This is a really insightful and interesting thread. Thanks all who contributed, especially treesparrow for keeping up with all things Bridgend. I also found the personal descriptions of the area made by Skipling, Truthseeker, Alana, and Gertrudes very interesting as well.
In some ways the area reminds me a bit of how Keel described Point Pleasant, WV in the Mothman Prophecies. As Woodsman related, there's even an old underground munitions storage area, just like the TNT area was used for munition storage in Point Pleasant. It seems like both places were (and in the case of Bridgend continue to be) a magnet for high strangeness, although for a slightly ways.
The suicides are another thing. Yes, these young people appear to be related as in being a chain of individuals who had odd connections to each other, but it doesn't appear like they were trying to form a suicide pact. This Vanity Fair article (don't think I saw it mentioned yet) covers some of the relationships and is pretty good as far as covering the suicides story:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/02/wales-suicides200902?currentPage=1
As far as the cause of these sucides, I think there probably is something beyond the normal explanations going on here. Even the wifi/cell tower argument doesn't explain how so many connected people could come to take their lives. I think that EMF signals are probably contributing to the problem, but this is the case all over. It might be that they are amplifying something that is already latent in the area or the people to begin with. But the real cause probably goes beyond all this, and might fall into the hyperdimensional category.
Regarding UFO strangeness in the area, Nick Pope has named South Wales as the UK's 7th most active location for unsolved UFO cases (based on military records apparently):
_http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/science/ufo.php
I wouldn't put too much stock in this number because they appeared to be highly selective with what UFO cases they chose. So the numbers might be somewhat meaningless in terms of rank. Remember Keel stated that UFO hotspots tended to be places where certain magnetic anomalies existed. This might go along with what the C's said too:
(A**) What about these suicides in Bridgend, Wales? What's going on there?
A: Location amplifies the kinds of waves mentioned earlier leading to rapid disintegration.
Q: (L) So it's like underground water, or electromagnetic, or some kind of power point or something like that?
A: Yes
One thing that I think is really interesting - and I only happened upon this connection coincidentally - is something Laura wrote in SHOTW:
[quote author=SHOTW p266]Stones may have another interesting property that deserves serious research. In
1982, Tafter, the landlord at the
Prince of Wales Inn at Kenfig in Mid-Glamorgan,
Wales, complained of the sound of organ music and voices keeping him awake at
night. To investigate, John Marke, an electrical engineer, and Allan Jenkins, an
industrial chemist, connected electrodes to the wall of the pub after closing time
one night. They fed 20,000 volts across the electrodes and locked tape recorders in
the room for four hours. When the tapes were analyzed, they had succeeded in
taping voices speaking in old Welsh, organ music, and a ticking clock.
Interestingly, there was no clock in the room at the time. It has been suggested that
the stones in the wall contained substances similar to those found in modern
recording tape.[/quote]
Well, it just so happens that the Prince of Wales Inn is located in Bridgend. So here is a possible connection to historical high strangeness in Bridgend, OSIT.
Actually, Laura's synopsis in SHOTW of T.C. Lethbridge's experiences that he recounted in his book
Power of the Pendulum might explain some of the happenings in this area. Lethbridge talked about walking through certain places that had a dreadful or frightening vibe to them. Often these were places where a person had committed suicide in the past or would commit such an act in the future.
I wonder if anybody has access to maps of magnetic anomalies in the South Wales area? I couldn't find much online, only some websites willing to sell hard-copy maps. There are also global magnetic anomalies maps which you can sort-of zoom in on the UK area, but the granularity is too large to see if there might be anything strange about Bridgend itself. This may or may not be a fruitful area of research.
