Brecon Beacons: Living in Britain's most exorcised home

Poltergeist activity, apparitions, alleged possessions - even physical injury.

A woman who lived in a remote farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons described the horrifying events that led her to call in exorcists, time and time again.

The family's home had more exorcisms than any other in British history.

It started in 1989, when a young couple named Liz and Bill Rich moved to what they thought was their dream home, a rural idyll to raise their family in.

Bill, an artist from England and his Welsh wife Liz who was pregnant with their first child, moved into the old stone property, converted from an even older barn, with Bill's son from his first marriage, Laurence.

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The whole ordeal lasted seven years, with strange activity starting to creep into the couple's life.

Doors began to slam unexpectedly and Liz heard loud, heavy footsteps running through the house and down the stairs.

The family moved into the house in 1989

''The footsteps were frequent but the strange thing was, they never reached the bottom of the stairs," she said.

"I was on the phone and I heard them coming - boom boom boom - and I thought 'oh no, I don't want this to happen, I'm too close'. But they stopped."

Liz said Laurence's personality began to alter significantly.

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Extreme hot and cold spots were felt within the house and there were also extreme smells - the disgusting stench of sulphur and the distinct aroma of incense, appearing and disappearing frequently but randomly.

The house's electricity meter would also spin wildly out of control, seeming to surge at the moments when the phenomena were most intense.

There was a further shock when Bill and Liz opened their first electricity bill.

It was £750 for just three months - the equivalent of almost £2,000 in today's money.

A priest performed an exorcism at the house

An official letter from the electricity supplier could not explain why so much power was being used in the house or why it happened in such intense bursts.

Bill and Liz soon faced the mysterious deaths of the animals in their life, horrifying apparitions, even an apparent possession.

There were physical injuries to people in the house and a series of intense exorcisms.

Liz said: "I thought perhaps, when this sort of thing happens you get a priest, so I went to Brecon Cathedral and said 'there's something a bit odd here' and a priest did come.

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"He walked around speaking Latin, put holy water here and there and said 'there you are, that's OK now'. And it did go away for a bit. But then it came back even stronger. We had exorcism after exorcism."

The story of what happened in Heol Fanog is the subject of a paranormal investigation for a new BBC podcast, The Witch Farm.

Journalist Danny Robins has been investigating the mysterious incidents that happened in the 1990s.

The family had a large number of strange experiences

"It's seven years of pure terror, like diving into this plunge bath of icy fear," he said.

Danny - a self-confessed sceptic who wants to believe in ghosts - is trying to find out what really went on.

He looked at whether the isolated location of the apparent haunting could have had a psychological impact on the family's perception of what was happening.

"You're about half a mile from your nearest neighbour, literally nobody could hear you scream. If you're a sceptic, you could say 'does the isolation play a part in this remote location, does it play on their imagination?'," he said.

"But if you're a believer, you could say 'look at this incredible backdrop of history, look at what's happened here before is dramatic, the witchcraft, the Celtic history, things have happened here and has it left its mark on this land?'.

"It was really interesting for me to dive into the history of this case. The ancient Celtic history, the history of witchcraft in the area. Really interestingly, Wales didn't persecute witches in the way that other parts of the country did, witchcraft flourished here really, so there were loads of rumours of rituals having taken place on this site."

Footsteps were heard on the stairs in the house

Whether you are a sceptic or a believer, Danny said there are reasons why ghost stories fascinate us to this day.

"I think there's a paradox at the heart of a ghost story. They are scary, but they are also comforting, because they offer us hope that there is life after death," he said.

"And I think we're living in a really strange period of history where we're confronted by death more than we used to be - with the threat of climate change, Covid, war in Europe - all these things make us question our mortality - so a ghost story offers a bit of magic.

"There's the adrenalin hit of the fear. People just get really excited by the darkness and the mystery of it all. They are a detective story aren't they, ghost stories? If you're a sceptic it's 'how-dunnit?' If you're a believer, it's 'who-dunnit?'."

The Witch Farm is available on BBC Sounds.

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