HAUNTED WIRRAL: The mystery of Mr Kipper

In this latest story, Tom explores the mystery of Mr Kipper...

In August 1986, Raymond and Melissa Earle moved from their cramped home in Birkenhead to a five-bedroom Victorian semi-detached house on Bebington’s Woodhey Road.

The Earles and their two children, Hollie, aged 9, and Jon, aged 7, soon settled into their new home, which was much bigger than their old house in Birkenhead.

Raymond Earle had once pledged that he’d give his wife a 'country room' – a special rustically themed sanctum where she could escape from the stresses accrued from the toils of housewifery, and now he was about to fulfil that promise.

Raymond and his brother Mike worked tirelessly on turning a spare room on the second floor into the country room, and they removed the skirting and architraves and laid down a beautiful wooden floor.

Melissa picked the wallpaper and the pink gingham curtains, and she had a rocking chair put in the room, a spinning wheel, as well as a hammock where she could relax and read.

Something was missing though, and Mike said an old-fashioned fire surround would complete the country room.

Melissa agreed, and Raymond scanned the items for sale columns of the newspapers and ended up fetching a Victorian cast-iron fireplace from a house in Liverpool’s West Derby district.

It had only cost £15 – an absolute bargain. The installation of this fireplace was the finishing touch.

On the first day in the country room after the beds had been made and the staircase and landings had been vacuumed, Melissa lit a patchouli joss stick and sat in the rocking chair reading a book of short stories by Guy de Maupassant.

She heard what sounded like a jangling ice cream van somewhere in the distance, but what the glockenspiel melody was she could not tell.

It faded away.

Melissa looked out the window and saw no ice cream van, and so she sat down to read and she heard the eerie melody again – and it seemed to be coming from the fireplace.

Melissa thought the tune was being played on a harp, but where was it coming from? Feeling a bit unnerved by the ghostly music, Melissa switched on the little radio on the bookshelf and listened to Schubert on BBC Radio 3.

She could still hear that ghostly music so she went down to the lounge, and her friend Thelma paid a visit.

When Thelma heard about the weird tune she went up to the country room and she too heard it. She identified it as Sumer is Icumen In – medieval for 'Summer has Come In' – a piece of music which dates back to the 13th century.

The music faded away, and Thelma smiled and said, "Melissa, you have a haunted fireplace. Oh I’d love that in my home."

Days later Raymond bought an antique Edwardian fire screen for his wife, and she noticed that when this screen was in place, there was no music from the fireplace.

A few days before Hollie and Jon were due back at school after the summer holidays, the children sneaked into the country room while everyone was out and played I spy, and then Jon removed the fire screen and suggested burning something in the fireplace, but Hollie’s eyes widened and she gazed at the fireplace with a face lit up by blue light. "Jon, look!"

In the fireplace there was now a bright vivid scene; it was as if the children were looking at a TV screen. They could see a castle in the distance, perched on a mountain, surrounded by acres of snow.

Jon and Hollie crept nearer to the vision in the fireplace and felt the cold draught coming from it – it really was an opening to some wintry wasteland with that castle of a dozen towers dominating the scene. "Let’s tell mum!" suggested Jon.

"What’s that?" Hollie noticed a tiny dot leave the castle’s arched opening. It was moving fast, and it had some colour to it in the bright white snowfields – was it an animal? Hollie realised it was coming towards her and Jon, and this frightened her. "What is it?" Jon kept asking.

Then the superior eyesight of the children discerned that it was not an animal hurtling towards them, but a person, running on all fours as fast a greyhound. "Jon, let’s go, quick!" Hollie grabbed her brother by the arm and began to gently pull him towards the door.

They could now see that the thing was dressed like a jester in pied clothing of orange and yellow, and his cap had four horns of scarlet, purple, blue and green with jingly bells close enough to hear!

The children rushed out of the room with Jon crying, and they almost fell over one another rushing down the first flight of steps.

They heard the door of the country room burst open and that jingling jester came running towards the terrified brother and sister on all fours. "I’m Mr Kipper! Hello! Hello!" he cried.

At that moment, Mike, the uncle of the children, let himself into the house, and 'Mr Kipper' turned like a snake and ran back up the stairs and into the country room.

The children threw themselves at Uncle Mike and told him about Mr Kipper, but when he went upstairs he found no one about in any of the rooms.

Raymond Earle said his children had got the name 'Mr Kipper' from the news reports regarding the recent disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, who had been showing a flat to a Mr Kipper when she mysteriously vanished, but Mrs Earle told her husband about the music she heard in the fireplace, and the latter was removed.

Its strange history, like its present whereabouts, is unknown...

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