Paranormal editor RICHARD HOLLAND uncovers fascinating tales of ghosts haunting prehistoric monuments.

My home-town of Mold (Yr Wyddgrug) in North Wales has an archaeological claim to fame: the finding of a unique, 3,000-year old Gold Cape in 1833. Proudly on display in the British Museum alongside such superstars of antiquity as the Sutton Hoo burial mask and the Snettisham torc, the Gold Cape is the largest piece of prehistoric gold ever found in Europe.

It was discovered by road builders in a Bronze Age cairn they were robbing of stones. With it was a skeleton and hundreds of amber beads which would originally have been sewn into an elaborate cloak, long since rotted away. The cape would have been fitted round the shoulders of its owner, a chieftain or, as some suppose, a priest. I spent most of my youth in a house about 100 yards from this burial site but what makes the Mold Gold Cape even more interesting for me is that its discovery in effect proved the existence of a ghost.

For many years before the cairn was opened, it had gone by the name of Tomen-yr-Ellyllon (‘Goblin Mound’) and the field in which it stood was known as Cae Yspryd (‘Haunted Field’). The reason for this is that the mound and surrounding area was the haunt of a ghost called the Brenin yr Allt, or ‘King of the Hillside’. He was described as taking the appearance of a man of huge stature – a man who was seen to be ‘glittering and shining in gold’!

This article can be read in Paranormal Magazine issue 39

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