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

In this latest story, Tom tells the horrifying tale of headless Heidi...

One Wednesday afternoon in March 1969, in the third-floor CCTV control room at a certain well-known department store in Liverpool, a 60-year-old Birkenhead man we shall call Jock Stephenson (not his real name), was unblinkingly watching eight monitors as he fed his mouth a stick of spearmint gum.

In his mild Glaswegian brogue he said to Phil, the young man sitting with his back to him: "Look at number 6; she’s back."

Phil looked at the monitor displaying the input from camera 6 downstairs. It showed a typical monochrome scene of women milling about in the knitwear department.

"Which one is she?" Phil asked.

"The one to the left with too much make-up on. She’s around my age and dresses too young," said Jock, "mutton dressed as lamb."

"Oh I see her," said Phil, operating the controls to zoom in on her. "An old hand, eh?"

"Yeah, her name’s Heidi – she’s loaded as well," said Jock, "but all her fingers are the same length. Said she’s turned into a klepto since her husband died. She’s just a tealeaf. Just watch her."

Heidi left the knitwear department and went to the perfume counter, so Jock radioed one of the store’s detectives, a 35-year-old woman named Pam, and told her to go and shadow her.

Pam, like Phil, had only been working at the store for a month, so Jock had to describe Heidi and guide Pam to her.

Pam saw Heidi point to an expensive perfume on the shelf, and when the woman behind the counter went to get it, Heidi picked up two boxed bottles from a display on the counter and pocketed them.

She made eye contact with Pam, winked at her and whispered, "They have more than us, love."

She walked quickly away from the counter and Pam followed her out of the building and seized her arm. "Heidi, I’m a store detective and you’ve just stolen two bottles of perfume. You’d better come back into the store with me."

Jock laughed when he saw Pam escorting Heidi back into the store.

Phil asked what type of punishment she’d receive.

Jock gloatingly answered: "Well, this is no first offence, laddie, so she’ll probably be fined about £75-£100 and be ordered to pay – I don’t know – thirty guineas costs. Serves the fool right. The country’s shoplifting bill was £120m last year."

The very next day, Jock made a serious error of judgement.

He watched a ‘long-haired lout’ (as he called him) walk out the store with a shirt and two male store detectives apprehended the man – who happened to be a solicitor named Thornbury.

"I bought the shirt in Burtons! How dare you!" protested Thornbury, but the detectives manhandled him, pushing him through bemused crowds as one detective joked, "Come on Raffles!"

Thornbury was taken down to the store’s basement interrogation room. The store’s senior security officer said, "Mr Thornbury, our CCTV officer Jock Stephenson saw you take that shirt! Where’s the receipt if you bought it in Burtons?"

Thornbury rummaged in his pockets for a minute or so, then located the receipt in his wallet.

"Here!" he roared, slapping it down on the table, "And you have detained me against my will for quarter of an hour, and I have suffered the indignity of being searched! I have a cast iron case for slander against this store and intend to sue! I am a solicitor too, by the way!"

Jock Stephenson was instantly sacked.

The department store had to pay out over a thousand pounds to Thornbury for slander, assault and false imprisonment.

Jock was hired by another department store in Birkenhead a year later on half the normal salary because of the incident that led to his dismissal in the Liverpool store.

A week into the job, he saw Heidi up to her tricks again at the Birkenhead department store, and alerted the in-store detectives but they could never find her.

Then one day Heidi looked straight into the CCTV cameras on the ceiling of the store and pulled tongues at Jock Stephenson.

He seethed – but then something gruesome and inexplicable took place.

The woman put her hands on each side of her head – and held her head above her body.

Her detached head grinned and winked at Stephenson, and he was so shocked at what he saw, he suffered a coronary spasm.

He staggered to a colleague in the next room getting coffee and told him what he’d seen, then collapsed.

Jock Stephenson woke in hospital and was told by a heart specialist he’d suffered a minor heart attack and was being kept in for observation.

At 2am, Stephenson awoke in the darkened ward and saw Heidi sitting at the end of his bed, grinning.

She nodded and her head fell off her neck and landed in her hands.

Jock screamed for help and headless Heidi vanished before the night nurse arrived.

When Jock was discharged a week later, a store detective told him Heidi had died a month back in a horrific car crash in Cheshire - in which she had been decapitated.

Jock never returned to store surveillance and ended his days as a caretaker.

Tom Slemen's Haunted Liverpool 31 is out soon on Amazon.