Welsh UFO sightings from 1859. For sightings from other years please click HERE.
PRESS
Wednesday 9th February 1859
Aberdare
There was a rain of fish, identified as minnow by the British Museum.
John Lewis recounted: "I was getting out a piece of timber ... when I was startled by something falling all over me - down my neck, on my head, and on my back. On putting my hand down my neck I was surprised to find they were little fish. By this time I saw the whole ground covered with them. I took off my hat, the brim of which was full of them. They were jumping all about. They covered the ground in a long strip about 80 yards by 12, as we measured afterwards ... My mates and I might have gathered bucketsful of them, scraping with our hands."
Read more HERE.
PRESS
September 1859
Matthew Street, Swansea
Mr Crompton, an ex-postman, along with his wife and their two children were living in a house on Matthew Street alleged to be haunting - Tom Watkins, a butcher, used to live there, and his sister hanged herself in the house. Paranormal activity occurred and the wife claimed to have seen a figure resembling neighbours' descriptions of the deceased butcher. It culminated in the ghost giving her a message to be delivered to two people; one of whom, claimed the Swansea Herald, became angry enough to threaten her with violence.
'The very probable explanation of the matter,' stated the newspaper, 'is that, her nerves being affected by want and by domestic unhappiness, she has been under the influence of a dream.' Mrs Crompton refused to deny its reality, and hundreds of people gathered in the street hoping to see a ghost. One man dressed in a white sheet obliged and was almost arrested.
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REMARKABLE GHOST STORY. - An extraordinary account of the appearance of the ghost of a deceased butcher to the wife of an ex-postman created a great sensation in the neighbourhood of Matthew-street last week. An ex-postman named Crompton has been living with his wife and two children (one an infant) for the last two months in Matthew-street. A butcher named Tom Watkin lived in the house some years ago, and his sister hanged herself in it. Since Watkin's death the house has been reputed to be haunted. According to the statement of the Cromptons they heard strange noises in the house at night repeatedly, and now and then the bedroom door was opened by some unseen agent after the husband had closed it.
Crompton himself never saw anything, but his wife declared that she saw on several occasions a supernatural being, whom she did not know, but whom she is said by the neighbours to have distinctly and minutely described to them as to feature and clothes, so as to leave no doubt of its being the figure of the deceased butcher - a man she had never seen in the flesh. On Tuesday night the apparition was first seen, and on Thursday night, the husband being away, things came to a crisis. The woman says that on that night after she had retired to rest she heard a noise at the foot of the bed, and saw the ghost in a sitting position there. Presently he rose and glided to the side where she lay, when she exclaimed "O, God! What do you want with me?" The ghost said "I am glad that you have spoken to me, for that was my object in visiting you."
He then told her she must accompany him to the stable. She did so, and when they reached the spot he told her to put her hand in a hole in the wall. She put her hand there, but found nothing; and the ghost himself then took hold of her hand and put it in a place where she picked up something which she refuses to describe. By direction and under the influence of her spiritual visitor, she accompanied him to the side of the canal and threw what she had found in the stable into the water. He then gave her a message which was to be given to two parties and to none else; and then he left her, and he has not since troubled her. This is the woman's tale.
She was found in the morning in a very excited state, her nervous system seriously affected. Mr. Davis, surgeon, attended her for several days, and she has now recovered and has removed from the town to Llansamlet. Since the scene with the ghost she has had a private interview with the two parties to whom she had the message, and whatever be the nature of the communication she made to them it sufficed to make one of them very angry and threaten her with violence if she ever mentioned Tom Watkin's name again. The woman refuses to be convinced that she is the subject of a delusion, though the very probable explanation of the matter is that, her nerves being affected by want and by domestic unhappiness, she has been under the influence of a dream.
The story, however, when it got abroad created the most intense interest in the neighbourhood. On Friday night hundreds of people collected together near the haunted house in the hope of seeing the ghost. Perhaps it is not necessary to say that they were disappointed. Some time after midnight a man dressed in a white sheet walked up Matthew-street and caused some temporary alarm amongst the remaining congregation of would-be ghost-seers; but he nearly fell into the clutches of the police, and so the imposition was at and end. - Swansea Herald.
PRESS
November 1859
Garndiffaith
The Usk Observer of December 3rd 1859 reported:
GARNDIFFAITH. A GHOST STORY. A curious story of this description is at present in circulation in this neighbourhood relating to a nocturnal visitant, that is said to be seen occasionally wandering near and tapping at the door of a miner, at Talywain. A youth more courageous than his comrades, being determined to interrogate the ghostly intruder as to its motives for thus "making night hideous," accosted it in the language of Hamlet :—
"Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd; Be thy intents wicked or charitable; Thou com'st in such a questionable shape; That I will speak to thee."
When it replied in a somewhat similar strain:— "I am a first wife's spirit / Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night, / 'Till my false husband for my coffin pays, / Which he ne'er did: nor for our wedding dinner, / And yet another woman he has wed-the sinner! / I wonder how he dare, for shame, to show his face! / As for these debts men 'clubb'd,' the money at the Race.'
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