Mum says living in UK’s ‘most exorcised home’ tore family apart and ‘destroyed’ husband

Liz Rich moved into Heol Fanog, an old farmhouse in south Wales, with her husband to raise their family but they began seeing ghostly figures and experiencing terrifying supernatural phenomena

A mum spent seven spooky years plagued by supernatural events in a terrifying farmhouse dubbed “Britain’s most exorcised home”.

Liz Rich claims she was confronted by a menacing hooded figure and was left fearing for her life during the hauntings.

She and husband Bill moved into Heol Fanog, an isolated farmhouse near the Brecon Beacons, south Wales, in 1989 to bring up their family, she told the Daily Star.

But the couple and their young children were quickly confronted by a series of sinister paranormal oddities including energy surges, dead farm animals, and sightings of two spirits – an old woman who would watch the children play and a terrifying hooded figure without a face.

Seeking solace in the church, the house nicknamed Hellfire Farm was exorcised repeatedly – Liz reckons “hundreds of times” – but still the problems lingered. Liz herself says she was even possessed in the kitchen of the property.

Liz, now 63, said: “If you’ve never experienced anything like this, it must sound like we’re making it up – but none of it was made up, none of it.

“It was so insidious and so gradual that we adapted to it.

“You could sense something before the real horrors came. Sometimes the house would level out but then something would happen and it would become more claustrophobic and more oppressive like an energy building up.

“We were living in an unreality. When you came home, you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Liz’s experiences were featured in a 1996 book by Mark Chadbourn named Testimony and a new BBC podcast, The Witch Farm.

In these, Liz talks about Hoel Fanog’s long association with witchcraft and magic.

She described living there as like “being in a bubble”.

She continued: “I would always try to look for answers. But the problem is when something happens that you can’t find a logical explanation for.

“How can you be standing looking at a door with your eyes and it closes and makes a slamming noise? How can an oil radiator heat itself up when there’s no oil in the tank? That’s when I thought there was a serious problem.”

Liz and Bill’s young children, Ben and Becca, began to see an old woman sitting in the corner of their nursery, watching them play.

And it wasn’t just the children who were affected. Liz also saw the woman through a window in the house, before she began to feel a second, more sinister presence in Heol Fanog.

One passageway in the home became the focal point for the problems and it was there that Liz was confronted by a faceless shadowy seven-foot figure.

“It was menacing, strong and sure of itself,” Liz said.

“It didn’t have a face but it was in the form of a kind of human. I don’t think it was a ghost but it was something evil, something that had been around for a long, long time.”

Bill, who separated from Liz and died before the release of The Witch Farm, cut himself off and spent hours locked away in his studio.

Liz said: “Bill was obsessed – or possessed.

“He was so involved and fascinated by this stuff. It got to his brain, he got so involved and enthralled with it. He went from being a really alive, good-looking guy to being a depressive alcoholic submerged in darkness.

“The house ate away at his soul, it took away his self-respect. He was drinking more, he was grumpy and he became someone who was rotten from the inside out. It eventually destroyed him.”