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 tale behind Wallasey's hearse omen...

At the height of the rush hour on Tuesday 17 May 2006, the Luftwaffe brought parts of Merseyside to a halt.

An unexploded PC 500 delay-fused armour-piercing bomb, measuring 7 feet in length and over 2 feet in diameter, had been dropped by the Fuhrer’s air force sometime between 1940 and 1942 – back in the dark days of WWII when the Morpeth Dock was targeted by the Nazi bombers - and the dormant cylinder of death had now been found on the river bed of the Mersey near the Twelve Quays ferry terminal, Birkenhead, during a routine harbour survey conducted by the personnel of the Royal Navy minesweeper HMS Atherstone.

The 7-foot-long bomb, packed with a deadly mixture of TNT, high explosive amatol and wax, posed an obvious grave threat to public safety because of its close proximity to the under-river tunnels and the ferries plying their familiar routes across the Mersey, so an exclusion zone was immediately imposed by the police.

As a precaution the two routes into the Wallasey Tunnel were closed in the middle of the rush hour and the trains on the Wirral loop-line were halted.

The ferries also had to be stopped, as the consequences would have been apocalyptic had the bomb exploded.

Over 150 passengers and 100 crew in total were therefore stranded on the ferries as the authorities, teams of divers and the brave souls of the 3rd Mine Countermeasure Squad tackled the ominous threat from sixty-odd years ago.

During the ensuing delays, detours and diversions, two Liverpool men and a Wallasey lady capitalised on the drama by steadying their nerves in the nearest pub.

The redheaded lady was a gracious-looking fetchingly elongated 25-year-old legal secretary named Jemima, and the two men accompanying her were Greg – a 30-year-old blond solicitor, tough as teak with biceps like billiards, and a bald gangly 40-year-old chartered accountant named Howard.

Jemima and Greg worked for the same firm and Howard knew them because he frequented the same pub at lunchtime.

Greg and Howard liked Jemima and she couldn’t decide which one would make her a decent boyfriend yet.

Both Howard and Greg were married by the way, and had called their wives in Liverpool to tell them they might not be home for some time because of the unexploded bomb disruption.

And so began the pub crawl, and on the alcoholic odyssey around the inns of Wallasey, the trio met other stranded commuters who were capitalising on the bomb to delay a return to home lives they resented.

By 11pm, Jemima, Greg and Howard were in the Black Horse pub, Wallasey Village, drinking with a gaggle of self-stranded commuters, and in the eyes of Greg, it looked as if Howard would be spending the night at Jemima’s home on Leasowe Road, and the drink had mellowed the iron-pumping legal adviser so he bore no malice towards the chartered accountant.

He knew the affair with Jemima wouldn’t last long as Howard had told him in the pub toilet that with the opposite sex, newness was his aphrodisiac.

Just after midnight, Jemima, Howard, Greg and a few other new acquaintances were invited to a party on nearby St John’s Road, and here Greg met a beautiful divorced woman in her early forties named Georgina.

The party went on till about three, and Greg left with Georgina, who said he could sleep on her sofa at her home on Clare Crescent, just a 10-minute walk away.

At this time, an icy fog rolled in from Liverpool Bay. Jemima must have still had a thing for Greg, because she went after him when he left the party with Georgina, and of course, Howard was not at all pleased, and he hurried after Jemima in a drunken state.

Jemima started shouting to Greg as he walked with Georgina on a path which was taking them past the Black Horse pub they’d been in earlier.

There was a clatter of hooves, and a strange old-fashioned vehicle - a hearse drawn by two huge muscular horses with black feathered headdresses – came out of the fog from the side of the pub, and Georgina halted and gasped, "Ooh! What’s that?"

A grinning man in a top hat and cape sat atop of the old hearse and turned to face the couple.

The large black coffin visible through the windows of the hearse was lying flat, but it was seen to move, as if invisible pallbearers were manoeuvring it.

Jemima caught up with Greg and Georgina, and so did an out-of-breath Howard, and these two also saw the eerie funeral coach and the black coffin that was extracting itself from the vehicle.

That coffin slid out the hearse and stood up near to the bus stop.

Jemima clutched Greg’s arm and swore, then asked, "What the hell is that?"

The upright coffin’s lid slowly swung open, revealing the unmistakable double of Howard!

His arms were crossed on his chest and his eyes were closed.

Howard almost fainted when he saw his dead doppelganger.

The coffin closed, then turned, leaned 45 degrees – and slid back into the hearse.

The terrifying coach then moved off silently into the fog and vanished.

Howard died of heart failure on the following morning.

The mortuary of Wallasey Village used to stand next to the Black Horse a long time ago, and that hearse, and also a little girl in black, has been seen near the pub for decades.

If you see either, turn and walk or drive away...

Haunted Liverpool 30 is out now on Amazon.