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 behind supernatural abductions...

On the evening of Christmas Eve, 2005, a thick fog invaded the North West.

Hundreds of motorists on the M62 were brought to a standstill after a 26-car pile-up on the motorway between junctions 11 and 12 near Warrington, and Wirral did not escape the chaos caused by the ubiquitous fog.

That same evening, a couple in their early thirties, Jane and Steve Havelock were returning with their children - three-year-old Harry and five-year-old Grace - from the house of Jane’s parents on Egerton Road, and being in a hurry to get home in the freezing fog, the couple took a short cut through Birkenhead Park, as they only lived off Laird Street, which was minutes away.

On Ashville Road, as Harry cried and asked his mum if he could have his Christmas presents from his Nan a day early, Grace suddenly cried out and said something had pulled her coat off.

Her parka was indeed missing and her mother said, "Oh Grace, what have you done with your coat?"

Harry started digging his heels in as he pleaded for his presents and then there was a piercing scream from above.

Steve and Jane looked up and for a moment they could not believe their eyes.

Grace was hanging almost upside down with her hair dangling and coiled around her was the tentacle of something resembling an octopus, and it seemed to be made of a faintly luminous vapour.

This thing had two luminous holes for eyes, and one of its tentacles reached for little Harry but his father slapped the thing away, and experienced a slight electric shock.

The frantic parents jumped in the air, trying to grab at their screaming daughter, but the thing drifted away, and as it did, it pulled Grace into its vaporous body. Steve climbed onto a park gatepost and jumped at the tentacled abductor.

Each of his hands went into those eye holes, and for a moment he was dangling from the abomination.

It let out a screech, and its face ripped open, and Grace fell from it.

Her mother caught her but the girl seemed unconscious.

Steve fell from the entity, and the thing vanished.

He carried his daughter as the family hurried out the fogbound park, and Grace later recovered and said she had seen small human skulls inside that unearthly monstrosity.

It took years for the girl to get over the terrifying ordeal, and the family still won’t go near the part of the park where the sinister incident took place.

I have a feeling Grace was one of the lucky ones who encountered that nameless thing and lived to tell the tale…

Haunted Liverpool 30 is out now on Amazon.