Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason. - John Harington
I watched a BBC show called "Paranormal: The Girl, the Ghost and The Gravestone". It's about a series of unexplained incidents, in North Wales, UK, at a place called Penyffordd Farm in Flintshire. Before commenting on the show: if is anything proven to be paranormal it is normal. If there is anything proven to be supernatural it is natural. Para-normal, the portmanteau, and proof, are contradictory concepts. Paranormal and supernatural are faith positions.
Television programmes are in a difficult position because the default, most accurate, response is that the story is not true. Truth is not binary in such circumstances and a witness, or witnesses, may be accurately reporting what they saw but not how or why they saw what they saw. If a person observes a magic trick and they do not know it's a magic trick they may well insist what they saw wasn't a magic trick.
Deception, in similar circumstances, is like magicians who won't admit it's a trick. Whether that's the television show, or the subject of the television show.
I like ghost stories and I like stories about the unexplained. I don't believe it but I enjoy the stories. Dr David Gower and his wife Rose-Mary moved into Penyffordd Farm in 1997 and shortly after claimed to have experienced unexplained events. The main claims made during the television show are:
While finding out a bit more I read:
I don't like debunking pieces or personal attacks on people. I don't want to cherry pick to make things look better or worse than they are. In all likelihood the story is a hoax. The physical evidence could be recreated by someone with a relatively basic knowledge of chemistry - David Gower, Dr David Gower, the husband, has a Bachelor of Education (BEd) in Chemistry, a Masters, and a PhD in Chemical education. Something as simple as silver-nitrate solution or various photosensitive chemicals could be used to create marks in stone that appear and disappear. There is no proof he, or his wife, used such chemicals, there is also no proof they didn't.
The night before the Brexit referendum result I had a dream about the result and it was so realistic that when I awoke the next day I was doubly disappointed that it didn't match my dream. I mention this as an example of how things that are happening can affect our subconscious thoughts. I'm not convinced of night-time apparitions because, given things like sleep paralysis, our brains are capable of weaving in subconscious and conscious biases. To that extent night hauntings are real, but not supernatural. The one I often get, when I'm very tired and sleep on my back, is the door bell or phone ringing loud enough that I run down stairs to find out there is nobody there and the phone hasn't been ringing. Quite real but also totally wrong.
The source of the story of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the field next to the house was a local newspaper whom received a letter from a couple called Michael Dooley and Concepta Dooley. Whom nobody tracked down. Concepta is Latin for conception. One of the claims made in the recent BBC programme was that there is no way that the Gowers could have had anything to do with the Virgin Mary story because they say they weren't living in the property at the time. In the journal article it says the story was published in March 1997 and the Gowers moved into the house in February 1997, and prior to that they lived in an adjacent cottage. It very much sounds like a local newspaper got an unverified letter and printed the legend. Which, in fairness, is pretty funny. Here's a quote from the journal:
On 7th March 1997 the lead article in the local weekly Mold & Buckley Chronicle reported that the newspaper had received a letter from an Irish couple, Michael and Concepta Dooley, who were on a walking holiday in North Wales. The letter described how, while walking along a lane (next to the Gowers' home), they stopped by a gate to admire the view. They then saw what seemed to be an apparition of "Our Lady" at the top of the field. They were both overcome by a sense of awe, peace and serenity. Mr Dooley claims in the letter to have been cured of a painful frozen shoulder while his wife's cataract is also healing. Rose-Mary was interviewed by the newspaper and is reported to have remembered seeing the couple in the lane. She says they were in their late 50s or early 60s, seemed excited, but said nothing about their experience. Rose-Mary is also quoted as stating "I think it's all silly".
On 11th March 1997, a three-page hand-written letter addressed to "The Lady with the Labrador Dog" and signed "M & C Dooley" was forwarded from Wrexham to the Gowers. Dated March 9th, the letter gives the writers' address simply as "London", where they were visiting. It confirmed their sighting and adds that "we revisited the field behind the bungalow on Monday March 3 and while we did not see 'Our Lady' again we had a great sense of peace".
In March 1997, Rose-Mary took a series of 35mm photographs of the house, garden, field (in which the vision had been seen) and the metal barn that is just beyond the field gate. One photograph appeared to show a large face in the far window of the barn (Fig. 1). On 1st June 1997, this photograph appeared in the Wales on Sunday newspaper, under the headline: "Is this the face of Jesus' mother?" The article also reports that the original name of the bungalow (built c. 1959) was "Santa Maria". On 17th May 1997, Rose-Mary says that she saw a white hazy figure standing alongside one of her daughters who had climbed to the top of the field with a friend. The two young women then ran down to say that they had sensed a presence. Also around this time, a number of visitors began turning up at the site to lay flowers and pray. On 8th June 1997, the News of the World ran an article: "Virgin Mary 'Cures' sick holiday makers". In November 1997, an account of the visions and cures also appeared in The Paranormal Review (Gower, 1997). Over the next year, several other newspaper articles appeared describing these religious visions.
In the summers of 1997 and 1998, the field became in Rose-Mary's words "a mini Lourdes". In response to the number of visitors, the Gowers decided to set aside a small strip of land in front of the gate as a "sacred site" (under the terms of the millennium Sacred Land Project established by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Prince Philip). A sign posted at the gate now welcomes those who wish quietly to pray or meditate outside the field.
I do not speak Spanish. During the Covid-19 lockdowns I made a semi-serious attempt to translate Miguel de Cervante's Don Quixote - a brilliant book in any language - from Spanish to English. Which I did page by page. It was quite hard work and the quality of my translation was probably not very good and the joke itself was that translating Don Quixote that way was itself a Quixotic venture. As it happens it was fun and I learnt a great deal as I went. So not an entirely wasted venture. I got three or four chapters in.
But, I suppose the point I'm making, if I were to etch, sometimes archaic, Spanish words into things, not speaking Spanish, or English sometimes, would not be proof I didn't do it. Or that I'm haunted by a Mexican in a Sombrero.
All of the other claims are just that. There is no way to prove or disprove them other than the balance of probability strongly implying it's a hoax. Even the son John-Paul purportedly being incapable of making such stories up. I have a nephew who has fairly severe learning disabilities but has a fairly well developed sense of humour and imagination. Given prompting he'd find playing tricks on people hilarious. I can't say that about John-Paul because I don't know him but I do know people with learning disabilities are people too with much of the same complexities and humour.
The gravestone is somewhat interesting but doesn't look old. I have been to a few cemeteries in the UK that are a couple of centuries, or more, old and almost universally things look more worn that that tombstone. It could have been buried and the stone avoided weathering. It is mentioned in the journal article:
The words "Jane", "Jones", the number 15, and the date 1778, which were found in close proximity on the fireplace, directly match words on a loose tombstone that leans against the outside front wall of the house. The origins of the tombstone are unknown, but its presence at the house predates the Gowers' occupancy (as shown by the original estate agents' photograph). The tombstone reads "Jane Jones / AGED 15 / 1778".
The BBC show implied that maybe the haunting started as a result of moving the gravestone. On the Monk Updates page from MoldWeb:
Update as at January 2004
After a BBC Radio Wales programme on Sunday December 28th featuring our haunted house, we had a visit from a gentleman called David Richardson. He had heard the broadcast and wanted us to know that it was he who dug up our tombstone about twenty years ago.
Mr Richardson, of Leeswood, was doing some excavation work for the then owner of Penyffordd Farm. It was while he was using his JCB digger on what is now our top lawn that he found the stone bearing the inscription Jane Jones Aged 15 1778. He did not wish to dig any further for fear of disinterring her bones!
This ties in with a theory that in days gone by, if people were snowed in during a hard winter, and there was a death in the family, the body would be buried in the garden if it were not possible to get it to the graveyard.
I am firmly of the opinion that if Jane Jones is indeed buried under our lawn, she should be left to rest in peace.
Rose-Mary Gower
So there is potential explanation. If accurate the tombstone has was buried and had been above ground since approximately 1976. So potentially an interesting piece of social history but unlikely to be post hoc ergo propter hoc, aside from the unlikelihood of a supernatural haunting. Nobody contacted David Richardson.
The TV programme was imbued with all of the spooky music and accoutrements of modern treatments of the supernatural. Somewhere between the excellent, for many of the wrong reasons, Most Haunted or Ghost Adventures, and a serious documentary programme. It was presented as being spine tingling. The only problem is, aside from the anecdotal nature of the claims themselves, the family regarded the monk as friendly as embodied in the title of a piece called "Friendly monk leaves carvings!" which contains an account of a "True Welsh Ghost Story" by Rose-Mary Gower. Or "Ghost Becomes Part of the Family" from BBC Wales. The Rentaghost theme tune would have been appropriate.
The Gowers seem smart and funny and I think regardless of the veracity of the story it's very funny. I hope Hollywood takes the story and produces something hilarious, because I think it's actually a story of joy and media farce rather than a story of anything tragic or supernatural. The BBC 3 show made it funnier. I think it's best to end this on quote from North Wales Live:
This takes the biscuit
A WOMAN says it's crunch time for a phantom which she claims has been making a habit of haunting her family.
Rachel Barrows, North Wales Live, 25 AUG 2006
A WOMAN says it's crunch time for a phantom which she claims has been making a habit of haunting her family.
Rose-Mary Gower from Penyffordd Farm in Treuddyn opened a packet of Garibaldi biscuits and discovered an image of a monk - complete with cross on his chest - embedded on the snack. The 56-year-old grandmother bought the biscuits from Tesco in Mold to stave-off her chocolate cravings.
'Last Sunday I had made a cup of tea and got the packet of biscuits out of the cupboard. I opened them and was just about to put it in my mouth when I spotted the strange image,' said Rose-Mary.
A spokesperson for Tesco said: 'We usually sell a lot of hot cross buns but this really takes the biscuit!'
...
Lol.
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