Carmarthen’s haunted tour returns

CARMARTHEN’S famous award-winning haunted history tour has begun a new season just in time for the Easter holidays.

The Creepy Carmarthen Tour explores Wales’ oldest town’s “horrible history”, including grisly murders and executions, as well as bizarre events from times past including ghost stories and other unusual goings on.

Tour guide Nick Brunger said: “Things definitely go bump in the night, and sometimes they can be mischievous in the daytime too.”

Since the tour launched 3 years ago in 2013, there have been many reports of tour-goers feeling hands stroking their face, kicks on their shins and even one person claiming they felt a charm bracelet being twisted around their wrist.

The tour always ends in the Tourist Information Centre, inside the grounds of Carmarthen Castle, which used to be the haunted cells of the town’s Victorian Police Station.

Mr Brunger recalls one tour he hosted in which a woman ran out of the cell coughing and spluttering. He found the lady outside, recovering from her sudden choking fit.

“She told me that while I was talking to the group that she felt a pair of clammy hands grasp her around the throat and attempt to throttle her,” he said.

“Once she had calmed down a little she told me that, far from being frightened, she was fascinated by her ordeal. She had been on many ghost walks in the past in the hope of experiencing contact with the supernatural and this was the first time anything like it had taken place.”

Over the years, other walkers on the tour have been videoed with their arms around ghosts they claim to see, and have taken photographs of what they believe are disembodied creatures picked out in the stonework.

One strange occurrence happened on the first ever ghost tour in which a hand-operated alarm-bell rang inside the police station’s cellblock, despite being behind a locked iron gate on public view.

However, Mr Brunger experienced his own physical contact with the spirit world last autumn.

Talking of the experience, he said: “The cell was full of visitors so I was standing on the outside in the corridor. As I began talking about some of the prisoners who had been held in the gaol, I felt a strong tug on my elbow from behind.”

“Thinking that I had left one of the tourists behind, I turned around to find that the corridor was empty, with not a soul to be seen.”

Despite these spooky encounters with the spirit world, the Creepy Carmarthen Tour is open to people of all ages and Mr Brunger states that he is yet to meet a child who has been scared by the tour.

He concluded: “Maybe the ghosts are keen to avoid scaring children. Although, in my experience, youngsters say they would love to have the chance to see a phantom.”