Visitations from a ghost.
Merthyr family’s claim.
“Lady in white” takes money.
Twenty-four-year-old David Jones and his wife, Mrs Dilys Jones, with their 18-months-old child, have left their home at 8, King Street, Caepantywyll, Merthyr, after receiving what they claim to be a series of visitations from a “Lady in White” accompanied by mysterious tappings and the unaccountable disappearance of sums of money.
“We came here about 12 months last October,” said David Jones to a Merthyr Express reporter, “and the first sign of any disturbance came three months later when one night we heard mysterious tapping on the fireplace wall. A couple of nights later we saw her for the first time. We were in bed. My wife woke me, and motioned to the foot of the bed. We both saw quite plainly the figure of a woman in white – she had long hair and wore beads. When she moved I got out of bed and followed her down the stairs. In front of the fireplace she vanished.”
More mysterious happenings, it appears, took place just after last Easter, when sums of money and a watch disappeared from the house at night-time when the doors and windows were locked. Water started running from a tap in the back kitchen when the control tap in the front kitchen was turned off.
“The climax, however, was reached,” said Jones, “when my friend and his wife were in the house with us two nights running.” “On the Wednesday night,” he went on, “we were all sitting in this room when we heard a tapping at the back door, or so it seemed. My wife got up and went to the entrance of the back kitchen. My wife got up and wen tto the entrance of the back kitchen. She called me and my friend, and there, standing by the fireplace in the back room, was the woman in white. The three of us saw her for a few seconds. Next night all four of us were sitting there again joking and laughing. My wife went into the back kitchen for something, and we heard her scream. We rushed in and she told us that she had seen the woman in white standing on the table.”
“We left the house that night. I have been back and fore since during the daytime, but my wife refuses to go back and live there, and we are staying at present in my friend’s house.” When Jones finished his story we sat listening in the dark to his friend, who told us that he had pulled Jones’s leg continually when Jones had told him previously about their mysterious visitor – until he himself saw her.
Both Mrs Jones and her married friend are emphatic in their refusals to go back to the house. “I would not spend another night there for the world,” said Mrs Jones.
Mr Jones said that the ghost he saw was tall and slim and had a beautiful face, but Mrs Jones states that the woman she encountered in the back kitchen appeared to be elderly and stern faced. Both Mr and Mrs Jones and their married friends state that the mysterious visitor only appears when Mrs Jones is in th ehouse.
A child’s red slipper also plays a part in the mystery. This slipper, stated Mr Jones, did not belong to their child, but was found in the house some time ago. On Monday night a Merthyr police-officer and others visited the house and the slipper was placed in a certain position on the kitchen floor. “When they returned on the following night,” went on Mr Jones, “the slipper was found underneath the pantry shelf, although no one had been into the house since they left it the previous night.”
“On Wednesday night with a friend, Mr W. Collins, I called on Mr and Mrs Jones at their friend’s home,” writes a Merthyr Express reporter, “and received his permission to stay in the house that night. Together we went down to King-street, and on the way Mr Jones said the red slipper had been placed on the corner of the mantelpiece in the front room before he had left the house the night before, and no one had been there that day. The first thing we noticed when we entered the house was that the slipper was then in an ornament on the mantelshelf. We arrived at 9.15 p.m. and made a thorough examination of the house, even climbing up into the dust-covered loft above the coal-house adjoining the kitchen. I walked across the cross-beams to the other end of the loft, but could see no hole in the wall or roof by which anyone or anything could enter. We returned to the kitchen, and at 9.35 p.m. we heard a scraping noise which appeared to come from the kitchen, but this ceased when we went towards it. Half-an-hour later we heard a similar sound, which stopped after about a minute. Both noises could have been made by rats.
“At 10.45 p.m. we left the house, and Mr Jones handed me the key to enable Mr Collins and myself to return to the house later. We were making our way back at 11.30 p.m. when we met Mr Jones and a friend, who told us that a spirit medium and several other spiritualists intended holding a seance at the house that night.
“Later, with seven others, including two police-officers in plain clothes, I sat in the kitchen where the “White Lady” was said to have appeared on two occasions. Mr D. Price, of Cefn Coed, was the medium, and he sat in the midst of us, our only light being that obtained from the faint moonbeams which struck across the window. Mr Price is a man of about 40 years of age, and has a soft voice with a pronounced Welsh accent. At midnight Mr Price asked me to go with himself and another spiritualist to the coal-house, adn we stood there in the pitch darkness for five minutes. Twice I heard the medium whisper ‘Louder, friends, louder,’ and then he turned to me and said ‘There is nothing here; we must go back to the other room.’ We returned to the kitchen and waited for a quarter of an hour, and then, from the direction of the medium, we heard the sound of a man speaking in a voice which was unmistakably English – clear and perfectly articulated, and which said, ‘Think what you will, friends.’ A short pause followed, and then there was the sound of dragging footsteps making his way slowly across the room. ‘That’s not the same man who came into the room,’ said one of the other spiritualists. The English voice demanded that there should be fewer in the room, and someone went out.
“Later, from the other end of the kitchen, we heard the voice say that ‘it was against the law that a voice from the hereafter should be used as evidence.’ This apparent hint, one presumes, will be remembered by the two police-officers who had come there in an unofficial capacity. Continuing, the voice seemed to rebuke what it called ‘the unbelievers for breaking into a beautiful religion,’ and suggested that there had never been a ‘White Lady’ in the house. The voice then called for Mr Jones, the tenant of the house, and asked him if he was convinced that he had seen the ‘Lady in White.’ Mr Jones replied that he was, and the voice admonished him gently and told him that he could return to th ehouse without fear. Suddenly, however, the voice changed into that of an elderly Welshman, spoke a few muddled words, and then returned to its former tones, concluding with a ‘Good-night, my friends.’ At the conclusion of the seance the medium, speaking in his natural voice, said, ‘There is nothing here. You could stay here all night and see nothing. I am sorry I came.’
“Mr David Jones, however still stands by what he says has happened, but whether he desires to return to the house or not, he cannot do so now as he has received 48 hours’ notice to quit from his landlord, an Aberdare man.”
Merthyr Express, 9th April 1938.