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 conjuration in a Birkenhead cellar...

THE following strange story took place in 1963.

An 18-year-old girl named Victoria – who came from a well-to-do family on Prenton’s Forest Road – started to mix with the ‘wrong sort of people’ (as her father put it) – meaning beatniks and other odiferous denizens of the counterculture.

Victoria had started to stay out late to frequent night clubs and coffee bars with some strange people, and her mother had recently found cigarettes made from Indian hemp and a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the girl’s bedroom.

Victoria was qualified for admission to the Sorbonne but instead she wanted to live with four strange young men – all redheads with the same Beatle haircut – in a tumbledown squat in Birkenhead discussing existentialism and a peculiar cult concerning the amalgamation of Germanic and Aztec paganism that was on the rise in post-war West Germany.

By January 1963, fifteen people were living in the squat and police finally charged the dwelling and only Victoria and the four redheads escaped; the rest were charged with various offences under the Vagrancy Act.

On 17 January that year, the four redheads obtained five tickets for the Beatles gig at the Majestic Ballroom on Conway Street, and they took Victoria to see the Fab Four.

After the show the ‘quartet of carrot-tops’ as they were nicknamed by Victoria, took her to a dark corner table of an all-night coffee bar where they persuaded her to share their “prellies” (slang for phenmetrazine pills) – a stimulant drug and appetite suppressant.

Then, around two in the morning, after the consumption of countless cups of black coffee and the smoking of innumerable Senior Service cigarettes, Giles, the intellectual member of the four redheads told Victoria he wanted her to take part in an occult ritual in the cellar of a derelict house just a stone’s throw from Birkenhead Park.

Although she was always on the lookout for new kicks, Victoria wanted to know what this ritual was about.

"We have contacted the spirit of King Arthur," said Giles spiritedly, "and he wants to reincarnate."

"And where do I come into this?’ Victoria wanted to know.

"You, my dear, are now pregnant, and he wants to be reborn as your child," Giles replied, all matter-of-factly.

"I am not in the club you vulgar beast," laughed Victoria, "wherever did you get that one from?"

"Oh yes you, are, and I am the father," Giles asserted, and he drew on a cigarette and raised his eyebrows till they vanished into his overhanging fringe.

"How on earth would you know if you’re the father," chortled Victoria, "it could be any of you here now, couldn’t it?"

"Just trust me, Vicky," said Giles, nodding slowly and smiling with smug self-assurance.

"Now, are you up for the ritual or are you going to be an actual square?"

"What on earth have you been taking, Giles?" asked a bemused Victoria. "Mescaline? Morning Glory flower seeds? Or just too much blue stilton?"

"You’ll see - if you’ve got the pluck m’lady!" a confident Giles told her.

"Right, come on then, off to Camelot!" said Victoria, waving an imaginary sword in the air, and she got up and left the coffee bar and accompanied the four red-haired clones in black through a jade fog until they reached the empty shell of what had once been a three-storey Victorian house.

There were about a dozen candlesticks down in the musty cellar, and three burlap sacks.

The candles were lit and now Victoria could see the peculiar graffiti on the mildewed walls; what looked like runic glyphs and strange circles and crosses daubed in white paint. The redheads opened the burlap sacks and Victoria saw them take out pale green robes with matching pointed hoods with eye-holes in them.

They looked like the 'glory suits' worn by Ku Klux Klansmen.

The four redheads donned the disturbing attire and stood in a perfect square, facing the wall.

Victoria was in the centre of them. Giles began a very strange-sounding prayer: "Hear me, my Father, come forth from the boundless light. Nopsither..."

Then he started to sing the words and it sounded like some Gregorian chanting, a very eerie incantation to the ears of Victoria – and then she saw a figure come out of the wall of the cellar which really gave her a start!

It was the glowing form of a man in a long pale robe and he wore a hood.

He had a black moustache, and a pair of pale blue eyes.

He spoke, but it sounded like German, then all at once, Victoria recognised him; she had been thrown by the moustache – it was usually much shorter – a toothbrush moustache.

"This isn’t Arthur! This is Hitler!" Victoria cried out, and the apparition looked at her.

She turned and ran, and Giles and the other three ran after her up the stairs, and when Victoria got out of the house, Giles dived onto her and threw her to the pavement, but at that moment two policemen on their beat saw the bizarre men in their costumes, and the lawmen dragged Giles off Victoria and the other three redheads ran off into the fog.

Drugs and the beatnik lifestyle were blamed for the silly ritual, but then Victoria came down with a morning sickness and discovered she was pregnant.

The child was put up for adoption when he was three because he was uncontrollable and violent – and what became of him is unknown.

Haunted Liverpool 30 is out soon on Amazon.