Welcome to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world famous psychic researcher Tom Slemen, for the Globe.

In this latest story, Tom explores the mystery of Rock Ferry’s Goblin...

The visitations began in the August of 1983 at a two-storey Victorian terraced house on Bedford Road, Rock Ferry.

At first, the parents of a five-year-old child named Brian thought he’d had a nightmare when he ran into their bedroom in a terrible state one night and told them that “Mr Noseybonk” was in his room.

Mr Noseybonk was an odd-looking character with a prominent nose that featured in an afternoon television show aimed at kids aged four to seven, and Brian’s mum, Helen, reassured her son he’d just had a bad dream.

Brian said it wasn’t a dream and that Noseybonk had come out of the ceiling and had slapped him across the face when he started crying.

“Mr Noseybonk’s not real, Brian!” the boy’s mum told him with a forced chuckle, “He’s just a make-believe character on the telly you soft sausage!”

Brian’s father Jim had been roused from a much-needed sleep by his hysterical son and he grumpily got out the bed and went into his lad’s bedroom.

He found the room in a mess.

The blankets and pillows had been thrown off the bed and Brian’s toy box had been scattered everywhere.

The sash window was also wide open.

Brian said he had not caused this mess and his father knew it would be very difficult for a boy of his size to open the window with its stiff catch.

He closed the window and he and his wife tidied up the room.

Brian refused to go back in the room and his mum had to sleep with him in his bed after telling him a comforting fairy tale.

On the following morning, Jim asked his older children, 11-year-old Christopher and nine-year-old Marianne if they had been messing about in Brian’s room but they said that they hadn’t – they’d both been sound asleep at the time.

That night, Marianne was lying on her bed at around 10pm reading a book by the light of the bedside lamp when she heard a rustling sound under her bed.

She smiled and assumed it was the family’s ginger cat Toffee, and she put the book down, got off the bed and crouched to look under it.

“What are you doing under there, Toff?” the girl asked.

Marianne saw an entity that would give her nightmares for years.

Something the size of her brother Chris was laying flat under the bed on its chest, and it was covered in a greenish scaly skin.

The head of this thing looked ghastly, with patches of yellow on it, two large luminous eyes with bags under them, and a long pointed nose with a red tip.

The thing smiled, revealing two rows of protruding sharp-looking fangs.

Marianne screamed, got to her feet, and ran out the bedroom.

As she descended the stairs to tell her mum and dad about the thing under her bed, the girl tripped, and fell hard.

Luckily, she did not sustain any serious injury but Marianne could hardly speak when her father picked her up.

When she told her parents and older brother about the green thing under her bed, her father said, “You’ve been listening to Brian and his stupid stories haven’t you?”

Jim searched his daughter’s room and found no green bogeyman under the bed and nothing amiss, but all the same, Marianne refused to sleep in her bedroom and kicked up such a fuss, her mother took the girl to stay at her grandmother’s house on nearby Inglemere Road.

Marianne stayed there for over a week because she was so terrified of encountering that “goblin” as she now called it.

A day after Marianne moved out, a strange note was found on the dresser in Helen and Jim’s bedroom.

Written in crayon in wonky letters were the words: “I ate da cat.”

Brian and his older brother Christopher were quizzed about the weird note and swore they hadn’t written it – and Toffee the house cat could not be found.

Jim searched the house from the cellar to the attic without success and then he walked the streets of the neighbourhood looking for the moggy – in vain.

A week later, while Jim was at work, Helen and her children went to visit her mother on her birthday, but when Helen got outside the house she realised she’d forgotten her mum’s birthday card and rushed back into the house to get it.

It was in her bedroom, and she barged in – startling what was undoubtedly the unearthly creature that had been frightening her children.

It had been looking through the drawers of the dresser and it looked exactly as Marianne had described – the long pointed nose, the greenish scaly skin, and the luminous eyes.

Helen picked up a vase, ready to hurl it at the scary entity and in a well-spoken voice it said, “I’m only five - don’t.”

It then ran into the corner and vanished.

That evening, Toffee appeared in the kitchen and seemed unharmed and curiously, he’d put on weight.

The family decided to move to a smaller house in Prenton, and I believe the Rock Ferry Goblin, as I label it, is occasionally still seen at the house on Bedford Road, but what it is remains a mystery.

Haunted Liverpool 29 is out now on Amazon.

Over the forthcoming weeks Tom will tell you more tales of the mysterious and the uncanny in the Globe.