Reviewed by Tom Ruffles
The History Press and Amberley Publishing continue to produce high-quality books of interest to the paranormal enthusiast. Under review are three that deal with the ghosts and folklore of Wales.
Richard Holland, editor of Paranormal magazine until its demise, and several earlier books on aspects of haunted Wales including the amusingly-titled Wales of the Unexpected, has produced a model of what a ghost gazetteer should look like. He has ranged widely in the antiquarian literature, and has traced each story back to its source. To allow the reader to follow up his entries he has included references and an extensive bibliography.
Accounts are restricted to those originally collected before the Second World War, to keep the book to a manageable size, and he has bypassed later versions written up by undependable authors. One result of this policy is the omission of some well-known stories that he has not been able to track back to reliable early sources and where he does not trust more modern ones. Given the extensive quantity of stories that he could have included, he has confined himself to English-language sources, though he adds that many of the Welsh-language accounts have been ably translated into English anyway.
He begins with an overview of the categories of paranormal he has included. Despite the title, it is not restricted to ghosts, encompassing apparitions of the living and of animals, poltergeists, and all sorts of folkloric beings. There is a section on ghosts’ motivations for haunting, and one outlining the major collectors on whose work he has drawn. The bulk of the book comprises a well illustrated county-by-county tour (taking a rather eccentric clockwise route beginning in Flintshire and ending in Powys) which is well-written and clearly laid out, making the text easy to navigate. The current (at time of writing) county boundaries have been adopted.
Very welcome is the presence of an index, a rarity in this kind of book, divided by named ghosts and places. Also included are a glossary of Welsh unfamiliar terms used and a thematic index which allows the reader to find with ease topics on, say, headless ghosts or links to fairy lore. Perhaps the book should have been called Haunted Old Wales, considering the absence of post-war accounts. There is a complementary volume to be written on more recent ghost stories (and possibly one examining untranslated Welsh-language accounts), but within its terms of reference it is doubtful if this one could be bettered.
Peter Underwood’s Haunted Wales might sound as if could be that complementary volume detailing recent cases, but despite the confusingly similar title to Holland’s book, this is actually an almost straight reprint of Underwood’s 1978 Ghosts of Wales with a few minor editorial adjustments. No material has been added, and the only item in the bibliography published after 1978 is the author’s own 2009 Haunted Gardens as it includes two Welsh locations which appeared in the earlier work. Haunted Wales is organised alphabetically by place-name, with the county added, and the result of a more or less straight reprint is that he has fallen foul of the Welsh predilection for altering boundaries. That quibble aside, Underwood always writes elegantly, and is a pleasure to read. Given the large quantity of material from which they had to choose, it is unsurprising that there is not much overlap between this and Holland‘s book. Both are worthy of a place on the shelf of anyone interested in Wales’s paranormal heritage.
Richard Holland expresses surprise that Anglesey has such a paucity of ghost stories, and speculates that this is perhaps because it keeps its secrets. That has not been a problem for Bunty Austin, who has now written three books on the island’s ghosts. Being based there helps, and Bunty bach, as she is often affectionately called, is clearly gregarious, able to encourage people to open up to her and tell their stories. This makes More Anglesey Ghosts far different in style to the other two books, being chatty and full of direct speech most probably reproduced from memory.
The author, an ex-head teacher, crafts each account with an eye to its narrative structure, and that is a problem for anyone hoping to use the book as a guide. The chapters are essentially anecdotes, and it is disconcerting to read the line “Those are the facts that I took to Peggy (padded out a bit by me to make a good story).” Another account given to her which she transcribes she has been told is “embellished a little”. Such throwaway statements make the reader wonder how much the incidents recounted might have been shaped in the service of telling a “good story“. Whatever the status of the contents, it is an extremely enjoyable read, though of limited use either to the researcher or to visitors, and rather out of place in the Amberley range of ghost guides.
Amberley also publishes Anglesey Ghosts, by Bunny Austin. The History Press publishes Haunted Swansea and Beyond; Haunted Cardiff and the Valleys; and Hunted Newport and the Valleys, all by ‘South Wales Paranormal Research’.