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Bizarre flyers about 'screaming' noises and a 'beeping machine' coming from an 'illicit underground drug factory' have been posted all over Gloucestershire.

The strange notice is titled 'please help' and has been stuck to lampposts and in some areas posted through people's doors. It has been spotted in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Lydney and numerous other parts of the county.

The poster makes a series of claims about an underground drug manufacturing factory 'running somewhere underneath our house' and goes on to explain that 'secret audio recordings' have captured the sound of 'women screaming, two foreign men talking and an automated machine running and flushing'.

Several people commenting on social media posts about the posters think it's a hoax, although the website it links to suggests the author genuinely believes they have made a startling discovery.

There is no mention of any location on either the poster or the website, although the 'contact' page on the site shows pictures of a blue van apparently parked off St Oswald's Road in Gloucester, with Gillmans in the background, but without further explanation.

Several of the posters have been spotted in Longlevens and Longford and there have also been reports on Facebook of them being pushed through people's doors in the Quedgeley area. There have been numerous sightings of them reported on various other local Facebook community groups around Gloucestershire.

We have spoken to the couple behind the posters and the recordings and you can read more about their story below.

What the notice says

There are some slightly differing variations of the notice at different locations, but all carry the same claims and advertise the same website.

PLEASE HELP

In August 2018 we discovered what we think is an illicit drug manufacturing factory running somewhere underneath our house.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN CAN BE HEARD SCREAMING

We reported it to the police who first ignored us and then did not bother to listen to secret audio recordings we made.

The recordings were made secretly in a 1.5 metre shaft tunnelled into the side of our basement.

On the recordings you can hear:

Women screaming, two foreign men talking and an automated machine running and flushing, when it flushes it emits strong gas.

We do not speak the language but it appears to be one man is teaching the other how to use the machine, if you follow the link you can listen to these recordings.

Three of these machines can be heard running (some are faint in the distance). A printing press can be heard running.

In a lot of the recordings of the recordings a motorbike can be heard and sirens that sound like a police car - there are never any other traffic sounds - just the motorbike and the sirens.

There is an old WW2 sealed bunker nearby and a two-and-a-half mile stretch of road underground running from the colliery.

One microphone was left outside and someone found it. They took it away, blanked it off, and returned it. By mistake. They recorded themselves on the way back.

This is not a hoax - please help.

Share these recordings with anyone you think will be able to put a stop to this.

The poster then carries a link to a website called noisesinmylane.co.uk

Who's behind it and what they say

The posters are the work of husband and wife team Alan and Christine Tait.

They say the mysterious recordings were made in their home in Ammanford, South Wales, and the noises picked up were coming from beneath a neighbouring property which is part-commercial, part-residential in the town centre.

They also told us that they found a 'sticky residue' in a drain shaft linked to the neighbouring property and that they've become so ill from exposure to that, that they can no longer live there.

They said they have made numerous reports to Dyfed Powys Police, who cover the Ammanford patch, but they don't feel their claims have been taken seriously.

They now lead a nomadic existence in a van, travelling from area to area to put up their posters in a bid to find someone 'who will take us seriously and help us'. They have given up their livelihood, which revolved around selling stock retrieved from liquidated businesses, they said.

Christine said: "I know how desperate it looks. If I had one of those posters through my door I would think it's a hoax too. But we're not mad, and we are desperate.

"People have said they think we're senile but we're really not. No-one will investigate, no-one will take us seriously."

She said they have now left Gloucestershire, but 'aren't far away' and don't have a set route for their ongoing journey.

In a separate email to Gloucestershire Live, Alan said: "There will be more recordings on the site over the next few days together with our diaries for the last eight months.

"We will also be putting up correspondence from the police together with freedom of information requests we made.

"When we released all the information to Dyfed Powys Police they did nothing at all.

"They still did not listen to the recordings. We suspect the house next to ours is an illicit drug manufacture, Dyfed Powys Police began their investigation by phoning the owners of the house next door to ask for an appointment to come and look inside the property.

"Both sides agreed on a date three weeks in the future. The police say they did not find anything in the house and the house was completely empty."

What police said

Five days after Gloucestershire Live approached Dyfed Powys police about the Tait's claims, a force spokesman issued this statement: "Dyfed Powys Police officers attended the address in November and no evidence of drugs were found."