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Was Penyffordd Farm authentic or attention seeking? RICK HALE investigates Wales’ most infamous paranormal case
Every year, tens of thousands of families embark on an adventure that is a right of passage: buying a new home.
My family and I recently moved into our dream home.
Although new homeowners have a few bumps in the road. Things like bad plumbing or not-so-friendly neighbors are normal, if you’ll excuse the golf metaphor.
Yet there are new homeowners who find themselves in situations that no one expects.
Spooky phenomena that can turn a dream home into a horrific nightmare almost overnight.
And some of these pursuits have caused eager new homeowners to flee for their sanity, even their lives.
This is what the Gower family experienced when they moved to a quaint little farm in the rural North Wales countryside, in the small village of Penyffordd.
An experience that brought them to the brink of madness. That said, this particular case was met with a lot of skepticism.
And while many consider this to be the most haunted house in Britain, many believe it was pure hokum. Hokum made for attention. I’ll let you be the judge.
This terrifying tale of evil spirits started innocently enough, I guess, as these things often do.
The nightmare begins
David Gower, a principal and chemistry teacher, along with his wife Rosemary and their children, bought Penyffordd Farm in Flintshire as a quiet retreat from life in a larger city.
When they entered the farm, which had been built sometime in the 15th century, they immediately set to work cleaning it up. They planned to make this archaic house their own.
While looking around the outside of the house, David and Rosemary came across a curious artifact.
A simple gravestone leaned against the house. Not really something most people would discover on their property.
Upon closer inspection, they could make out the words “Jane Jones, 1778” engraved on it. Of course, the old age of the stone made it difficult to read.
So the Gowers did something most of us would do in a situation like this: they moved the headstone. A decision that was extremely regrettable.
The haunting of Penyffordd Farm
Shortly after moving the headstone, the house seemed to change and take on an overwhelmingly eerie feeling.
Simple household items seemed to take on a life of their own.
Objects would suddenly move from one place to another. Sometimes in full view of the awesome family.
Perhaps one of the strangest things that happened was that the family members found the word peace in Welsh written on the walls.
Of course, this may seem like no big deal to someone, but to the Gower clan the word, mixed with everything else going on in the house, had a sinister air.
Rosemary’s meeting
As the activity in the house increased and more and more strange words appeared on the walls and strange noises could be heard at all hours of the day, Rosemary Gower saw something that chilled her to the core.
Rosemary claimed to have seen the sad apparition of a pregnant girl in a white dress wandering around the property.
Rosemary claimed to investigate who this ghostly girl was and came to the conclusion that the girl was none other than Jane Jones herself.
Rosemary believed that she was the only apparition causing trouble in the house. And all because the family dared to move her gravestone.
The Gowers would soon find out that Jane was not the only ghost haunting the farm. Something much darker was about to show itself.
The Phantom Monk
When David and Rosemary left home in the early years of the 21st century, their daughter Nicolette remained in the house with her husband and young son.
I think it’s quite extraordinary that not every family member said, well, we’ve had enough. But who knows, maybe Nicolette was okay with the spookiness. But not for long.
One evening, Nicolette went to check on her son and when she entered the room, her eyes took on a horrifying look.
Leaning over her baby’s cradle was the figure of a man dressed in a dark monk’s robe.
Nicolette screamed, grabbed her son and fled the room. Ultimately, he leaves the farm in the dust. Nothing more than a terrifying memory.
Skeptics abound
As with every famous case of anything involving the fantastic skeptics, it seemed to come out of the woodwork.
According to them, Rosemary Gower’s character and motives were a bit too questionable.
They claimed that Rosemary was not the quiet, modest woman she claimed to be.
Skeptics claimed that Rosemary made up the whole story to get on television, but also to attract attention.
Let’s face it: this kind of thing happens in the paranormal, whether we want to accept it or not.
A local chemist further stated that the eerie words written on the walls were nothing more than salt water painted over with silver nitrate.
Something, the man of the house, who is a chemist, would have no problem getting off the ground.
And finally, other skeptics suggested that an earlier sighting of a vision of the Virgin Mary in the area might have led Rosemary Gower to believe that her farm was haunted.
To this day, the haunting of Penyffordd Farm is considered deeply divisive.
You have the word of the Gower family who claim to encounter creepy apparitions and bizarre ghostly activity.
And then there are the skeptics who make a good argument that events may have been falsified for personal gain.
This is obviously not for me to decide. I’ll let the evidence speak for itself.
Tell us your thoughts about Penyffordd Farm in the comments below!
Penyffordd Farm is the subject of a new BBC series. Read our review of Paranormal: The Girl, The Ghost and The Gravestones.
