HAUNTED WIRRAL: Susan and the Devil

In this latest story, Tom tells the creepy tale of Susan and the Devil...

In the many years I have spent investigating the paranormal, I’ve come across a lot of stories that sound like urban legends, and to cite an example off the top of my head I could mention the Prenton Doll’s House Story.

A lot of people have assured me that there was once an eerie oversized doll’s house – more of a Wendy house that a child could play in – and this house stood somewhere off the main road near the Sainsbury’s on Woodchurch Road.

According to legend, the large playhouse’s interior lit up at night, and there was a life-size doll of a little girl always to be seen at the window, and this girl represented the only daughter of the couple living in the real house nearby.

The child had been knocked down and killed years before, and the couple never got over the shock of losing her.

It was alleged that the doll had the original hair, skin and teeth taken from the corpse of the dead daughter – and what’s more, the doll was often seen to wave at passersby and the curious – or so the weird story goes.

I happened to mention this story once when I was a guest on the Billy Butler Show and I received dozens of emails, letters and calls from people assuring me that the story was true.

I remain sceptical about this local Grand Guignol but perhaps a Globe reader out there knows the truth of the matter.

We remain in Prenton next for a story I researched some years ago which initially seemed like an urban legend, but I subsequently found that this did not seem to be the case at all, and there were numerous witnesses to back the eldritch tale up.

The incident took place on the Tuesday evening of 22 January 1974.

At 7.30pm, Mr and Mrs Jones left their two children in the care of a 13-year-old babysitter named Susan Woodford at their luxurious detached home on Manor Hill.

The Joneses had not been out in six months and were looking forward to a night at a restaurant over in Liverpool and then a drink and catch up with a few friends at a local pub.

They assured Susan they’d be back ‘a bit before midnight’ and left the girl with lemonade, a box of cakes from Sayers and a copy of Jackie magazine.

Marianne Jones, aged five, and her four-year-old brother Peter, were allowed to watch an Abbott and Costello film until 8.30pm, and then Susan took them up to their rooms and tucked them in.

The babysitter told Peter a bedtime story, and then she moved on to Marianne’s room, and the little girl looked worried over something.

She said a strange thing to Susan: "I saw a devil last night."

"There’s no such thing as the devil, Marianne, now have a nice sleep and your mum and dad will soon be back," said a smiling Susan.

"There is such a thing, I saw him, and Peter too," insisted Marianne, sitting up in the bed. "He had a big fork and he was all in red and he said 'Hello little girl, my name is Raffy Mirkuss [the phonetic name given by the child], and if you tell anyone you saw me I’ll throw you in the pit.’"

Susan rolled her eyes and said, "Marianne settle down and stop talking about things like that or you’ll upset Peter."

There was a loud bump downstairs.

"Is that him?" Marianne asked, here large eyes looking over the edge of the blankets.

"No, it came from outside, now go asleep Marianne," Susan told the nervy girl, and then she kissed her forehead and left the room, switching off the light.

Susan went downstairs and made sure all the doors and windows were secure, and then she watched Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? on the telly.

She sipped Corona cherry lemonade and flipped through the pages of Jackie – when she heard a weird voice cry out: "Susan beware of the devil!"

It came from the kitchen, and as the startled babysitter looked at the doorway to the kitchen, she heard something moving.

There had been a song by the British-Jamaican singer Dandy Livingstone called Susan Beware of the Devil that had been in the charts two years previously, and Susan hoped her ex-boyfriend, Terry, who had loved that song, had somehow got into the house – but the voice had not sounded like Terry’s voice.

And then it came walking into the lounge from the kitchen; it looked like a child or a man of very short stature – around 4 feet tall - in a red devil costume with a ghastly Mephistophelian mask and horns.

The eyes seemed to be a luminous blue, and the 3-pronged fork the intruder brandished looked real – and lethal.

"Dance, Susan, or else!" the devil cried, and made threatening thrusts at her with the fork. Susan screamed and ran to a corner, crying. "And you said there was no devil!" cried the weird masked trespasser.

He gave a bow and said: "I’m not the Devil, I’m Raffy Mirkuss, and I could kill you and no one would ever catch me."

Susan tried to run around the terrifying interloper and he pushed the points of the fork into her back, but she was so afraid, she didn’t feel the pain at the time – but later needed hospital treatment.

She ran up to Marianne’s room, opened the window, and screamed for help.

Neighbours had keys to the house that had been left with them and they went in and saw blood on the carpet.

The ‘devil’ had gone.

I discovered that the entity had been seen at the house from the early 1960s, and the last sighting of it was in 1993. The case continues to baffle me.

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