Family blames high electricity bill on a ghost.
By Ian Taylor.
A family haunted by bumper electricity bills are refusing to pay up – claiming the huge charges are down to ghostly goings-on. Artist Bill Rich said the £400-a-quarter bills are not his responsibility as they are not of his making. He claims paranormal phenomena and not his family draining the supply with electrical appliances are the cause.
“We have a wood-burning fire and our heating and cooking is run on oil fuel, so we use very little electricity,” said Mr Rich, 48, who lives in a three bedroom cottage at Heol Fanog, St David’s, Brecon, with his wife, Elizabeth, and three young children Ben, Rebecca, and Tomas. “I have a friend who has a large family, a five-bedroom house and numerous electrical appliances and his bill is around £75 a month.”
Mr Rich claims there is another presence in the house which is sucking up the electricity. “The house is built where ley-lines meet and I am wondering if that may have something to do with it,” he told the Echo. “We thought it may have been a ghost which was causing the problem so we had the cottage exorcised. The bills fell sharply after that but now they are rising again. We are refusing to pay our bills because there is clearly something wrong.”
The family’s claims are backed by exorcist Eddie Burks, who was called in by Mr Rich in February. He said there was definitely a presence in the house which could have some effect on the electricity supply. But a spokesman for electricity company SWALEC said Mr Rich’s meter had been checked twice and was working correctly. “In the absence of any evidence to the contrary we are sure that the bills are correct,” he added.
Freeing the spirit.
“I’m not a ghostbuster,” insists paranormal expert Eddie Burks who has already rid the Rich’s cottage in Brecon of a trapped spirit. “What I do is not at all aggressive so I resent being likened to the characters of the film,” he said. Nor does Mr Burks, a retired consultant civil engineer living in Lincoln, want to be seen as a religious exorcist. “I establish some sort of empathy with the spirit and help it by discovering the nature and cause of the death and what is causing them to be trapped. By sharing the experience of the memory it enables the spirits to free themselves of what is holding them.”
South Wales Echo, 3rd December 1994.