Wrexham Vicar on banishing spirits from homes, meeting Rob and Ryan and more

With Halloween fast approaching, we thought it was a good time to go and visit Dr Jason Bray, vicar of Wrexham's St Giles' Church, to hear about his ghostly enocunters.

Last year, he released a book called Deliverance, which detailed his time as a deliverance minister helping those who feel they may be haunted, cursed or possessed.

Earlier this week, reporter Arron Evans went to St Giles to meet Rev Bray to discuss his unique side job, as well as how the role of the church has changed down the years and his appearance on the Welcome to Wrexham series.

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Rev Bray, originally from Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, was ordained 25 years ago.

He has been based in Wrexham for nearly eight years by now.

Asked about how he thinks the role of St Giles' has changed down the years, he tells me that the church has 'bucked the trend' in terms of the overall gloomy picture for churches around the UK.

Rev Bray said: "It feels like very much part of the community. One of the things we've been trying to do at St Giles is to enhance the profile in various ways such as a series of festivals - we had the Angel Festival and that saw around 18,000 people come in to see it.

"What we've tried to do is not only build visitor capacity, but also build congregation capacity, so we're actually a growing church. On a Sunday, we have three services, one at eight o'clock which is quite traditional, one at half-past nine - which is very untraditional and we'll have around 60 people of all ages in for that - and then the 11 o clock service you'd expect.

PIC: Wrexham's St Giles' Church.

"Those services are growing and St Giles is bucking the trend. A lot of churches are not doing quite so well, they haven't really recovered from Covid. We've actually come out of Covid with around the same number of people we went in with."

Our next topic of discussion brought us to the deliverance services (banishing spirits from homes) which Rev Bray has become synonymous with over the years.

He tells me the journey all began when the house he and his family moved into was cold and never seemed to get any warmer. It was particularly cold around the cot of his then baby boy, Tom.

He re-calls: "It was dark and odd and there was no reason for it to be cold. You would sit on the stairs and there would be this whopping big draught - it just never warmed up.

"The cold spot next to the cot was so cold, it was like walking into an ice box. My wife Laura, whose very level-headed, told me she thought there was something wrong with this place.

"Around the same time, I went to the bathroom just before going to bed and just as I was about to go out of the door, I just got this impression that there was something on the otherside of the door wearing a wooden mask.

"Opened the bathroom door and there was nobody there, I ran to bed and threw the duvet over me and my wife said 'you look like you've seen a ghost'. 

PIC: Vicar of St Giles' Church Rev Jason Bray.

"Soon after, my boss at the time (Jeremy Winstone) came around, splashed holy water around, said some prayers - some of them in Latin - and suddenly the house became so much warmer."

This led to Rev Bray's fascination with deliverance, he added: "Basically, I thought 'there's something to this'. I've done quite a few interesting cases by now.

"I spoke to my Bishop (when he first started) and I went on training. I've been doing it about 25 years.

"I'm part of a team of eight people across the Diocese of St Asaph (covering from Llandudno to Newtown) who carry out deliverances. We tend to go out in pairs and we do about 12 cases a year."

Rev Bray re-calls a 'classic' case of a woman called Lucy's house (name has been changed for privacy reasons) where she had seen and elderly lady stood on her staircase. You can view our Facebook video on that here.

If you have watched the popular Welcome to Wrexham series, then you will most likely be with familiar with Rev Bray and what they call his 'exorcisms' on the show.

Although that series mainly follows the takeover of Wrexham AFC by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, it also shines a spotlight on members of the community.

Talking about meeting Rob and Ryan, Rev Bray says: "While we were talking, we'd have girls going past screaming 'Ryan, we love you!' and he would be remarkably apologetic for that. Ryan is obviously a Canadian who are famously polite and you could see that in him, Rob was a bit sharper.

"I gave them both a signed copy of my book each and so I had that weird experience of encountering two Hollywood A-listers and they came away with my signature. I didn't get theirs!"

Rev Bray adds that he has had people come from afar away as British Columbia to visit the church as a result of it appearing on the show.