saw his face,” Owen said.

“His expression was another perfect echo from my dream.

“His eyes, wide, shocked, scared, looking up at me.”

Connie’s ghostly encounter…

 

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria winner Connie Fisher coped with a haunted cup dubbed “Honey Monster” at the London Palladium.

The singer was warned that the Gracie Fields dressing room was plagued by ghosts.

She took the warning with a pinch of salt. But her dresser, Lyn, noticed something odd.

“I teased Lyn a lot about the ghost of Gracie Fields haunting my room,” Connie said.

Lyn claimed she once saw a woman in a black dress walk straight through a wall.

“Before the show Lyn would always make me a cup of honey and lemon, in a cup and saucer that she bought me, as she would be the first in the dressing room and often the one who locked up,” Connie said.

One night Lyn asked if Connie had decided to make her own honey and lemon.

The Haverfordwest actress said she hadn’t had a drink.

“I thought nothing of this conversation until the next night,” Connie said.

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Lyn asked again whether Connie had made herself a cuppa.

“Again I responded that I’d only just got in and hadn’t made myself a drink yet,” Connie said.

The next day she asked the same thing. Baffled Connie asked why Lyn kept asking this.

“She showed me the cup and saucer that I drank out of every night, and it was placed upside down, and the rim was so heavily smeared in honey that it was stuck to the saucer,” Connie said.

The honey had hardened. The cup was hard to remove.

“It wasn’t the way anyone would leave a cup and saucer after they had drunk out of it,” Connie said.

“We always washed up every night before we left and the room was locked until we came in the following day.

“So how the cup ended up upside down covered in honey I shall never know, but we put it down to a dressing room haunting and affectionately called our visiting ghost the ‘honey monster.’”

After two weeks Lyn and Connie held a vigil . They asked Honey Monster to stop leaving dirty cups lying about.

“It never happened again,” Connie said.

She is convinced the ghost was real.

“It was probably something from the other side,” Connie said.

Roy’s sign of the times…

Keith Willoughby

 

Broadcaster Roy Noble woke the dead when he took a ghost tour of Tredegar House in Newport.

When he and wife Elaine reached the top floor they were given divining rods.

These were supposed to react at “ghost hot-spots.” The group were divided into two.

In one room the rods swayed “all over the place.”

“Suddenly, we heard a crash and screams coming from the other group in the adjoining room,” Roy said.

Roy and pals rushed in and met “the other group rushing out.”

“When everyone got control of themselves again, they told us that, in their bedroom, the hand-held divining rods were also swaying uncontrollably,” Roy said.

One of the group said: “If there’s anyone here, show us a sign!

“Go on, show us a sign!”

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There was an enormous bang.

“In the next breath, the bed collapsed,” Roy said.

“No one was near it when it crashed to the floor.

“For the rest of the tour, both groups huddled closely, with everyone quietly pushing and jostling, so that they wouldn’t be last as we made our way downstairs.”

Welsh Celebrity Ghost Stories, compiled by South Wales Paranormal Research, is published by Bradwell Books priced £3.99. Proceeds go to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust