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

In this latest story, Tom reveals the mystery of the faery lynch mob...

AS WINTER moves in, let me transport you back to a blistering summer day in less complicated times, specifically Saturday 29 July 1967 at 5.40pm.

The Irving family of Ashford Road, Meols, were returning home in their trusty 11-year-old Morris Minor 1000 Traveller after a day out in Chester, shopping, sightseeing and enjoying a lot of sandwiches, ice cream and sarsaparilla.

It should have been a forty-minute trip at tops, but Mr Dennis Irving had an annoying habit of pulling over at certain points along the 25-mile return journey to either point out historical sites or places where he had worked or lived, and his wife Jill and the couple’s two daughters, Juliet and Suzanne, just wanted to get back home because the heat was unbearable.

As the car travelled down Heron Road, Dennis Irving said, "Ah, see this farm here on the right? That’s where Tommy Briggs and I were chased by a bull."

Jill had had enough of her husband’s nostalgic rambling. She turned to him and groaned: "Oh Dennis, never mind all our yesterdays."

"Let me just show the girls where the bull chased their old dad," said Dennis, pulling over near a hedge.

Jill shook her head. "No, Dennis, the girls are dying from heatstroke and I want to get home and put my feet in a bowl of ice cold water and watch 'Jukebox Jury' – which started five minutes ago, by the way."

"You’re so selfish sometimes Jill," retorted Dennis, and he turned and looked at his daughters in the backseat and asked, "you do want to see where the bull ran after me and Tommy Briggs don’t you?"

"I want to go home," moaned six-year-old Juliet, "and Suzanne wants to have a wee!"

"Right! Home it is then!" said Dennis gazing straight ahead up the sun-scorched road.

He sulked as he drove off, but fifty yards along the road, Jill Irving said, "Hey, look at that!" and pointed to something colourful through a gap in a hedgerow.

It looked like a miniature model of a village. Dennis slowed the car and halted, passing the gap.

He reversed and saw it was indeed a breathtaking replica of a village thatched cottages, and each quaint dwelling was painted in bright vibrant colours.

The Irvings got out the car and walked along a gravel path which led to a 4-foot-tall dry-stack wall. The top of this wall was level with what seemed to be the village green of this hamlet of doll-sized houses.

There was some wooden platform in the middle of the green with a vertical beam in the centre.

Mr Irving thought it resembled a gallows. He went back to the car to fetch his camera, and when he came back inside of a minute, his wife grabbed his hand and said, "Dennis, how do they do that?" She nodded to the little figures of people in old-fashioned clothes forming a crowd on the green.

"They look too realistic to be dolls," said Dennis, taking the camera out of its case. "Mummy, can we take some of them home?" Juliet asked, and she crawled forward on all fours, intending to go and visit the little people, who looked as if they were about six inches tall.

"Come here Juliet!" Mrs Irving grabbed her daughter’s ankle and pulled hard.

She had a very bad feeling about this strange spectacle. "Are they fairies?" asked Suzanne, and suddenly a faint cheer went up from the crowd of tiny folk. Dennis Irving tried to take a picture of the weird scene but his camera’s lever jammed.

"Oh!" Mrs Irving threw her hands to her face and gazed in horror at the development on the centre of the green.

The little people were positioning one of their kind on the wooden platform. A little man in a black hood then grabbed the rope dangling from the wooden arm jutting out from that upright beam, and he took the noose at the end of that rope and looped it around the head of the man in front of him.

"What in God’s name –" Mr Irving gasped as his wife pulled the children off the green.

There was a cheer as the little people hanged someone, and they quickly formed a circle and danced around the gallows chanting something.

By now, Jill Irving was running with the bewildered children to the car, but her husband kept trying to get his camera to work, and seeing the macabre behaviour of the little mob he swore at them – and they all stopped dancing and noticed him looking on. A cry went up from them and they charged towards him across the green.

Dennis noticed that some of the diminutive beings brandished what looked like sticks and pitchforks.

He turned and ran, and as soon as he got in the car, he started the engine and vehicle tore off up Heron Road.

It didn’t get far because the engine inexplicably conked out. As Mr Irving tried desperately to start the car, his wife screamed as she looked in the wing mirror of the vehicle.

Those little people were pouring down the road. The car engine suddenly started and Mr Irving drove off.

When he told his mother what had happened, she said he’d had a run in with the Poldies, an ancient faery race that inhabited Wirral, Cheshire and parts of Lancashire.

From that day, Dennis Irving refused to go anywhere near Heron Road, where the phantom faery village is still occasionally seen...

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