I first heard about the case through a small piece in The Independent newspaper about the baffling power drain, which had been investigated by the local electricity company and independent experts. As a journalist, I was intrigued enough to get in touch with Bill for a follow-up. I wasn’t prepared for what I found. The ruined medieval Manor House in the garden with its private cemetery. (c) Elizabeth Udall Mark Chadbourn is an English fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and horror author with more than a dozen novels (and one non-fiction book) published around the world.

Love and Death at the End of the World (in The Last Continent, New Tales of Zothique, edited by John Pelan, Shadowlands Press)

All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate. But at its heart it is a story of the supernatural. Heol Fanog could be the most haunted house in Britain. That would be frightening enough, but there is more. Much more. The people who give their testimonies in this book will unveil one of the most startling cases of the paranormal ever to be documented, a case which starts with a haunting and carries on into the shadows. Its final destination is somewhere very dark and terrible. Bill Rich was haunted by terrifying demons. Some that manifested in his isolated home, as I detailed in my non-fiction book Testimony. And some that were firmly embedded in his psyche, as he always admitted. Yet if only we could be sure it wasn’t our extremely powerful imagination playing with us. If only those scientists would tell us we were right all along and then we could stop doubting and questioning and feeling uncomfortable. If only we could be sure…

She says, “Bill’s paintings have never been exhibited, which I feel is sad, as he was an unusually talented artist. During his life he dedicated his time to painting what he described as primitive surreal art. Most of his ideas came from dreams or interpretations of what was happening around him. Each painting holds immense emotion and visual stories. When the artist Bill Rich and his wife Liz moved into Heol Fanog with their young family it was supposed to be an idyllic hideaway. Within weeks they were afflicted by a series of inexplicable events, including a massive power drain that took their electricity bills to industrial levels.The Ones We Leave Behind (in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror vol 18, edited by Stephen Jones, Carroll & Graf) I am a writer of fiction. I am comfortable with creating the fantastic in my head. I am also, by trade, a journalist, steeped in that profession’s culture of cynicism, used to operating in that grey, mundane world where everything has a rational explanation. So when I first encountered the Rich family and Heol Fanog, their picturesque house deep in the Welsh countryside, I approached their tale with a healthy scepticism. Yes, strange, inexplicable things did happen in the world. But their story was too unbelievable – too terrifying – to be true. The truly horrifying, on a spiritual level, only happens in novels. One of the most striking things about reading Testimony is the moment you realise that the Riches are just normal people. They have their share of ups and downs in life, but then doesn’t everybody? They are just trying to live their lives the best way that they can, yet something is causing them constant grief. The effects of the events they experience build into quite a harrowing account. Reading about all the things that happened to them did make me wonder if I would have been able to cope in their place. I suspect the answer would have been a resounding no.