27 Oct 05

The Gorey ghost #2

My correspondent continues her story of the Gorey ghost in the Welsh mountains:

The haunting didn’t stop and there were many more times when we, or one or two visitors saw, or felt a spirit. I don’t know if it was the same one, or different ones. The house — Bwlch yn Horeb, known as the Bwlch — was on an historic spot and we discovered that from about the 11th century to 1800s it had been an inn, before becoming a farmhouse.

The “spirits” could have been wind, or even rats, though more than once actual shapes were seen and voices heard. I camped out in it on my own when we first bought it, when it was a virtual wreck. Many times, I had such a strong feeling of a presence that I had to run outside.

I met two young policemen who told me about the ‘ghost’ they saw; it’s a long story.

The walls were four feet thick, stuck together with a lime and mud render. When we knocked a hole in one for a window, piles of wheat poured out and we saw the ‘rat runs.’

Locals told us the meadows behind, used for hay in the spring and then sheep, hadn’t had wheat on them since before the War. They meant WW1.

We left to live in Italy and later sold the house. We have never returned, so I have no idea how the current occupants find it.

The ghost story

Briefly: The Bwlch was cross shaped, a block at the front with a porch and front door, central stairs with rooms left and right; and a wing sticking out of the middle at the back.

There was a very small front parlour to one side of the central hall (later we knocked it into the room behind); on the other side of the hall was the main parlour, which was the depth of the house.

One day I was walking past the smaller parlour, when I saw a man in heavy tweeds hunched up in an armchair by the dead fire. I went in and there was nobody there.

One Easter, a year after the incident which I mentioned to you last time, when my son sleepwalked, lured by the Gorey — my parents and teenage sister came to stay. My sister went for a walk on the mountain and disappeared in a sudden blizzard. My father went to look for her and got lost. We called Mountain Rescue.

Twelve big policemen turned up and searched for her. They found my father, but my sister had vanished. During a regroup, standing around the kitchen, drinking hot tea, two of the older policemen told us that years ago, when young, one winter they had been called to the Bwlch because the elderly shepherd who lived there — a Mr Gorey — hadn’t been seen for a while and his dogs had broken out and made their way down to the village.

The policemen walked up through deep snow and in the small front parlour found Mr Gorey, dead in an armchair in front of the ashes of an old fire. The house was freezing.

They picked him up to carry him upstairs to the bedroom, but he was frozen into a bent shape, as if in a chair. They carried him up anyway, and laid him on the bed. His legs were bent, in the air. Without thinking, one of them went to straighten him by pushing on his legs. It made him sit up. They yelled and fled. They were sheepish, of course, when relating this.

I said I’d seen him once, in the armchair. That just led to lots of local Welsh ghost stories, in the middle of which, we got a telephone call to say my sister was safe. She had gone over the top and eventually ended up in a distant farm, by doing what I told her, follow a stream down if you get lost.

Incidentally, there was an Irish connection, though I don’t know if with Mr Gorey. Cattle and travellers would land from Ireland on Anglesey and follow the old Roman cattle (or drovers’) road that passed the Bwlch to Chester or Shrewsbury and then down to London.

These articles might be of interest:

• A Gorey ghost?
• Conversation starters
• Child protection #2

Tags: dog, fire, police, PR, sleep, travel, war

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