WHEN David and Rose-Mary Gower moved into their new home in the remote North Wales countryside, in February 1997, the supernatural was the last thing on their mind.

As far as the couple from England were concerned, Penyffordd Farm was an idyllic retreat from where head teacher David could teach at the nearby secondary school and Rose-Mary could homeschool their adopted son John Paul, who had learning difficulties.

Yet, as Rose-Mary would write nearly ten years later about her home in Treuddyn, Flintshire, a few miles outside of the market town of Mold, “When moving to a new house, you do not expect to employ an expert in the paranormal in addition to the surveyor and the solicitor. Maybe this is what we should have done before we moved in.”

Penyffordd, which in English means ‘end of the road,’ was a normal-looking house in a normal-looking neighbourhood, but if the stories are to be believed, it was the scene of events and apparitions that were anything but normal.

It all began innocently enough with a vision of the Virgin Mary seen in a nearby field by a couple of Irish tourists.

The husband and wife who went by the name of Michael and Concepta Dooley wrote a letter to the Mold & Buckley Chronicle in March 1997 claiming they were on a walking holiday in North Wales when they saw the vision not far from the Gower’s property. Michael claims the apparition healed his bad shoulder and also helped cure his wife of her cataracts.

Rose-Mary was interviewed by the newspaper, and although she remembers seeing the couple, she described the events as “Silly.”

Nevertheless, The News of the World picked up the story and sensationalised it with the heading, “Virgin Mary cures sick holiday makers."

Word got around and by the end of the summer, the field had become, according to Rose-Mary, a “mini Lourdes.”

It wasn’t until August of that year, that the supernatural entered the Gower’s home.

In an excerpt from her diary, Rose-Mary writes, “One day I was moving some dried flowers that had started to look a bit manky so I decided to throw them away. I took them from the lounge to the kitchen and put them on the counter, dropping petals all the while.

“Somebody came to the door and I was about 30 seconds, and when I came back every single petal had disappeared. They had been replaced by dead or dying half-drowned wasps.

“The was no sign of a wasp nest and all of the doors and windows were shut. Inexplicable.”

From there, things got decidedly spookier!

In October 1998, the Gowers’ youngest daughter Adrianne was staying overnight when suddenly she woke up and saw what looked like the figure of a monk sitting in the shadows at the bottom of her bed.

Rose-Mary wrote in her diary, “Haunting has entered a new phase. Adrianne was back home for a few days and was staying in the smallest room. Overnight she awoke to the weight of something or someone on the end of her bed. When she opened her eyes, a dark figure was sitting above her. A dark cloak covering its face. She woke up screaming.”

A few days later Rose-Mary saw a monk-like figure walking in the garden.

Not long after a dark stain of a cross appeared inexplicably above the fireplace in the lounge.

What did it all mean?

In January 1999 things when Rosemary and David returned from a New Year’s party at their daughter Nicolette’s house they walked into an empty house and the Welsh word for peace - ‘Tangefedd’ had appeared like a brown stain on their lounge wall.

This opened the floodgates for other Welsh words that would appear and disappear over the coming months, such as ‘mynach’ (monk), ‘gobaith’ (hope), and ‘cariad’ (Love). These words both intrigued and confused the English couple who previously had no knowledge of the Welsh language.

Alongside the words which were stained or carved, there would also appear outlines of crosses and monk-like shapes.

Alongside the apparition of the mysterious monk and the strange carvings, the haunting of Penyffordd Farm also involved the noise of unexplained footsteps and door latches being lifted, the unexplainable smell of candles and incense at odd times, sudden fluctuations in temperature, and pools of water suddenly appearing in the house.

Dr. Michael Daniels who investigated the haunting for the Society for Psychical Research was contacted by the Gowers in October 2000.

He told the BBC programme Paranormal, “It was a spectacular case. There were actual physical things in the house that could be observed.

“They were normal and well-adjusted people overwhelmed by the scale of it all. They were frightened, and wanted to know if someone was playing a prank on them.

“As a researcher you have to consider if they have a mental health problem, is it a hoax, or done for fun? Or is genuinely paranormal?”

Dr. Daniels noted that about 200 stains and carvings had appeared on the wall and admitted he had never seen or heard of anything on this sort of scale.

He was also intrigued that some cravings had seemingly been done behind heavy furniture and radiators but had also disappeared.

He eventually concluded that the phenomena that had occurred at the property were ‘extraordinary’ and ‘remain highly ambiguous.’

He wrote, “In my opinion, it is not possible, at this stage to be certain about the status of this interesting case.”

In 2002 the Gowers relocated briefly to Eastbourne for David’s work. During this time, their daughter Nicolette, her husband Ewan, and son Quinn moved in.

Any thoughts she may have harboured that somehow her mother and father were responsible for the haunting and it was all a hoax were soon put to bed.

She told the BBC that although her mother would constantly telephone her from the farm and say ‘You’ll never guess what happened now?’ It was a completely different kettle of fish “When you’re there and living it.”

She said, “It was a constant daily thing of weirdness,like words appearing on the wall when you’d be sat watching a programme.

“Quinn’s name appeared on the wall and I really didn’t like that. How can you sit in a room and words appear on a wall?

“There were brief moments of children singing and being in the bed and hearing the latch lift, a pause, and the latch would go down again.

“I could feel this tension. There were figures in the corner of your eye. It was creepy.”

She added, “It couldn’t have been my siblings because when things happened they weren’t at the house.

“My parents couldn’t have had anything to do with it - they were in Eastbourne hundreds of miles away.”

Yet the worst for Nicolette was still to come.

She explained, “One night I awoke and saw a figure standing over the cot in the corner where my child was.

“It was leaning over looking into the cot where Quinn was sleeping. I couldn’t see its face - it had a hood, like a habit a monk would wear.

“I sat bolt upright and it had just gone. It creeped the life out of me.”

There was also an incident, where the Gowers’ adopted son John Paul, who was said to have seen the monk figure more than anyone else, was heard talking to himself in his bedroom one night. This in itself was not all that odd, but on this occasion, his sister heard another voice, male and deep, responding in Welsh.

A visitor to Penyffordd Farm also insists that she saw a hooded figure walk past the house while she waited in the car and had a terrible sense it was haunted.

A local resident told the BBC, “There is something around here. There is an energy.”

A radio producer who visited the farm for an interview with the Gowers also told the BBC that he, “Had the impression that someone walked by when they were talking.” And admitted "experiences like that do stay with you." He remained convinced, “Something had happened.”

Yet is there any historical evidence of a monk in the vicinity of Penyffordd Farm?

Little is known about the history of the house. It was thought to have once been a miner’s cottage and there is a stone built into the wall with the inscription ’1610’.

Research has since revealed that there was a well-established pilgrimage route between Shrewsbury and Holywell that passes right by the farm.

The pilgrimages would have been associated with the cult of Winifred and popular from the 12th to 15th Century.

Legend has it that after attempting to rape Winifred, Prince Caradoc ordered to have her decapitated. On the spot her head fell a spring broke forth (Holywell).

Winifred was later resurrected through the prayers of her uncle, St Beuno, and spent the rest of her days a nun. Her mortal remains were later moved from Gwytherin to the Benedictine monastery in Shrewsbury.

Upon her death, she became a holy figure and the pilgrimage from Shrewsbury to Holywell became so popular that King Henry V made the 45-mile journey on foot to give thanks for his famous victory at Agincourt in 1415.

Was a monk murdered near Penyfford Farm or did something more sinister take place?

When the Gowers first moved into their new home they noticed a gravestone leaning up against the wall of the property.

Upon it was the inscription “Jane Jones. Aged 15 - 1778.”

Not long after they moved in they were preparing the garden for a party for their daughter Nicolette’s wedding.

Deciding that having a gravestone hanging around set the wrong tone, they moved it to a more secluded spot. In hindsight, they believed this was the catalyst for everything that followed.

As well as the monk an apparition of a young girl who was heavily pregnant and wearing old fashioned clothes was also seen.

The name Jane began appearing as a stain along with the words ‘Help me!’ The Gowers realised it corresponded to the name on the gravestone, but what was the connection?

The BBC documentary on the haunting discovered that there was a Jane who died in 1778 and was the daughter of Morgan and Mary Jones.

A local resident told the BBC that the poor girl was buried in the garden and not a churchyard because “She died in childbirth and they wouldn’t allow her to be buried in consecrated ground because of the disgrace of having a baby at 14.”

Did the monk and Jane’s paths cross in some terrible and fateful way when they were both alive or are the two unconnected?

Perhaps you share the view of Penyfford Farm’s new resident Mike, and regard the whole thing as an elaborate hoax or mass delusion.

He told the BBC, “I’ve lived there for over a decade, and when the estate agent told me it was the most haunted house in Wales. I thought brilliant, that means the price is going down.

“The chances of the paranormal being something real is just zero.

“This wall was flooded with damp, and if you have a damp wall you have stains. If you’re creative, you could look at it and say ‘My gosh it’s a picture of a person’s head.’”

Yet photographs of the stains and carvings on the wall reveal that they are in some cases incredibly detailed. How would it be possible for them to appear as if by magic?

Could the answer be the chemical silver nitrate?

If you paint an image or word on the wall with salt water and then cover it with silver nitrate, the mixture becomes highly reactive to light which can cause the image and word to appear and disappear over time.

As someone with a degree in chemistry, David Gower would have been well aware of the process.

Then there is also the problem of the gravestone. After over 200 years would it be in such good condition and why would the inscription, in what was a predominantly Welsh-speaking area, be in English?

The names that appear on the wall are without exception all in Welsh, and the Gowers were English-speaking. Yet certain words were misspelled. Make of that what you will.

Although it is not mentioned in the BBC documentary, Rose-Mary’s family alsoexperienced poltergeist activity at her Guernsey home. It occurred before she was born, during her childhood years, and after she left home.

By all accounts, she was no stranger to paranormal activity.

The question remains, is there a deeper mystery at Penyfford Farm than modern science can account for? Or was the entire haunting a consequence of a chance visitation of the Virgin Mary that primed a series of minds to seek a strange sort of solace in the unexplained, unaccountable, and impossible?

Remember, just because you believe something doesn’t make it real in the world outside your imagination.

But then again, just because you don’t believe in something, it doesn’t stop it from happening.