Couple flee house due to mystery ‘screams’
MORE than a year ago we were invited to enter what appeared to be an unremarkable house in the centre of a Carmarthenshire town.
The house is located just off a main road in Ammanford, down an alleyway, hidden away from the hustle and bustle.
But what thrust this house into the centre of a mystery was not the sounds coming from everyday life in a town centre street, but the sounds that, according to its owners, were coming from beneath.
Screaming, crying, swearing. The voices of men, women and children, apparently coming from underneath the basement.
The owners have fled, and have not been at the property they own for more than two years.
They are too afraid to go back, convinced that a criminal gang have been running a subterranean enterprise just yards beneath their kitchen.
It all started in June 2018 when Alan and Christine Tait heard strange noises while up late one evening.
The making of a latenight coffee started a chain of events that has made national news, inspired radio discussions and led to police officers attending the house.
Mr and Mrs Tait started to record what they could hear.
“It was like a flushing noise that I heard first,” said Mrs Tait, “then we could hear a machine running, and we started to record all over the house, picking up the sounds of chains, a motorbike starting, and people screaming.”
A year later, in June 2019, we sent a reporter to the house to investigate. The owners did not go with him, preferring instead to stay well clear. They sent us a key and our reporter made his way inside.
A recording device (an iphone) was placed next to a small entrance to the basement and left to run for several hours. It did not pick up anything sinister, only the sounds of the reporter leaving the house to head to the shop.
However, Mr and Mrs Tait had already at that point captured recordings taken further down, or nearer to the habitat of the “serious criminal gang” who they believe reside underground.
Those are the recordings that have now been listened to by thousands of people since the story was covered and subsequently picked up by national news outlets more than a year ago.
So what has happened since then to Mr and Mrs Tait?
They left the house in June 2018 and now are in the North of England, living in a mobile home.
They continue to travel around, moving from place to place, trying to raise awareness of what they believe is going on in Ammanford.
“We have a number of supporters who have been in touch with us, and one has been to the house several times and made hours and hours of recordings which also picked up similar noises,” said Mr Tait.
“It has to be the case (that there are people underneath the house) if I picked up the noises in 2018 and someone else, totally independently, picked up similar noises a year later and 18 months later.”
Since last summer, Mr Tait has appeared on an online radio channel called HPANWO radio, which looks at and discusses, among other things, government coverups, ghosts, UFOS and paranormal
Mr Tait does not believe the goings-on in Ammanford come from another world or stem from some paranormal beings; it’s something much closer to home, something much more real than that.
“What we want is for people to be serious about it,” he said, “and for the right people to investigate it properly.”
Dyfed-powys Police sent officers to the property in November 2018, although they did not go inside.
They have also listened to one of the recordings captured at the house and, according to Mr Tait, “dismissed it”.
“They said that they were ‘ordinary noises’ that could have come from around the house. They also said that we could have recorded them off the TV – why would we do that, and then leave our home? Anybody could just record noises from the TV.”
Nevertheless, Mr Tait says he and his wife are unlikely ever to return to the property they once called home.
They don’t even want to rent it out to anyone and earn some income from it because they don’t deem it safe.
“To our minds it’s a matter investigations. of working out what’s going on before we would even think of going back.
“If it’s a gang (that is operating under the house), then we will never go back. As for selling the house in the future, providing we make everyone aware of what has been going on then it will be up to whoever wanted to buy it.”
The Taits have set up an online petition “in desperation”, because they have sent the recordings to everyone they can think of and because they insist that the matter still requires an “urgent and full investigation”.
“We’ve sent details to the police and to Crimewatch, but it never goes anywhere,” said a frustrated Mr Tait.
“We have two concerns: why isn’t it being investigated properly? And our main concern is the screaming. If there are people down there they are obviously really struggling. There has to be a reason for the noises.”
The police are satisfied that nothing of interest lies within, or under, the seemingly unremarkable house.
The Taits, however, remain convinced, and will not stop – or even contemplate a return – until they get to the bottom of what lies beneath.