“MYSTERIOUS BLACK CLOUD’

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 202, 23 May 1936, Page 22

“MYSTERIOUS BLACK CLOUD’

World’s Queerest Ghost

The queerest ghost in the world recently drove a family from home, writes T. Macdonald in a London journal. A mysterious black cloud enveloped every member of the family in turn —that is how the phantom has been described by Mr. David Jones, a colliery foreman, and his wife and sons, who used to live in a cottage on the mountainside at Wainllwyd, South Wales. Because of the ghost they abandoned their cottage and are uow living happily at Abertillery. For five years they lived in the mountainside cottage. Then suddenly the black terror appeared.

It drove one of Mr. Jones's sons from home. It made his wife a nervous wreck. He himself felt the strange influence weighing him down, almost .strangling him one night as he lay in bed. He came home from his work and found his wife unconscious on the floor. She told him:

“I was sleeping. Suddenly 1 awoke. I could feel something weighing down on the bedclothes, which gradually tightened about me. f put up my hands to ward off some dark shadowy mass which seemed to be enveloping me. Then I collapsed.” After that Mr. Jones and his David slept in the room. They had a terrifying experience. Here is Mr. Jones’s story; “Something tugged at the bedclothes. Then I had a feeling that the bedclothes were being drawn tightly round me. I had an awful feeling of being trapped.” His son felt the same eerie influence. A candle was lit. There was nothing. The candle was put out. Mr. Jones’s story goes on: “Suddenly we knew that it was coming. My body went icy cold. A wave of blackness seemed to be flowing into the room. David shouted: ‘Get up, dad, I can see it over your head.’ ” They put on the light again and waited until the dawn. Then they left the cottage. There was nothing else for it. To-day that cottage is empty on the mountain, and the curious are making pilgrimages to it. But there is no explanation of the weird happenings that drove away the occupants.

At Gogerddau. the mansion o£ Sir Lewes Loveden Pryse. near Aberystwyth, I was lold of the phantom carriage which comes up the drive at dead of night to herald the death of a Pryse. When he was a boy Sir Lewis heard a carriage on the drive in the night. He looked out but saw nothing. At that moment a member of the family had died in London.

Another time the phantom carriage seemed to be driven right across the lawn. That seemed strange, for tlie lawn was railed. But the squire died, and so mighty was the cortege at his funeral that the rails had to be taken down to allow it to pass from the doors in formation.

In Montgomeryshire I heard the story of the phantom harpist. A woman who lived in a certain mansion was a fine harpist. Just before she died she asked to be buried with her coffin in a perpendicular position, so that she could get out ot' it easily. For years she was heard playing her harp in the grounds of her old home. A villager showed me where she was buried. Out at Dolgelley, in Merilonetbshire, I saw tlie spot in an oaken grove where Owen Glydwer, tlie Welsh chieftain, killed his cousin, Hywel Sele, in a hand-to-hand fight, and threw his body into an oak where it had been blasted by lightning.

Years later the skeleton was found. The blasted oak became the demon oak. The spot was said to be haunted by hobgoblins and sometimes the skeleton of Hywel would be seen wandering about the grove.

At Bettws-y-Coecf I found the ruined palace of Gwydir, where lived Sir John Wynne, who was hated by the poor people. They cursed him. And when he died it was said that his soul would be imprisoned for all time in the Swallow Falls.

Once after the rain a photograph was taken of tlie Swallow Falls. Some strange trick of sunshine and shadow may have been responsible, but local people saw in it the outline of the face of Sir John Wynne.