New book explores haunted history of Welsh hilltop town

Ghostly Tales of Llantrisant is a new book published by local historian Dean Powell who has spent decades researching the story of the ancient settlement.

What do you know of the witch condemned to eternal purgatory who haunts the lonely pathways in search of her family crypt? Or the workhouse warden whose footsteps can still be heard from the upper rooms of Model House Craft & Design Centre?

What of the murdered landlord whose skeleton was discovered after two centuries, and the town’s blacksmith bludgeoned to death by a lunatic wife? Have you heard of the vicious brothel owner’s poltergeist, the phantom soldier and his undiscovered treasure, or the drowned widow who appears on Llantrisant Common on a stormy night?

Pieced together from history books, newspaper reports, archive material and interviews with local residents, the book explores tales of paranormal occurrences in Llantrisant’s buildings.

It turns the spotlight on the spirit of the child whose vacant eyes look across the Bull Ring from a shop window, and the presence of the murdered farmer’s son as you walk the steep slope to the Billy Wynt.

From witches and spirits to murders and plagues, this volume of more than fifty blood-curdling stories tells the dark and grisly history of Llantrisant.

Chilling

Harrowing nightmares are born in a community where so much brutality, cruelty, and bloodthirsty battles terrified generations with chilling stories of the supernatural.

Born and raised in Llantrisant, author Dean Powell, said, “Age-old tales of pagan sacrifice, druids, blood-drenched altar stones and witchcraft are all around us and yet this is the first time a book exploring the darker history of the town has been published.

Dean was brought up hearing stories of soldiers slaughtered in the castle, the doomed king imprisoned in its foul dungeon and how the troubled souls of executed criminals haunt the site of the deathly gallows.

“We knew the stories of the legendary longbowmen who returned victorious from the Battle of Crecy in 1346 only to die horrifically from the Black Death in a town where the souls of plague victims still cast a shadow.”

Dean launched Llantrisant Ghost Walks in 2017, which attracts several thousand people to the town every year to follow a tour of its shadowy cobbled streets and hear tales of its gruesome past.

This is his twenty first book on local Welsh history.

For further details see www.deanpowell.co.uk