Rhymney House Hotel, Tredegar - November 2005

Alison and myself arrived just after 10pm to find that Evan was already familiarising himself with a local Ale. The bar manager, Rob, introduced himself to us and showed us upstairs. He was allowing us to use a room that was a sort of 'flat' within the building. In fact, Rob, couldn't have been more helpful and really put himself out to assist us during the night - he also allowed us free rein to go where we wanted and move stuff around as we wished. He gave us a tour of the two upper floors of the building, where the bedrooms were (which fortunately were deserted of living guests the night we stayed). The previous owners had drastically altered the building to make it into a hotel - it is thought to have started out as a Hunting Lodge. The adjacent conservatory is probably near the site of a foundry used during the Industrial Revolution, but which has long since disappeared.

Whilst the pub patrons, together with Evan, were finishing off their drinks downstairs, Alison and myself set up a camera and a trigger object experiment (which didn't move all night) in a spooky-feeling corridor. While inspecting the two upper floors Alison suddenly got a whiff of perfume in room 10, though this could have been from a previous guest. A stronger smell of perfume on the first-floor landing was eventually tracked down to a plug-in air freshener, but none were found in the other room. Evan joined us and we did some short vigils upstairs.

 Once the area was cleared downstairs we went down and carried out further short vigils in the bars, dining room and conservatory, all of which seemed quiet. Alison felt an association with the name "Thomas" in the back bar and that "Something's Wrong" in the conservatory. We then headed down to be amongst the barrels in the cellar where Alison felt there was an uncomfortable feeling at the bottom of the stairs and the video picked up a light ‘orb’ apparently flashing across the camera - but with it being a warmish cellar this could have been an insect. We then returned upstairs where I think we all agreed there were a couple of rather odd-feeling areas. One was the corridor to the Fire Exit and adjacent room (Room 5) on the first floor, which felt like they were probably all part of a single room in the original building layout, and the second was the landing at the top of the stairs on the second floor. During the early and later parts of the night we carried out filmed vigils in these areas and in some of the other room, with us inviting Rob to join us in the later ones.

As it got past 4:20am Rob told us of some of the tales associated with the building. Shortly after they purchased the building, a sudden mysterious bang appearing to emanate from an empty room on the first floor seems to have initially alerted Rob and his wife (who is a 'sensitive') to a possible ghostly presence. In addition, one of the patrons, who always sits in the same seat, has reported frequently seeing faces peering in through a window in the back bar; though the fact that he is a heavy drinker and the flickering of the fire in that room could have some effect on these as they don't appear to have been seen by anyone else. What was more compelling, was the story of a child observing men in tall hats (as there would have been in the 19th century) in one of the rooms who appeared to walk through a wall. Before leaving, at about 5:30am, we thanked Rob for his excellent assistance and fascinating stories about the place - it really is nice to go to a place were the person really is interested in any possible paranormal events.

Nothing of any note was picked up on this occasion - though it would have been interesting to have had a 'sensitive' with us (especially in those areas that felt a bit odd, as then their findings could be compared with other groups. But we were made to feel very welcome and learnt a lot about the place, not to mention the previous owner's rather dodgy construction techniques. After we left it suddenly occurred to us that we had not tidied up the trigger object experiment - we wonder what the cleaning lady thought when she found a model of the Eiffel Tower covered with flour on a table!

A report on a further visit to the Rhymney House Hotel in 2007 can be seen here.