Llandaff prepares for Halloween haunting

One of the many possible ghost sightings, photographed in July on a walk.

There’s a ghostly feeling in the Llandaff air that’s hard to dispel at the best of times, but this Halloween expect it to be heightened to the point of despair. Jim Cowan, who runs the regular Llandaff Ghost Walks, is putting on a full course of activities to honour this most haunted of festivals.

The evening will begin at the Mulberry Restaurant with drinks, a meal and a quiz on Welsh ghostly legends before the party strolls down ‘The road of the dead’ and ‘The place of the witch’.

Mr Cowan said the walk just keeps on increasing in popularity, “The first ever walk nobody turned up, I would say now we regularly take over 100 people a week.” Join him either this Thursday or Friday and prepare for a frightening.

Myth or reality?

Some of the stories and myths told on Mr Cowan’s ghost walks have a disturbing amount of factual evidence connected with them.

The most common is that of the The Gwrach Y Rhibyn or Welsh Banshee. This foul creature is said to be hideously ugly with huge wings and with the nasty tendency to spy on people in their sleep. In the 19^th century the American consular general to Wales is said to have met a man who told him of a sighting of the Gwrach Y Rhibyn. He spoke of the story as being, “Of such utmost integrity that I believed it to be true.”

More recently, and perhaps more worryingly, participants on the walk have complained of “Feeling people talk in their ear.” This is said to be the ghosts of three Victorian children who drowned in the Llandaff River in the late nineteenth century.

It’s enough to have you sleeping with the lights on.

For more information on the walk and to purchase tickets, check out the website over here.

Ghost walk, Jim Cowan, Llandaf, mulberry restaurant, place of the witch, road of the dead