Haunted Wirral: The two Heathers

In this latest story, Tom tells the haunting tale of the two Heathers...

In the autumn of 1997, the National Trust said that a spate of recent television costume dramas had helped to make historic houses and gardens the most visited tourist attractions in Britain.

Little Moreton Hall – a half-timbered moated manor house in Cheshire – featured in ITV’s version of the DeFoe classic Moll Flanders, was one such attraction, and it was visited by the Leigh family from Birkenhead one afternoon in October 1997.

The youngest of the family was 19-year-old Heather Leigh, a girl who was not into history and had only accompanied her parents and 21-year-old brother Brian because she had been badgered into coming.

Heather, a Goth, normally sat in her room all day listening to heavy metal or hanging with friends at a cafe in Birkenhead.

When heather visited Little Moreton Hall, which was built between 1504 and 1610, she had a strange feeling of déjà vu – as if she had been there before.

She had not watched Moll Flanders on the telly and had most definitely never set eyes on the historic dwelling before, and yet the girl felt at home in the place.

When the family had visited the hall they visited a local antiques shop before setting out on the 53-mile-journey home.

At this antiques shop, Heather’s father bought an onyx ring emblazoned with the letter H for £100 and gave it to his daughter.

The owner of the store said he believed the ring was very old, possibly dating back to the Jacobean era (1567-1625) but he knew nothing of the ring’s origins. An old man had sold it to him ten years back.

As soon as Heather put this ring on, her personality seemed to undergo a drastic change.

She was usually outspoken and loud but now she was quiet and shy. She was prone to thrash out power chords on her electric guitar in her room, but her brother Brian was surprised when Heather started to pick strange haunting tunes on the instrument.

She wrote a curious verse in a writing pad which Brian read. It went: "I know a little girl sly and deceitful, every little tittle-tat she goes and tells the people, long nose, ugly face, ought to be put in a glass case. If you want to know her name, her name is Heather Lee. Please Heather Lee, keep away from me; I don’t want to speak to you, nor you to speak to me. Once we were friends, but now we disagree. Oh Heather Lee, keep away from me. It’s not because you’re dirty, it’s not because you’re clean, it’s because you are a witch, and you shouldn’t be seen."

The word 'witch' stood out to Brian in the strange verse, and the copperplate handwriting bore no resemblance to Heather’s spidery scrawl.

On the following morning Brian heard raised voices in his sister’s room.

His mother was shouting, "What have you done to yourself?"

Brian went to see what was going on and got the shock of his life.

His sister normally had her shoulder-length hair dyed blue and purple – but now she had long red hair – and Brian asked if it was a wig. His confused mother said, "It’s not a wig – it’s real – and I don’t know how her hair grew that long overnight!"

Heather was also wearing a long black velvety dress, and a choker necklace of gold, embedded with a variety of gemstones and pearls.

Heather sat there on the edge of the bed, closed fists on her lap, gazing down at the floor.

When Brian asked her if she was alright, she looked up at him – and he noticed she now had blue eyes.

His sister’s eyes had been olive green.

"Heather’s gone," she told Brian in an unfamiliar soft voice.

Her nose ring was gone, and all of the pale foundation Heather had worn was also absent, along with the dark lipstick.

"Gone where?" Brian asked, thinking his sister had suffered some breakdown.

"To the stake," came the reply, in a weird accent reminiscent of a Lancashire brogue. "gone to burn, instead of me."

"Mum, her tattoo’s gone," said Brian to his mother, drawing attention to the back of Heather’s left hand – where the girl usually sported a tattoo of a lemniscate - the infinity symbol.

The ‘new’ Heather refused to leave her room, and Brian felt a shiver run down his spine when he heard her singing Greensleeves as she strummed and picked chords on her guitar.

He visited a priest and told him of the unearthly, unaccountable change in his sister, and the priest visited Heather then spoke to her distraught parents.

Mr Leigh recalled how the change in his daughter had occurred after she had put on that old onyx ring, so the priest resolved to remove it from the teenager, and red-headed blue-eyed Heather screamed and clawed at his face when the holy man removed the ring.

Over the course of an hour, Heather’s red hair became shorter and changed colour, and before the shocked eyes of the family, the old Heather returned, her eyes now green, and the tattoo on her hand reappeared, along with the girl’s usual attire – black tee shirt and dark-grey jeans.

The returned Heather sobbed and hugged her mother and rambled on about people ‘in the old days’ trying to burn her alive at a stake – for being a witch.

The priest kept the onyx ring, and said it had been a ‘gateway to possession’.

Heather had nightmares about the sinister ordeal for years.

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