HAUNTED WIRRAL: The mystery of Bear Cottage

In this latest story, Tom investigates the mystery of Bear Cottage...

The following weird story unfolded in Spring 1967.

Two 17-year-olds – Davy, who hailed from Birkenhead, and Mick, a Liverpool lad – escaped from a borstal in Lancashire by sawing through the bars of a bathroom.

Davy had been in borstal for a year after being found guilty of breaking into a house and stealing money and property valued at £136 1s 3d.

He’d also pleaded guilty to being in possession of housebreaking implements and an antique dagger.

Mick had been sentenced to six months’ for loitering with intent to steal.

After the escape from borstal, Davy broke into a gleaming crimson MG Magnette outside a house in Rainhill, and while police were scouring the surrounding countryside, the youths were on their way to the Widnes-Runcorn Bridge, headed for Wirral.

Davy unrealistically had plans to steal tents and camp in the ‘wilds of Capenhurst’ whereas Mick said the Delamere Forest was a safer bet – but Davy didn’t know the way.

They crossed the bridge and made it through Runcorn and on to Frodsham.

“Do you think we’ll stay free or will they catch us?” Mick asked his friend with a despondent expression.

“Mick, we are going to be alright,” Davy replied, bombing the Magnette along a country lane, “we’ve got a tiger in our tank and the coppers are miles away now.”

Mick switched the car radio on, and turned quickly to another station when he heard the news about Home Secretary Roy Jenkins considering the use of military camps for civil prisoners.

A DJ – possibly Radio Caroline’s Emperor Rosko – introduced a song by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames that made Davy laugh; the aptly-titled ‘Get Away.’

Sixteen miles and 25 minutes later, the escapees were singing to ‘All or Nothing’ by the Small Faces when they happened to pass a Morris Minor in police livery parked off a lane on Parkgate Road.

Davy kept as cool as a cucumber and took a quick turn down what seemed to be a dirt track and kept going.

The teens expected the police car to follow, but it didn’t, and the getaway car emerged near a wood.

“We’re lost aren’t we?” Mick asked, and Davy said nothing for a moment, then he nodded to the wood and told his friend: “That shouldn’t be there – Shotwick should be there; the whole village has gone.”

Mick laughed and said, “You got lost, Davy – we might be in Wales.”

“We’re not in Wales,” he said, and parked the car in the shades of a massive oak.

The two teens wandered into the wood, and Davy expected to see the village of Shotwick, but instead, he saw a quaint old thatched cottage – with cotton wool puffs of smoke coming from its chimney.

It had a little red door and two windows, and the walls of the single-story dwelling were made of rubble-stones with turf gables.

The escaped borstal inmates thought there might be food and money to be had in that cottage and made their way towards it through long grass.

They passed a fallen weathered sign that read: ‘Bear Cottage’ in flaking black letters.

Davy knocked at the door, and a little blonde girl in a sky-blue dress with white polka dots answered.

She looked as if she was about ten, and had a huge pair of cornflower blue eyes.

She recoiled in shock when she saw the teenagers, and almost fell back into the cottage.

“Where’s your mam and dad, love?” Mick asked, scanning the rooms as he barged into the place.

There was a spinning wheel and a big old table and a little chair and three huge chairs.

The bedroom had one small bed and three enormous ones. “You living with giants?” Davy asked the girl.

“They’ll be back soon,” she said, and her accent had a tinge of Welsh. “You’d better run.”

The front door burst open, and in came a bear, walking upright.

Davy swore out of shock and as soon as the six-foot-tall beast lunged at Mick, he was out of there.

He heard Mick scream as he ran out the cottage behind him – and there, coming down the path to the cottage, were two even bigger bears.

Mick and Davy ran across the long grass but when they reached the car, they saw that a tyre had been slashed and the roof was crumpled.

They ran down the long dirt track, pushing and elbowing as they tried to overtake one another in the flight from those three fierce-looking animals – and when the teens ran around the corner at the end of the lane, they both hit the oncoming bonnet of that police car they’d passed earlier.

Davy fell, doubled up, holding his stomach from the impact, and Mick landed on the verge.

As he got up, he realised he had two deep scratches across his buttocks, and the blood had soaked his jeans.

“Davy and Mick, I presume?” said one of the policemen, getting out the car.

When Mick told the policeman what had happened, the constable said, “You must be on some powerful drugs lad – bears in a cottage with a little blonde girl?”

“Was her name Goldilocks by any chance?” asked the other laughing policeman.

Maybe some higher intelligence – some Cosmic Joker – was playing with the minds of those teenagers that day, putting imaginary nursery characters in their minds – but how can we explain the serious claw-like wound sustained by Mick and the wrecked car?

Haunted Liverpool 29 is available from Amazon.