LIZ RICH
Imagine seeing this apparition in any context. How would you feel? Now imagine you are walking up your drive, pushing your baby in a pram, and the figure is looking down at you from the empty nursery. How would you feel? Now imagine this incident comes after months of unexplained phenomena including phantom footsteps, noxious smells, loud banging noises, electrical disturbances and possible demonic possession. How would you feel? Now imagine you live in a remote old farmhouse deep in the Welsh countryside and you are on your own. How would you feel? Later, you walk into the nursery and see the same woman sitting there and realise she looks like a former resident who died 10 years earlier. How would you feel?
This is a haunting case from 1989. It’s set in the shadow of Pen y Fan, in Brecon Beacons National Park, the highest peak in South Wales. Just to the north, on the way to the town of Brecon, is Heol Fanog, a remote farmhouse more commonly known in the media as “Hellfire Farm”, or even “The Welsh Amityville”. Recently, due to a popular BBC Radio 4 podcast by Danny Robins (of Uncanny fame), it is now also referred to as “The Witch Farm”. When you first hear the eyewitness accounts from the Rich family at the centre of this case, all of these colourful labels make sense. In fact, if we take the reported paranormal phenomena at face value, Heol Fanog certainly has the potential to be the UK’s ‘Most Haunted House’. But that’s if you believe in ghosts and haunting experiences. If you’re a sceptic, like me, then this case instead has the potential to be the ‘Most Complex Paranormal Whodunnit’.
THE WITCH FARM
In May 1989, young, pregnant Liz and her successful partner, Bill Rich, rent an isolated farmhouse in the beautiful but remote Welsh countryside, with Laurence, Bill’s teenage son from a previous marriage. They’re hoping for a fresh start, a rustic idyll; but Heol Fanog, as the ancient stone building is known, holds dark secrets, and the family’s new life will become a terrifying ordeal that will change them forever.
It all starts with some footsteps on the landing heard late one night in November. The next day, events take a turn toward something more tangible, more modern: an electricity bill – an outlandishly, impossibly huge one. Something, it seems, is drawing the power from the house. But as Liz and Bill try to investigate, other strange things happen – phantom footsteps are heard coming down the stairs, stopping as if realising there arethen turning to go back up again. Freezing cold spots are felt before heat invades the house; the sound of snoring is heard in an empty room; Bill’s art commissions dry-up; the farm animals die mysteriously, one by one; and the family feels a sinister presence in the house that seems to affect them all in different ways. Laurence becomes increasingly moody and withdrawn, and Bill’s paintings, previously bright, colourful and in demand from buyers, change, as he obsessively works in his studio, painting dark, unsettling images that disturb Liz. And then, there are the ghosts. Frightening apparitions appear – an old woman in the children’s room, a hooded figure by Liz and Bill’s bed and a young man with an injured face. The old house may be lonely, but the Riches have the constant feeling that they are not alone.
