HAUNTED WIRRAL: The familiar girl

In this latest story, Tom explores a mysterious case of the familiar girl...

The following strange story unfolded at a supermarket on Seaview Road, Wallasey, in August 1966.

Jon Woodford can’t remember now if the supermarket was named Lennons or Gateway – probably the former, he thinks, but he does recall that he went into the supermarket on his lunch-break from a second hand bookshop where he worked part-time.

The bookshop was owned by his oldest uncle – Larry, and today, being Wednesday – pay day – skinflint Larry paid his nephew the royal sum of one guinea – 21 shillings.

It was an infernally hot noon on the last day of August and 17-year-old Jon went into the supermarket to get a bottle of Corona cream soda, a Fry’s Five Centres bar, and then he’d pop into a newsagent and get a copy of the Hotspur (price 5d).

Uncle Larry was always telling him he was too old to read the Hotspur and the Lion and how he should be swatting up for his apprentice as a pharmacy assistant next year by reading books on medicine, but when Jon was immersed in the comic’s thrilling tales of Wilson the Wonder Athlete and Richard Starr – the Blazing Ace of Space – the teenager didn’t have to concern himself with mundane worries like finding a well-paid job and a girlfriend.

As he entered the supermarket that day, Jon had the feeling someone was watching him – and he also experienced that intriguing, almost magical feeling we all experience from time to time – déjà vu – the impression that a certain situation has occurred before in every detail, even though it apparently hasn’t.

You somehow know what’s coming next, as if it’s all happened before – like you’re reliving some part of your life, and you know what’s around the corner so to speak.

Psychologists have tried in vain to explain the déjà vu phenomenon for years, but as of yet, no one has come up with a hypothesis that fits the facts.

Just as weird as the déjà vu was the acute sensation of feeling watched; Jon turned and saw that a pretty girl who looked around his age was staring at him.

She was petite, about 5ft 3in, fashionably dressed with a bob of black shiny hair, and as soon as Jon set eyes on her, she swiftly turned away, but Jon thought she looked very familiar, and he felt as if he had done all this before; gone into the supermarket and seen this girl standing in that exact same spot.

He’d had déjà vu before but never as intense as this.

He found himself following the beguiling girl around the supermarket, and he noticed she was not carrying a basket, and without buying anything, she left and vanished into the milling crowds of Seaview Road.

Jon returned to the second-hand bookshop and his best friend Spencer called in on his lunch-break to see him.

Spencer was an apprentice TV repair man and straight away he could see Jon looked distracted and worried.

Jon told him about the girl and the déjà vu.

"You’ve probably seen her before somewhere, that’s all," said Spencer.

Jon shook his head, "No Spence, it’s something else. I just can’t put my finger on what it is, and there’s something about her; she’s not even stunning – just pretty – but she seemed to be waiting for me in the supermarket."

"Maybe all this has happened before!" said Uncle Larry, peeping round a bookcase and giving the teens a start.

He opened a book of poems and said: "Lend me your Philistine ears. Listen to this old poem: 'I have been here before, but when or how I cannot tell. I know the grass beyond the door, the sweet keen smell, the sighing sound, the lights around the shore.' Written by a Victorian poet named Rossetti. Deep, isn’t it?"

"So you think we’ve all been here before, then?" Spencer asked Uncle Larry with a toothy grin.

"We might all be in some never-ending film that goes round in a big loop – who knows?" Uncle Larry replied, before walking away.

Jon Woodford had recurring dreams about the familiar girl each night, and they always ended with him being knocked down by a Number 31 bus on Wallasey Road and he’d awake with a start at that dramatic point.

Jon started noticing the girl more and more as the days went by, and one morning he plucked up the courage to confront her.

"Who are you?" he asked, and he saw tears well in her eyes.

She tried to get past him but he surprised himself by grabbing her forearm.

"No, tell me who you are!" he insisted.

She grinned – and then sniffled, and he heard her gulp.

He led her to a café, and she went willingly.

Over coffee she told him an outlandish story.

"You were mine once – don’t ask how – but you were, and I lost you – the first time around.

"My love for you was so great, I asked someone – you’d call her a witch - to give me another chance. She turned everything back too far though, so now you don’t know me."

"When you said you lost me – what happened?" Jon asked, intrigued.

"So you believe me then?" she said, excitedly.

"We had a tiff and you ran off – and you were knocked down by a bus."

"That explains the nightmares," muttered Jon.

He grasped her hand over the table.

"So now we have to start all over again?" he asked, and the girl nodded, her face streaked with tears.

"My name is Tara," she said, and Jon just knew everything she had said was true.

Haunted Liverpool 29 is available now from Amazon