'I didn't believe in ghosts until I bought my castle, now I boss them around'

'I didn't believe in ghosts until I bought my castle, now I boss them around' Mok O'Keefe needed a friendly ghost to tell him how to control the rest A man who 'lost everything' when his brother and father died within days of each other and his mother fell seriously ill, leading to him having to quit his job and his home, ended up meeting the love of his life and moving to a castle with a bunch of ghosts. Mok O’Keeffe was living in London in 2010 when his world fell apart. “I lost my entire family within two years,” he said. “My brother Andrew died at the age of 44, my father died the day after his funeral. My mother lost her full mental capacity, I'd lost my job and couldn't afford my house, so I sold it under duress. “I was living on £20 a week. It was awful.” Mok, 56, says it was the toughest time of his life. Andrew had asked Mok to help bring up his three nieces with his sister-in-law, so he threw himself into family life in his forties. “My mother went into a care facility around the corner. I was doing school runs, seeing my mother in the morning and in the evening, and trying to start a business. I was in a terrible way,” he said. Andrew used the savings he had to buy a small cottage in Gloucestershire, where he unexpectedly met Joe. “Life is a journey, and if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met Joe. Or Gladys,” Mok said. “I met Joe in a little village just near Highgrove, where King Charles lives. I thought I was the only gay in the village. What was the likelihood I would meet a man, fall in love and marry him?” The couple moved to Wales five years ago, so Joe could be nearer his family, where for £900,000 they bought “a baby castle” - a five-bedroom home with Elizabethan roots, a turret and a title near Abergavenny. Now the baronial Lord of Glenbach, Mok sees himself as the custodian of a building with a rich and wonderful history, and he posts about his experiences on YouTube and Instagram as @Lifewithmok. Mok said: “The previous owner said to me: ‘This house is haunted.’ She told me she’d been lifted and carried down the stairs. I said: 'I don't believe in that nonsense.' But I do now." Putting his doubts to one side, when Mok moved in, he told the ghosts that he was happy to share the house with them, but they must leave him alone. And they did, for a few months. But then he started experiencing visitations - moving figures and lights flickering on and off. Delving into his “baby castle's” past, he found out it had a sinister history. Hundreds of years before, people were taken to what is now known as Wales' most haunted pub - the Skirrid Mountain Inn - for execution, and the night before they were hanged, they would visit what is now Mok's house, sleeping in what is his bedroom. Mok dismissed this until around a year after he moved in, when he started hearing footsteps going up the stairs that were so loud they would wake him up. And unexplained things would happen. He would leave his yoga mat on the floor only to find it rolled up and tucked away when he wasn't looking. Shadowy figures would cross his path, which he assumed was Joe until he found him in another room, and his schnoodle Chaucer would go crazy barking at some invisible spirit. “I learned that a lady called Gladys, the youngest of nine children, lived here into her nineties and had her ashes scattered on the cherry tree in the garden.” His neighbours say they have seen Gladys' ghostly figure roaming the grounds, although Mok hasn't. He invited local psychic Lisa to come and look around the house, and she confirmed forces were at work. After feeling pressure around her neck in Mok's bedroom, she told him about Gladys, and told Mok to take a firm hand with the ghosts. “When I told her that I had seen a figure going up the stairs, Lisa said that I had experienced a time slip, and that I had potentially seen the executioner going up the stairs to collect one of the prisoners to take them up the road. “Through Lisa, Gladys said I had to take control of the ghosts. They were misbehaving. So I had to stand in my room and say: ‘You can't come upstairs after 9.30pm.’ After that it went really quiet and they rarely bother me. “Although one night I was going to bed, I walked up the stairs, I turned around, and there were two eyes peering at me through the door of the snug. I just said to them: ‘You know you're not allowed to come upstairs. Stay down there.’ And I went to bed.” So now Mok is a firm believer in the spirit world, although it doesn't frighten him. If they play up, he just tells them to “go into the light”. “There is definitely a feel when you come in. This house has a feeling of history. There's nothing sinister. It has a beautiful energy. It's incredibly calm. It envelops you with real love. “I love being here, and I think of it almost like it's another character in my family. It's like Diana, with three of us in this marriage, and this house is a support to us. I love this house. I will be carried out of here in a box. I will have some of my ashes sprinkled on top of Gladys' in the old cherry tree that she planted as a child,” he adds.