A prequel to ''The Ghost of Gladstone villa'' The property was named after the former Prime Minister William Gladstone, he died in 1898.
The the Gladstone property dates back to the 1900's as shown in a map of former mining town of Bargoed of that year and it still stands in Cardiff road.
Henry Jones and his family lived there during the first world war, they were a family of 14 and Gladstone villa was large enough to accommodate them all.
Henry's son Albert served in the war and was taken prisoner in Germany but was released in 1917.
Michael and Evelyn Kimmiett lived at Gladstone villa in the 1920's, they were married in 1923, their son Elvin Rowland's Kimmiett was born there in February 1924 but he died on Thursday the 29th of May, just four months old!
His funeral took place at Bedwellty church on Monday the 2 June 1924, it was a strictly private affair as stated in the Cardiff newspaper of that year.
The Williams family lived there in the 1940's, Hugh and wife Gwen, their son Robert was born there on the 8th of March 1946, they moved out to the Grove in 1950.
The Mills family lived there at some point, Edgar Mills said Gladstone villa was haunted, telling his son Kevin that it was a creepy place!
He told about the time he heard rhythmic tapping on the door and the family would go and investigate, this maybe why Gladstone villa was known in town to be haunted, about the legend of a tunnel that lead from Cardiff road to other villages, a manor house and a church.
My family moved to Gladstone villa in 1960 from Frances street, they were William and Rita Higgs, Bill to his family and friends,
The family made no such claims that Gladstone villa was haunted (Until just after I was born).
They had their only daughter Caroline, she was ten years old at the time and attending Bargoed north school.
Bill and Rita were my maternal grandparents and their daughter is my mother, she left school in 1965 and got a job at the bake house in Baldwin street, Bargoed, since demolished!
There she met my dad William Douglas Dexter (1947-1991), they dated for three years and married on April 1st 1968.
I was born in August 1969 and that's when my mother said that the paranormal activity started, it may have remained dormant after the Mills family left and started again after I was born.
She said it all started off quietly with tapping, then it gradually increased to a much larger scale, something jumping from the attic and it eventually occupied the main bedroom.
The activity continued for nine years solid, from 1969 to the Summer of 1978 we experienced phenomena that defied logic, like electrical cables being pulled by unseen forces, footsteps heard in the main bedroom, the occasional sighting but very rare, though on at least two occasions my mother saw the full solid figure of a monk and another time during the day she saw the face of an elderly man popping his heard through the open door from the hallway.
There was also claims of a crying baby in the bedroom, I never heard this at the time so did didn't make sense until I learned that a baby died there in 1924.
We moved from there in the Summer of 1978, to Sycamore Court, an estate in Bargoed and we gained some sort of normality.
Gladstone villa was converted to 'Redz Parc hotel' in the 1980's but was closed in 2014 and is now privately owned by Mr. Mills with rumours that it's planned to be converted into flats.
On further research, I found that Evelyn Kimmiett died in 1970! Not long after I was born!, maybe her ghost returned and thought I was her son Elvin?
Many years later a couple of mediums claimed to have picked up the spirit of the monk and an old lady, maybe this is Mrs Kimmiett who still mourns baby Elvin.
To this day, I do not know who the old man was my mother saw, maybe it was Edgar Mills or Henry Jones.
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