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.
Ghostly taps give Bill jolt in pocket.
Is there anybody there? … Ghosts have been blamed for a Mid Wales man’s sky-high electricity bill. Paranormal experts say three spooks are tapping into the power supply. Electricity firm bosses are sceptical – but have cut Bill Rich’s massive bill to around £1 a day anyway. Mr Rich from Brecon, called in electricity specialists to find out why his electricity bills were so high when he used very little power. Baffled officials from electricity company SWALEC admitted they did not know the cause of the £900 quarterly bills. When a paranormal expert was called in, however, he pinned it down to the three ghosts. Today more tests were being carried out by baffled electricity officials. “We have no evidence the supply is being used by ghosts,” said a spokeswoman for SWALEC. There are very few electrical appliances in the house. It is even heated by oil-fired central heating.
Shropshire Star, 22nd November 1995.
Surely the suitableness of his name for a trickster trick like this is clear?!
House ghosts baffle experts.
Electrical engineers remain baffled by the powers draining a Mid Wales house of its electricity following an in-depth investigation at the property. Despite changing the Rich family’s electricity meter five times, engineers who returned to the Brecon house yesterday failed to find any reason why electricity is mysteriously vanishing into thin air leaving a £900 quarterly bill.
The paranormal has been blamed for the extraordinary goings on at the house. Owner Brian Rich has brought in an exorcist on numerous occasions after one paranormal investigator claimed the ghosts of a young man, an old woman and a creature with a “bent” nose lived in the house.
Officials from electricity company SWALEC have examined the house on numerous previous occasions along with other experts, but apart from replacing the electricity meter, have found no reason for the occurrences. D.C.Smith, a private electrical consultant from Surrey, has been attempting to help the family. “They found absolutely nothing here, which we knew full well,” he said after engineers left along with representatives of Offer, the electricity watchdog. There is definitely something wrong here. But having five meters and still having the problem shows it is nothing to do with the meters,” said Mr Smith, a retired electrical engineer.
“When a meter comes into this place it acts in an abnormal manner. That might not be spooks, but there must be some unusual electrical forces in here,” he said. He is continuing to analyse the house and is taking data home to study. Meanwhile SWALEC deny spooks are involved, and say they are completely baffled. Nevertheless, SWALEC, which is expected to continue its bizarre investigation, has reduced the Rich family’s bill and is now charging around £1 a day instead of nearly £7.
Shropshire Star, 23rd November 1995.
the engineer also has a suitable name!
‘Devil’ drives out terrified family.
Nightmare in house of horror.
A terrified family are having to move their young family out of a dream cottage because they claim an evil presence has made their lives a living hell. After seven years of tormet, Bill and Liz Rich are moving their three small children out of their Brecon home. The couple say the idyllic farmhouse has been a focus for evil since its construction on an ancient Celtic burial site in the 1950s. Since arriving in Mid-Wales, the Riches say they have suffered hauntings from a giant devil figure and been plagued by poltergeists and phantoms. Just weeks after the couple moved in, Bill’s thriving business had volded, his eldest son, Damian, left the family home fearing he had been possessed and the couple were reduced to nervous wrecks.
Artist Bill, 50, said: “Our life here has been one long unbearable nightmare. There seems to be an unspeakable evil here manipulating us – it seemed to exercise a control over us so that we could not leave. Our friends and family don’t visit any more because of the mood of the house, and many of the priests who have attempted exorcisms refuse to cross the threshold again.” The couple have called in more than 30 ghostbusters to the house at St David’s Without, Brecon, since 1989. The most recent, medium Philip Steff, boasts an impressive catalogue of successful exorcisms. He said: “There is something very powerful here – it may even be the Devil himself. The presence is too strong for me on my own, but I shall return with reinforcements.”
Herbalist Liz, 36, fearing for her children, said they were looking forward to their new start in the town away from the horror house.
The family’s chilling ordeal is told in a new book, Testimony, out next month, and the BBC have been filming in the house for a new programme about the paranormal.
Wales on Sunday, 16th June 1996.