Haunted: Horror of Haverfordwest

Davies

Introduction

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of Evil.

Aristotle

A house should always be a home, an abode of familiarity, a place of refuge. A space one can retreat to, to cultivate hopes and dreams; a place to forge a loving environment. Within its shelter we nurture and birth memory and happiness. A house is where we face the hardships of life, guarded in the confines of our own fabricated setting, personalised with the artefacts of good people and good times. Home is not so much the place but more the feeling. It is our sanctuary.

As adults, we still refer to our parents’ home as our home, an ownership not on the property itself but on the feeling of safety and invulnerability. Times of deep worry or doubt dissolve into the steam of a hot cup of tea and familiar parental reassurance, for most at least.

Occasionally that home will betray us. More often than not it is the people we place our love and trust in that destroys this sanctuary. Abuse, dependency, violence, infidelity, parental complacency and neglect are all hammers to the bricks of our psychological bond to what should have been a home.

Though darker still and hidden in the blackness of our nightmares dwells an inexplicable and absolute force. It is a brutal and undefinable element that interferes in our world with no recognisable agenda other than to tear apart the fabric of what makes us human.

It spreads like a mould, cold and rotten, seeping into our thoughts, consuming the joy, decaying the hopes, slaughtering without heed our essence, like lambs at an abattoir. We are left a shell, a decomposing putrid vessel of what should have been a beacon of light, a person that can dream, believe, create and love. It thrives on our misery; it drinks our negativity and expands in our suffering.

What is this thing so destructive and malevolent?

Some call it demons. Others name it ghosts or evil spirits, while some believe dimensional beings cross through the veil of our known physics to feed on our desolation. It is faceless and nameless in regard to human comprehension. It is something altogether inhuman; it is evil in its nature but evil is again a human concept. To comprehend its motives would be as easy as understanding the nature of the universe. There is only so much the mind can fathom before the elasticity of comprehension snaps and the mind begins to regress. We have to ask, is our melancholic maladies caused by such a thing or could one argue it is the reverse?

In life, some of us live happily, oblivious to the torments that lurk deep within the walls of a home; accounts of ghosts and the paranormal merely stories and imaginations for the weak of mind but active of inventiveness. Yet so many of us feel that momentary panic as we cross the landing in the dark or as we are jolted from a deep sleep by something unseen. Our minds can be haunted by film, TV programs and literature hours and even days after absorbing concepts of such horror, even though we know we are just being preposterous because such things do not and cannot exist. Or do they?

Our minds from birth are shaped by notions of religious miracles and more than human biblical exploits, of Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny. We are surrounded in a world of myth and legend. Magical boys and faraway lands dominate the box office while over fifty per cent of the planet believe in and actively communicate to an invisible omnipresent entity that created all we know. Our lives are foreshadowed by concepts of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, life after death, reincarnation, saints and miracles, singular Gods and animal deities, the Holy Spirit, alien life, multiverses, parallel dimensions, and on and on. The mysteries of our lives unfold unconditionally before us yet unanswerable, and still we are told that some things are not acceptable to believe in.

The house in Haverfordwest lingered in my psyche, resistant to any form of catharsis. It dwelt there for nearly a decade before I took action in an attempt to cleanse my brooding and dark thoughts of the experiences that took place there. Day after day my thoughts would dwell on the house, a house unlike any I had lived in before nor would I wish to again.

In 2013, I suffered a nervous breakdown; I had been dependent on alcohol for over a decade since I had lived at the house and found myself staring into the abyss of despair. One small foot away from actions that would have been an absolute end, an escape to the depression and darkness. I pushed everyone I ever loved away and found no joy in life. There was no tomorrow. My dreams were consumed by the house, beckoning with arms of bramble-like vines, windows blackened and cracked, the front door missing, boasting an infinite hole of gloom. I was utterly lost to the light, to what made me who I was. It was time to find closure not in the house – the power in the house was invincible – but on my life.

Some would argue that the house was merely a manifestation of my depression; that it merely represented my bleakness, and that I needed to visualise my fears into something tangible. But I knew that the events of A most haunted house were more than just perception; they were a digestion of the events that happened there. Something very real had happened there and it had hollowed out my soul and feasted on my want for life.

On 7th January 2013, the night I decided would be my last, after the consumption of two bottles of rum and several bottles of wine, I did something absolutely baffling and deranged to those that have not been trapped in the quicksand of depression. Rationalists will snigger, but I tried to telephone my dead grandmother.

My gran had died in September 2009, several years before, and she had left a hole in my life that quickly eclipsed any brightness that was left. Her unconditional love had been the counterweight to life’s woes, to my failures, to the grasp the house had upon me. I had loved her so much. I thought that by ringing her maybe she would somehow be there, give me a sign that there were better things waiting for me once I had, in my mind, relinquished this vehicle we call a body. Maybe there would be peace waiting for me on the other side. I cannot remember anything more of that night other than my instinct to reach out to her.

Society has a view that to take one’s life is the uttermost selfish act that one can perform. However, when you are at that stage, you are stripped of everything that makes you you. Gone are base human qualities such as fear, anger, love. There is no ego or sadness, and all you are left with are two simple options: Do I simply cease to exist? Or do I cease to exist and explore the possibility of a better life after death?

I woke up the next day confusingly free from the effects of such damaging alcohol consumption – amongst the other things unprescribed – with the purpose of neutralising my melancholy. The winter sun shone brightly into the room, and I lay there for a moment and realised there was indeed a flicker of hope inside; that a flame still burnt that wanted so much from this life. That day I attained a desire to smile, to strive, to achieve, to love again. I wanted to live. I, to this day, have no idea what had really happened during that night.

I took the action, the support, I so dearly needed. Friends rallied around and got me help. I changed and removed many damaging aspects of my life, sought professional counsel and re-established myself at the bottom of the ladder and began to climb again, rung by rung. I began to appreciate and feel value in almost everything. I took accountability for my actions and explored the triggers that had taken me down a very dark and dangerous path.

I finally defeated my dependency to alcohol on 23rd March 2013, and have been sober ever since. I took control of my life, reinvented my career and used every day as an opportunity to succeed and accomplish. Every day is a day of warmth and of sunshine; and overcoming my own personal tribulations has allowed me to support and mentor others with dependency issues. I have been blessed with the gift of being able to help others that have stood at the edge of the abyss and to show them that there is hope, that we can turn around and face the sun again. I felt I had not had a nervous and mental breakdown, but a spiritual awakening.

What of the house? Had my experiences there been real? I was asked to confront the issues by the wonderful professionals charged with my healing process, to try and understand what had happened there. Had the events there, the loss and grief, the hurt and pain, manifested the haunting into something that I perceived to be real? I began to write.

The more I wrote the more the events became more real, but gone was my fear, and a duty emerged, a duty to unveil this nefarious force. If I could understand its effect then maybe I could help others or at the very least help heal my own psychological wounds. In October 2013 I finished, while sat at Carmarthen train station, the first draft of what would become A most haunted house.

My dear friend Ash had been keen to understand what had happened at the house and asked to read it. I was dubious at first that such a private experience be shared. However, I trusted her and sent her a copy. The next day her partner Ste asked, what had I done to her? Ash has been too scared to go to the loo in the night!

Other friends started to read it and encouraged me to publish it; they said sharing it would help others experiencing the same thing. They loved the mystery of whether it was a haunting or a psychological reaction to the breakdown of the relationship at the house that made the house seem haunted. They said it was troubling and chilling, and very different to what other writers of the genre offered. They said it read as an authentic retelling, a real testimony of very real events affecting real people. There was an emotional attachment to the people involved. They believed it could help others but at the same time they believed it would terrify people too!

I lacked the confidence to publish it as my own personal account. I was deeply concerned that the other people who were part of my life at the time would take great offence if they were linked to a paranormal testimonial, so I fictionalised the names, changed dates and attempted to hide the clues that could cause much bother for the other people involved. I changed my name to John in the testimony. I hid my dependency, depression and failings under the guise of a faceless man. Only I and those very close to me knew it was me, though others guessed in time. The account is 90% accurate in its telling, I just had to change the details of the people. I also had no real idea how some of the others were dealing with their experiences. They had closed ranks and shut me out. It had been something I had faced alone for over ten years.

By merely writing it and sharing it, I felt a huge weight lift from me as I dropped those immense bags of rocks of shame and guilt from having wasted so much of my life in a depressed state; and I decided to self-publish on eReader. I suffer from dyslexia, which is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. Intelligence is not affected by this learning disability and it’s estimated that up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK (to say nothing of the world) have some degree of dyslexia. Another wonderful side effect from my experience was that I could support and encourage young adults who also were dyslexic to write and explore creative avenues. Unlike many self-publishers I had no illusions of grandeur that my book would be read by anyone other than close friends so I did not hire the services of a proofreader or an editor [GV Thomas would go on and edit A most haunted house later in 2014.] and that was very much evident in the first issue. I made a cover [That is me in a wig on the cover of the original for fans of the book.] and uploaded the Word document and left it at that.

On 1st January 2014, nearly a year after my spiritual awakening and three months after self-publishing, I was notified that my little account was number 1 in several e-reading categories in four countries, and had been read by hundreds of people. I had no clue. I was contacted by publishers offering me deals if I would spice up the action and add more supernatural horror to the account, but I never intended for a sensationalised version of events. A most haunted house was a personal catharsis for me, a reminder of the true power of unseen forces at work and the effects on people. How fragile we are psychologically and just as importantly how we can endure as humans and overcome the darkness. A most haunted house was my attempt to rationalise whether a prolific haunting in a house in Haverfordwest, West Wales was the cause of the disablement of blissful beginnings or whether the haunting was a manifestation of the breakdown of what should have been an enchanted time in life.

In August of 2015 I was approached by a friendly and empathic journalist named Jean Jollands who had read A most haunted house and reached out to me to find out more about the occupants of possibly the most prolific haunting in Haverfordwest (or even in Wales as some had suggested) for a magazine called Take a Break: Fate and Fortune. I felt the time was right to acknowledge that I had in fact been John and that the account was mine. By this time, I had the blessing of those involved and I felt confident that I was strong enough of mind and emotion to admit my part in the testimony. There was of course criticism from some within the paranormal community for my admission, saying it had been deceitful to hide my identity. In their defence, they did not know the full extent of my breakdown and of my dependency. They did not fully understand that from the safety of my anonymity I was able to grow in confidence and build a new life. I was blessed, however, to have so much love and support from people I knew, from those within the paranormal community and from complete strangers that could relate to my issues, and the strength I found to overcome. That support was incredible and far outweighs any negatives my journey has taken me on. It humbles me to this day.

Nearly four years on, A most haunted house has taken on a little life of its own. It has been featured on radio shows and podcasts across the globe, featured in newspapers and magazines, has interest from film and TV production companies and been read by over 50,000 people! The Paranormal Chronicles, which is a project created at the same time to help give me drive, focus and to help me understand the events, has become a global community with over half a million visitors to my blog site. It is an astonishing and humbling social media presence which has offered me the opportunity to create a YouTube channel, The Paranormal Chronicles Network, where myself and like-minded individuals can present and ponder the nature of the paranormal. I have been blessed to have met so many extraordinary and dedicated people who work towards looking for answers to the mysteries that haunt our existence.

A dark and almost soul-destroying episode of my life has blossomed and grown to become a wonderful time, where I can share my past without fear of ridicule or shame with people from all over the world, and we can all offer each other support, not just on matters of the supernatural but on depression, mental health and dependency.

Do I believe that there is a connection between depression and the paranormal? I do. To what degree I do not know but I continue to explore that idea every day of my life.

But again, what of the house?

The more people the book reached the more I felt like I was defeating the entity that resided there. I was experiencing more positive effects from the book than the negative which had affected me in the past. I was surrounded by people who helped me understand: I was part of something strong. I was part of a network of great people, and together, united, we would not be broken.

Then I received the email.

In September 2015, a few weeks after the Take a Break: Fate and Fortune article had been published I received an email from a lady asking many questions about the house.

I began to worry as I had worked very hard to conceal the location of the house. It had been a daily occurrence, nay, a scourge of people asking where the house was. It became a guessing game. Fabricators assuredly told people through social media where the location was and they were wrong. No one guessed, until …

The email asked a great many details about the location of the house. The woman identified first the area and then the street. I was alarmed as this could cause potential issues for the owners of the house, who chose to leave the house unoccupied due to the ongoing situation that troubled many tenants with its paranormal abuse, and planned to sell it.

I felt that ignoring the woman would be discourteous so answered that the house had to remain unidentified due to the circumstances surrounding the current owners. Then she identified not just the street but the actual house, and began to tell me of an experience she and her husband had encountered while living there in 1989. They too had been victims to the intensity of the haunting; they too had been victims to a darkness that prowled the abode. I was obviously dubious but the more we communicated the more it became real. She knew the layout of the house and she knew of things that had not been published in A most haunted house as they were surreal aspects of the haunting that were difficult to articulate. Her account was thirteen years before those incidents in A most haunted house and shed new and detailed information on the haunting.

I was conflicted between the jubilation that validation brings yet worried that this was something very real and not just a personal psychological infirmity. Could this couple prove that the house was subject to a paranormal transgression? My theories on the events that affected the home were centred on a new mobile communications transmitter based on TETRA Cold War psychological technology, and these soon started to dissolve.

Not only was their account detailed but they experienced a more intense version of what I had for the short time I lived in the house. I do not think I would be here writing this now had I experienced what they had. I honestly believe that the events which happened between 1989 and 1991 to them would have broken me in all perceivable manners. Their testimony coupled with my experiences helped me understand that the paranormal perception like most things in life is based on the individual. My investigation had shown me that some people are more receptive and therefore their experience more detailed, while others experience little to nothing. Paranormal perception can almost be likened to hearing as everyone can hear different frequencies. Some can never hear certain frequencies whilst others are attuned to most.

The couple were willing to share their account but asked for anonymity. They are both in their mid-fifties and still live in Pembrokeshire as do their family, and like many, they feel that they will be open to ridicule and concentrated negativity. We must remember that this is a very challenging subject to many, and certain people are prone to react defensively or antagonize anyone who does not fit in with their personal viewpoint. However, as I have said on numerous platforms, there is not a person alive that truly understands the nature of time, space, the universe and the human mind.

Dai and Anne, the names I have used for them, were interviewed 46 times through 2016 to 2017, separately and as a couple. The account is in their words. I have edited out my questioning and reformed both testimonies chronologically to give you a better understanding of the events. As per my style (A most haunted house, Ghost sex: The Violation) the account is presented as an interview. Paranormal research, as so many forget, should be focused on the witness and clarifying details of the account. I have questioned and re-questioned, cross-examining from different perspectives and avenues to ensure that the testimony is accurate and consistent.

This is a scrupulously detailed account to bring you as close to the events and the people involved as possible. The more information you have, the more you can visualise the house and the events that happened there. Dai and Anne will become more than just characters in a book, but real breathing people enduring a horrific nightmare.

At the end of their testimony, you will find the 2014 version of A most haunted house in its original format for new readers to gain a complete overview of the events of the house, and for returning readers to reinvestigate. You may have before you one of the most complete and unique paranormal accounts regarding hauntings in UK history. Furthermore, regardless of the obstacle that no permission has been granted or will be granted from the owners of the house (including an attempt by a commissioned production team for Channel 4 to investigate), I have included at the end of this book various hypotheses analysing what could be behind the haunting from the rational to the psychological to the abstruse. These will, of course, just be assumptions until a time when the house is available for a thorough and prolonged investigation.

I ask sceptics and believers alike to push away any preconceived notions which you have on the subject and investigate with an open mind what lurks behind this unassuming house in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. It is difficult for me not to compare this event to my own personal account, but Dai, Anne and I will only do so if it is necessary to the detailing of their account. What we do have to remember is that there are events happening in homes across the world that defy belief, events which are ignored and are conceivably and tragically extinguishing lives. For everyone like myself that has escaped these damnable forces, there are many, I am sure, who have dismally succumbed to the abyss.

You are now part of this, as a reader, and it is up to us to review and scrutinise the following information and evaluate as a collective. Let us try to make sense of what is happening at this house.

Let us step inside the Horror of Haverfordwest …

GL Davies

July 2017

Dwelling

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

HP Lovecraft

Dai and Anne first supplied me with the evidence I requested to prove they had once lived in that incomprehensible house so that I knew I was not dealing with hoaxers. Verification confirmed that they had lived there from late 1989 to early 1991, 15 months in total.

Both had been born in Pembrokeshire in the early to mid-1960s, with Dai being three years older than Anne. They married in 1987. In 1989, the time the account begins, Dai worked as a driver for a large local company and Anne was a barmaid for a local Haverfordwest pub. Neither, at the time this account is set, had children, but did so in later years.

These were friendly and very down-to-earth people. Dai, a hard-working Pembrokeshire man, enjoys time with his family and working on his cars; while Anne was open, genuine and her love of her family evident in the pictures of them which adorned every available space on the walls of the house. They