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

In this latest story, Tom explores a mysterious timeslip incident from 1960...

TEN years ago a retired police superintendent told me a very intriguing story of what must have been a timeslip incident.

I’ve changed a few names for reasons of confidentiality, but beyond that the story is exactly as it was related to me by a very down-to-earth hard-boiled police official who had spent almost forty years in the force.

It all began on the warm Monday evening of 8 August 1960 at a certain police station on Wirral.

Chief Inspector Len Mills was sitting in his office at 9.25pm when a detective named Marshall brought in two men, described by the desk sergeant as 'a couple of queens' – 1960s slang for two gay people.

"Gross indecency, sir," said a young constable who had accompanied the sergeant into the chief inspector’s office, "kissing they were."

"And," the sergeant butted in, then handed Mills an open box with some unfamiliar things in it, "they had this paraphernalia on them."

At this time in history, the Sexual Offences Act had not yet received royal assent, and would not be passed until 1967.

That act would state that two gay people acting in private would not be committing an offence provided they consented to what they were doing and were both 21 years or over.

In 1960 you could go to jail, lose your job and even face ‘chemical correction’ if you were gay and caught in the act with another gay person, so when two outlandishly dressed men were brought into the station that humid August night in 1960, some of the detectives sneered, some sniggered, but Chief Inspector Mills immediately sensed there was something different about the couple, who looked as if they were in their early to mid thirties.

Their hairstyles and clothes looked odd, Mills thought, and when the sergeant ushered them into their seats facing Mills at his desk, the usual lines of interrogation commenced.

"Name?" Mills asked the man to his left, a smiling chap with collar-length sandy-brown hair and a prominent aquiline nose.

"Mick –" he started, then paused and said, "Mikhail Ivanov."

"That doesn’t sound very English," said Mills suspiciously, "sounds Russian. You taking the Michael?"

"I was born in Moscow," said Mikhail, and he had a glazed look in his eyes and a faint smile which convinced Mills that he was either drunk or drugged.

"And your date of birth," said Mills, glancing at his sergeant before he looked into the box of the men’s belongings.

"August 12, 2014," Mikhail replied, and his friend next to him giggled.

He was a very handsome blond with large blue eyes and an almost elfin, boyish face.

Mills tapped the point of the pen on the sheet and said, "You look as if you’re drugged up to the eyeballs – love."

"Psyke," sighed Mikhail, "it’s legal, don’t worry."

The sergeant grunted behind the two men and slapped his hand on Mikhail’s shoulder but Mills shook his head, then asked Mikhail’s friend: "And your name and D.O.B sir?"

"Charlie Ivanov, officer, and this makes me feel so old but I was born on September 30 2012."

"So, you’re brothers eh?" said Mills with a painful smile, "the brothers Ivanov? Sounds like a Dostoyevsky novel."

"No, we’re married," Mikhail replied, all matter-of-factly.

"Idiots!" snarled the sergeant, "leave them with me sir and we’ll soon –"

"It’s okay sergeant," Mills raised his palm, and then he turned his attention back to the odd duo seated before him.

They were like some theatrical double-act in his eyes.

"So both of you haven’t even been born yet, then?" Mills tapped the top of his pen against his lips and leaned back into his chair. "And where do you live, Mikhail?"

"Landican Glades," came the reply.

"I live by him in Storeton Gardens," said Charlie.

"I thought you were both married to one another?" said Mills, quick as a flash. "Get your story right!"

"We are married," retorted Mikhail with a succession of nods, "just separated for now, that’s all."

Chief Inspector Len Mills opened a desk drawer and produced a large fold-out map.

"I’ve never heard of any Landican Glades and Storeton Gardens, so come and show me where they are," he said, and the two men rose from their seats, and, accompanied by the sergeant and the constable, they stooped to look at the fold-out Bartholomew map.

"Landican Glades is just facing The Brothel pub there," Mikhail pointed to a trapezoid of blank farmland next to Storeton Village.

Then the fun started when Mills went through the belongings of the men in the box.

The shiny black plastic card that Mikhail called a phone, and the white long cigarette lighter that could knock a person out according to Charlie. A stunner, he called it.

And the box of pills Mikhail smilingly admitted to be drugs that made him clever, gave him weeks without sleep, and even enabled him to perform like an Olympic athlete.

When Mills saw that the car-thin phone was indeed some communications device, he thought about the Russian surnames of the detainees and had them put in a cell while he contacted Special Branch.

Two officers from Special Branch said they’d be at the station in the morning and mentioned Hungarian and Soviet stowaways who had recently been arrested on the Cunard liner Carinthia at Liverpool.

Ten minutes later, the sergeant and the young constable burst into the office of Chief Inspector Mills and told him that the two prisoners were gone.

They had somehow escaped from a locked cell – and not long afterwards the belongings of the men vanished from a safe.

Mills believed the men were ghosts – but ghosts from the future, and fearing dismissal he had to pretend he and his officers had been hoaxed.

Haunted Liverpool 29 is out now on Amazon.