The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Welsh Amityville Revealed: The Dark History of Heol Fanog’s Witch Farm

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

*UPDATED - Was made aware of a strange error that meant a line of audio was being repeated from around the 8 min mark. This is now fixed!* The case of Heol Fanog has gone by many names over the years. The Welsh Amityville, Hellfire Farm, The Witch Farm and even the most exorcised house in the world. This is the true story of the haunting of Heol Fanog, a tale of Egyptian deities, witchcraft, possession, urban legends, ghosts and even demonic entities. This paranormal encounter has it all… 🏚️ Explore the eerie tales of unexplained phenomena, ghostly encounters, and unsolved mysteries that have shrouded Heol Fanog for generations. Discover the chilling comparisons to the infamous Amityville Horror and delve into the witches that haunt its past. 🔍 In this gripping documentary, we venture into the heart of Wales' supernatural folklore, uncovering the secrets of Heol Fanog and the sinister forces that continue to captivate the imaginations of believers and skeptics alike. 🌌 Join us as we navigate through the realms of paranormal investigations, occult rituals, and dark tourism, shedding light on the uncharted territories of the unknown. Brace yourself for a journey into the depths of Heol Fanog, where history meets the supernatural. 🌐 For more bone-chilling tales, subscribe to our channel and hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest explorations of the world's most haunted places. You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary Stock footage and additional audio courtesy of Envato Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The feeling of being watched actually is more frightening than seeing things. If something's watching you, you're assuming that its next move is to do something. It all started some time in the late 80s. In Egypt, Bill Rich, his teenage son Lawrence and his new partner Liz, awoke early one morning to beat the rush of tourists. Lawrence had long dreamed to visit in Egypt. and exploring the resting places of the pharaohs, Bill, who hadn't long begun a relationship with Liz, thought this would be the perfect opportunity for the pair to bond. Although it was early,

the sun's heat was already scorching. They entered the pyramid of Keops and were instantly hit with a wall with cold, dank air as they made their way through the darkened passageways, delving deeper inside. At this time, they were the only tourists venturing into the pyramid. Liz led the way and entered the burial chamber first. Almost instantly, she was greeted with a strange sight. She saw dozens of what looks like tiny lights, dancing around the walls of the burial chamber. But seemingly no source from which this light was coming from. She mentioned the curious lights to Bill and Lawrence, but was shocked. shocked when neither one of them had any idea what she was talking about.

They could see no lights. But both the boy and his father looked like they were frozen to the spot. While they couldn't see what Liz was seeing, the moment they entered the chamber, they were both hit with a crippling sense of unease. Liz asked what was wrong, to which Bill replied, I don't know.

I can feel something, to which Lawrence said the same. Moments passed in the cold silent chamber, when suddenly all three of them felt something. It wasn't something tangible. Nothing had happened. But all three at the same time claimed they felt like a presence had entered the chamber and was now in there with them. This feeling was so strong it instantly hit,

all free with the fight or flight instinct, and they ran as fast as they could to get out of the pyramid. On its own, this incident could be passed off as some sort of obstacle illusion, and the very natural feeling of fear while standing in what can be quite an unsettling environment. This was, after all, a tomb. But it's harder to dismiss as nothing when you know what comes next. Back in England, the incident was brushed off, and Liz and Bill's relationship began to flourish. They soon decided to get a home together, and were thrilled when they discovered a picturesque farmhouse in the middle of the Welsh countryside that fit their budget. Little did they know at the time, but this move would become the defining moment of their lives. They were about to enter a world of the unexplained. A world were a reality.

itself seemed to fray at the edges. This farm would be referred to as many names over the years. Hellfire Farm, the witch farm, even the Welsh Amityville. But they knew it at the time by his actual name, of He or Vanok. This would be the place they would call home for the next several years, and the place they would soon regret ever stepping foot into. Shortly after getting married, Bill, Liz and Lawrence all moved into the farmhouse late in the summer of 1989, with Liz already heavily pregnant. When they first arrived at the property, they described an odd sensation.

As soon as they stepped through the gate, they were hit with what felt like an odd atmospheric change. Like they had stepped into an invisible dome, a bubble protecting their new home. home. They saw this as a positive, a sense of safety washed over them. It made the farm feel like a haven from the outside world, which was exactly what they were seeking. Hale Vanog was extremely isolated, the perfect place for a young family looking to start anew, and for Bill who as a painter by trade, the perfect distraction-free environment for his creative work. Both Liz and Bill felt like they needed to be careful with Lawrence. They had uprooted the teenager from his home, and with a new stepmom in Liz, there was some degree of tension there.

Although the pair apparently got on for the most part, with Liz claiming they almost acted like brother and sister. In October of that year, baby Ben was born, and once they got him home to Hail Vanog, they felt like they were finally ready to begin this new chapter of their lives. But just one month after this, it all began. Liz and Bill had just finished making love when Bill was hit with the pangs of guilt, asking Liz if they were too loud, mortified by the idea that his son may have heard them in the old farmhouse, where sound could obviously travel easily. Bill got up to go to the toilet as Liz began to feed Ben.

He gently opened Lawrence's door to find him fast. He walked downstairs to the toilet. While he stood there urinating, lost in his own thoughts. He was suddenly jolted back to reality, when from the floor above him, he heard the loud crash of what sounded like someone in boots, running around. This wasn't someone just creeping about. The sudden banging in the quiet of the night gave Bill quite a shock, then came the feeling of guilt again.

It must be Lawrence. He must have heard them after all. He returned to the bedroom only to discover that despite the sound coming from the same floor the bedrooms were on, Liz had no idea what Bill was talking about. She had just got the baby back to sleep and hadn't heard a thing. There is commonly a weird interconnectedness between paranormal phenomena and electricity. Electrical currents are often seemingly. manipulated or even controlled in many incidents. And this was very much the case in Hill Van Gog. The morning following the incident with the footsteps, Bill was doing his very best to put it out of his mind. In a cold light of day, it all seemed silly, like it wasn't anything to be concerned over. But he would soon have another shock. He sat at their dining room table and opened a late at their late at a late at.

electricity bill. He was baffled to see they were being charged £750 for the quarter. This, for the time and size of their property, was an astronomical bill. There was no way they could be using that level of power for what amounted to a couple of appliances and lighting. This wasn't a one-off occurrence. The electricity company were charging the family similar amounts for the majority of the years they stayed in the home.

leading a battle between the supplier and Bill. The electricity company sent out multiple technicians to try and find the source of the drain, but concluded that there was no fault with the line coming into the house. Therefore, the fault, if there was one, was the result of something inside the property, which meant it was the responsibility of the rich family. Bill had all their appliances in the house tested, and measured for their electricity. electrical usage. He turned off the power at times and had the place thoroughly checked over,

but no one could find any reason as to why the house was drawing in such a huge amount of power. Bill even began a legal contest to the charges they were receiving. The situation with the electricity wouldn't improve until... Well, we'll get to that later. On the same day the bill had arrived, Liz was upstairs feeding Ben, while Bill was downstairs making coffee, Lawrence had gone out. This time it was Liz, who heard something strange, the loud slamming of doors in the upstairs of the house. Starting from the far end of the hall, she heard the sound of each door slam, until it reached the shut bedroom door she was standing in. She was both terrified and baffled when she heard the bedroom door slam as well.

but as she was looking at it she realised the door did not move yet it still made the sound of someone violently slamming it Bill came racing upstairs to find out what was going on only to find his wife clutching their baby terrified the pair had a conversation downstairs in the kitchen about what had just happened

as well as the previous night when this time they heard something together ever. Footsteps once again on the upstairs landing. Quieter this time though, not the loud banging steps from the night before. They heard it creeping along the landing above their heads and then were both frozen with fear when they heard it make its ways to the stairs and begin to descend one step at a time. Eventually, the sound reached the bottom step, but no one walks around the corner into the kitchen.

Bill approached the doorway and quickly jumped out to look up the stairs. There was no one there. Much like the electricity draining, this was the first of many incidents of phantom footsteps. This would be a phenomena that the family would quickly grow used to and would be present throughout their entire time in the home. Just a few days later, Bill was met with the distinct smell of sulphur in the kitchen that would seemingly appear and disappear in an instance. Again, multiple people were called out to investigate the source of the smell,

but no one ever found a source for it. Through the various retellings of this story, Bill and Liz often suggested they began to think there was a curse if not on themselves, on the place they now called home. Throughout the early months of 1990, this curse, as they called it, made itself known. Bill's work suddenly began to dry up. A once successful painter with many clients was having orders cancelled at the last minute, with no explanation, and a continued lack of new customers getting in touch.

The family's car battery would routinely drain for seemingly no reason. This combined with the increasingly worrisome financial situation, the riches had quickly found themselves in, led to them selling their car, isolating them from the outside wild fervor. Then there were the strange occurrences with the animals. The family had a pet dog, a cat and guinea pig, alongside a small handful of farm yard animals they kept on the property. All of them began to show signs of odd, almost psychotic behaviour.

The goat gave birth to two kids and almost immediately crushed one of them. The pig picked up a disease and had to be shot. The family's dog started to act strangely, before running away. The guinea pig was found dead in its cage, and the cat started routinely walking around in circles, unsettled by something. While as individual cases, this might just feel normal for many pet owners. The fact that it all happened in such a short space of time is unusual. On top of all of this, Liz and Bill were constantly filled with a feeling

that they were being watched at all times of the day. Like there was a presence with them inside their home. A presence they couldn't see but felt very real to them. A presence? much like they had experienced, deep in the dark chambers of that Egyptian pyramid. As for Lawrence, if he was experiencing anything similar, he wasn't telling Liz and Bill,

not that they were talking to him much anyway. Almost exactly when the apparent haunting started, Lawrence's behaviour took a drastic change for the worse. He had gone from being a kind, friendly boy, to being cold and distant, storming through the house and barely interacting with his father or new stepmother. In an effort to let them make his own mark on his space, Bill gave him some money to paint his room. He stayed up until the early hours of the morning painting his room. When Bill and Liz went in there the next day, they discovered he had painted the entire room,

an oppressive and vivid blood red. he was increasingly rude and aggressive would keep the pair up half the night banging around in his bedroom and watching horror movies at full volume all night when Lawrence's grandmother came to visit Lawrence once again entered the farmhouse and stormed past everyone to retreat back to his bedroom

his grandmother decided to have a word with him Lawrence was on the stairs already when she asked him to stop Lawrence shouted at his grandmother to get away from him. In a voice that Bill claims he did not recognise, when his grandmother attempted to speak again, Lawrence shouted at her to fuck off, in what is described as an almost demonic tone

and spat in her face, before storming upstairs. Lawrence would not leave his room for the remainder of the evening, but once again, Bill and Liz were left awake most of the night. with the sounds of Lawrence crashing around in his room and wailing at the top of his voice. But no matter what they tried, he would not unlock his door. The following morning after he had gone out, they checked his room to discover. He had punched holes in the wall and trashed his entire bedroom.

It was at this point they began to reach out for help, contacting a local Catholic priest who came and blessed the house. and for a few days at least, it seemed to make a difference. But just four days later, Liz was returning home with baby Ben when she looked up at the house and saw the face of an old woman peering down at her from the window of Ben's nursery. Liz rushed into the house and up into the room, but no one was there. Again, this was not a one-off occurrence.

The old woman were cited not just by Bill and Liz over the years, but also by Ben, and their soon-to-be-born daughter Rebecca, who recalled seeing her in their nursery. Chillingly, they simply assumed this was a memory of a family member, or someone who used to care for them, not an apparition. At the very least, the old lady didn't seem to be the source of the negative energy the family was experiencing in the house. Liz often described her as looking sad

and she seemed to almost be watching over the children, keeping them safe. I used to be in the playroom and there would always be this old woman in there. She never spoke, she never moved. At that age you just think it's normal. Like anything that would happen around you and you just assume that's normal, that's what people see. I don't think we told anyone about it.

I think we just assumed that mum and dad must have seen her as well. After some time in investigating into the history of the property, Liz began to realise that this woman was the spitting image of a woman who had lived in the house previously before her death. Over the following months, the couple both seek the help of, and were contacted by a whole host of people from the world of spirituality. Mediums, spiritualist church members, and even exorcists all made a trip to heal Van Gogh. to try and uncover the mystery of what was happening there and try to help the family. Various claims were made by the spiritualists about what was taking place in the house, including the spirits of seven witches being present in the area. It's worth noting that the Breckham Beacons do have an extensive history of witchcraft.

Others claim that the farm lay on top of a series of dark laylines that might be responsible for attracting dark energies to the home, along with the suggestion that the farm was in fact built on a Celtic burial ground. Others claim that they were in fact four spirits residing within the farmhouse. Two young men, an older woman, and something that appeared to hide its true identity. Something that was seemingly attached. to Bill. One of the spiritualists who visited the house became massively concerned about the negative effect

the home was having on Lawrence. And after much soul-searching, Bill decided for the safety of his son that he needed to take this seriously. He might not understand it. He might not fully believe all the wild claims that are being thrown at him, but what he knew for certain is that since he moved into his house, Lawrence had become a different person. He reluctantly sent the boy away to boarding school. Lawrence was understandably furious with his father's decision, but seemingly, it worked.

Almost immediately after leaving Hale-Vanog, Lawrence returned to being the positive young man he was before he arrived, and over time, he rebuilt his relationship with both his father and Liz. Out of all the children, Lawrence was seemingly the one most affected by the events that happened within Hell of Anok, and interestingly, is the one who is most reluctant to talk about it publicly. Meanwhile, whatever was affecting the richest animals appeared to be spreading throughout the local area. Multiple lambs and calves were born either blind or deformed. The locals were well aware of what was seen. going on up at Helvanoch at this point, and had even been in touch with the riches to inform

them that similar strange occurrences had happened there for years now, which led Liz to uncovering an extremely strange story from a local plumber. The toilet in the building had seemingly become loose from the floor. Liz contacted a plumber, but upon investigation, the toilet was fine, like something had moved it and then placed it back. The plumber tells Liz this is not his first encounter with the farmhouse. Back in the 1960s, he had installed radiators for the woman who lived there. Even during this first visit, the plumber's apprentice got a bad feeling from the place and refused to be left alone there. The plumber installed the radiators and after a long day's work returned home. The following morning he was awoken by a phone call from the woman at

the farm. She had woken up to discover that all the radiators had been removed from the walls. Unsure how this was possible, the plumber returned and reattached them all. The next day he received a call. It happened again. This happened again and again and again. With the plumber returning every day to try and put things right. He has never been able to explain how it happened. He wasn't the only local contractor to get in touch. A builder also informed Bill that many of the farms in that area had their own burial plots back in the old days and that in fact parts of Hill of Anog had been built from the stone from old forgotten graves that were damaged in the area. Another neighbour reached out to the couple, knowing Bill was a painter.

they asked if he would be happy to paint their prized horse. A chance that due to his business issues, Bill jumped at. He painted the horse standing proudly in a nearby field. For some reason, Bill could not get one of his back legs to look right. He tried his best, but for some reason he just couldn't get it to look normal. Eventually he finished this as best he could and took it up to his neighbour's house. He found his neighbouring quite a state. It appears the horse had broken its leg,

and the man had been forced to shoot it. Once he looked at the painting, the man's face went pale. The leg that Bill had struggled with was the same leg the horse broke. The field he painted it in was the same field the horse had been shot in, the spot it was standing, it was the same spot it was now buried, shaken to his core and now fully believing what others had said about the curse. The man burnt the painting.

Each time a new investigator or spiritualist would come to the home and try to bless it, things would inevitably calm down. But each time it would seemingly only work for a short while, and then the activity would flare up again. It was about a year into living there that Liz began seeing someone outside the farm. standing in the garden partially covered by trees. She would glance up and see this person just calmly standing there, observing. But Liz never got a good look at that person, and they were always gone when she went out to them.

By this point Liz was heavily pregnant again, this time with their daughter to Rebecca. Rebecca's arrival seemed to bring about more sightings of the sad old woman in the house. The entire family was worn down, exhausted, confused. They had no idea what was happening or how to stop it. Their requests to move to the local council were met with no help. Just after Christmas in 1990, Liz saw something that pushed her over the edge. Standing there in her house was a seven-foot-tall, shadowy figure, with a strangely shaped head. This apparition more than any other made Liz's blood run cold.

and she sent the feeling of benevolent evil. She then decided she had to get her family out of the house. The family retreated at Liz's mother's house. While there the couple got in touch with more religious leaders in the hope that someone could help. And whilst not being strictly religious before, the pair turned to Christianity as a potential way out of the hell they now found themselves in.

While the strange activity didn't seem to follow them to such an extreme degree, there were a couple of strange incidents to note during their time at Liz's mothers. Puddles of water damage began to appear in the home, but with seemingly no sign of a leak. Most interestingly, Liz's mother found a pendant in her home. They looked to be Egyptian in origin. Assuming it was Liz's, she returned it to her. Only for Liz to be equally perplexed.

She had never seen it before either. When Bill picked up the pendant, he was hit with what he described as an electric shock and dropped it. Deeply troubled by this, Bill destroyed the pendant. The family returned to Hail Van Gog, this time bringing along a Baptist minister, David Holmwood, and self-proclaimed former Satanist Anita Dick. On two separate occasions when Holmwood and Dick drove to the farm, birds crashed into their windscreen while they were driving.

During his time in the home, Bill's paintings had gone from happy and serene to dark and oppressive. Holmwood believed that certain objects within the home may be feeding the energy within, and he made Liz and Bill burn a whole host of their belongings, including a number of books that Bill had. collected over the years on spiritualism and occultism. And most notably, a painting Bill had been working on, one that contained the image of an all-seeing eye. Liz experienced one of her most unsettling incidents around this time. She kept finding herself being awoken by the sound of the cat making odd noises, somewhere between a snoring sound and a purr. One night she heard it coming from under her bed.

She threw a pillow underneath to the stir the cat. It didn't stop the noise. Liz got up and realised the sound wasn't coming from underneath the bed. It was coming from the window. What's more, she realised that it isn't the sound of a cat. It's deeper, more guttural, more vicious sounding. But as she approached the window, the sound grew quiet. She flung open the curtains, and the sound stopped.

There was nothing there. The sound continued to be heard by Liz, causing her many sleepless nights in the following weeks, and she was never able to identify the source. After that incident, Bill started to paint what he described as his masterpiece, a painting of a giant glowing crucifix that he called testimony. The name would be taken by the journalist Mark Chadbull for his book on the Hill of Anulcase. I highly recommend checking that out if you want to delve deeper. It contains first-hand interviews with a lot of the people involved,

and there's been an invaluable resource in creating this episode of the tape library. The burning of the objects and the work of Holmwood saw the farm experience its first prolonged period apiece since the riches moved in. Throughout 1992 they lived in relative calm, unbothered by the strange occurrences. Liz would sometimes see figures out in the garden, but they were like shadows on the periphery of her vision. They would vanish the moment she looked at them. The electricity meter, however, kept ticking along. Whatever was in Hill of Anok wasn't gone.

It was just resting. Then 1993 came. 3 came, and with it the discovery that once again Liz was pregnant. Just like clockwork, the activity ramped up again. After months of relative calm, Bill was alone peeling carrots, when in the corner of his eye he saw someone, thinking it was Liz, he turned to see a woman standing there in his kitchen. She was beautiful, staring at him blankly. She didn't say a word but turned and walked away.

Bill described a feeling of extreme temptation, like she was trying to make him follow her, but he fought against the impulse. Bill began to be plagued by nightmares about Egypt. Specifically, he had dreams about a large figure with a birdhead that resembled the Egyptian deity Horace, but then those nightmares bled into reality. They witnessed the same figure, standing in their kitchen at night.

Liz realised that this was the shadowy figure she saw back in the winter of 1990 that made her want to leave the house. Next, an exorcist by the name of Dr. John Aston got involved in the case. He spent months in the home praying and performing rituals with the couple. Once again, this seemed to calm the activities. But like a pendulum, it swang into moments of calm, only for the activity to return with a growing vengeance. Over the years, many explanations for the source of the haunting were discovered, with a number of murders and executions taking place nearby,

with one local resident telling Bill that one of these murders happened on the grounds of Hill of Anok. It was in late 1993 that a man by the name of Eddie Burks got involved. He had recently risen to a certain level of fame within the paranormal community after seemingly exercising Coots, also known as the Queen's Bank, of an apparent headless spectre. Over the next year, Berks made several visits to the house. He claimed to see multiple spirits with his psychic abilities, but, that as others had suggested,

before, there was something darker residing in the home. This was around the time that Bill had his most disturbing experience with whatever was happening in their house. He found himself sat at his kitchen table late one night when he noticed the large kitchen knife had been left there. Not the sort of thing that either himself or Liz would normally do with small children running around. Bill found his mind racing with dark thoughts when he looked at the knife, thoughts of death, of violence, of suicide. A chill ran down Bill's spine and he put the knife away in the drawer. He turned back to the table.

There, sitting exactly where it was a moment ago, was the knife again. This was the moment he realised that something in this house wanted to harm him. Luckily Eddie Burks returned again to perform another exorcism on the house. This managed to greatly calm the activity yet again, but the couple continued to witness a whole host of apparitions of people. Although they mostly now seem to be appearing in the garden, there was still the feeling, although more diminished, that something was still in their house. Over a year later in the summer of 1995, a final battle was waged for Hale-Vanog. Eddie Berks returned with two paranormal investigators. Regular tape library listeners will recognise one of them as Maurice Gross, the lead investigator

of the Enfield Hauntings. Berks claimed he had identified what the dark presence in the home was. He believed that it was of an ancient and evil pagan entity, that at some point in history was welcomed onto the land by someone who did not know what they were doing, Berks once again performed an exorcism, and seemingly, with the increased focus on one specific entity, it was finally successful. For the first time in years, the energy bill the riches next received dropped, and then it dropped with each subsequent bill until it was below the average for that area. whatever you believe, something had happened that had stopped the constant electrical anomalies.

The paranormal activity that the riches witnessed gradually became less and less. It didn't stop overnight, but it appeared its power and intensity had greatly been diminished. And most notably, they felt a sense that something in the air had been lifted, that feeling of the feeling of of a bubble they described when they first moved in was gone. Eddie Berks did have one final message for Bill and Liz though. He told them that while the darker presence in the home was the cause or a lot of the disturbing phenomena they had witnessed. It was just a part of the rich paranormal tapestry that was Heovanog. He told them that the farm appeared to be a place of great energy, a place that, specifically within their garden, lost spirits would gravitate towards

as a way to cross over to the other side. Whether this is true or not, Bill and Liz continued to see apparitions of people throughout their remaining time in Hill of Anhock, and just as Eddie had said, they were mostly spotted in the garden, but it didn't fill them with the same fear they had experienced over the past few years. It was lighter, and more positive air filled the home. And once again,

Hill Van Gog was restored to be in the beautiful, picturesque location they had fallen in love with. I've wanted to cover this case for a while, but I've kept putting it off. There's just so much to go over that I hope I've been able to do it justice here. From more mundane incidents to some stuff,

that is just totally unbelievable. The story of Hill Van Gog is rich and detailed. I didn't manage to get into everything here. But if you want to learn more, I strongly recommend the book testimony that I mentioned earlier. Also, the incredible Danny Robbins has done a 10-part podcast series on the case called The Witch Farm that combines interviews and dramatic reconstructions and is well worth checking out.

Thank you for joining me tonight. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please be sure to subscribe. Also, I'd love to hear your takes on this case. I present these stories as they are reported, and try to leave it up to you to debate and question further. So please do leave me a comment below. That's all for this entry into the tape library. Until next time. Pleasant dreams.