Spook tale 1

CATHEDRAL Close in Llandaff, Cardiff, has a spooky reputation, with ghost-hunters and bloggers who write about the supernatural holding it in high regard.

And, whether you’re a believer or not, there’s a ghoulish story that goes with the street that was once known as the “road of the dead”.

When Llandaff was a village in its own right, rather than part of the wider city of Cardiff, the road that runs along the side of the cathedral was given that rather morbid title.

It’s claimed the location was used for carrying dead bodies along the road, which previously ended at the River Taff.

Once the bodies had been carried down the “road of the dead”, they’d be buried at the now-abandoned and overgrown graveyard near the river.

The spot is apparently known for ghostly “young kids playing, laughing and singing in the area... linked to mass deaths of children during the 1800s”.

It is claimed the mass deaths of children were linked to the city’s 19th-century cholera outbreak.

Historian Dr Madeleine Gray has confirmed the disease was prevalent, but argues that it seems strange the stories of ghostly youngsters were linked to the cholera outbreak since it took the lives of both children and adults.

She also added that Llandaff probably wouldn’t be the best place for cholera death-related ghosts if such a thing were to exist.

Dr Gray said: “Cardiff had a series of cholera outbreaks, the worst being 1849.

“Looking at the map, the cholera graveyard was that area between St David’s Way and Hills Street, pretty much where Debenhams is.

“They removed more than

300 bodies in the late 1970s when they were building the St David’s Centre.”

Perhaps the eerie road to the graveyard was spooky enough to give people the creeps – and the ghost story developed from there.