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

In this latest tale, Tom explores the strange tale of the masked ghosts ...

IN the Summer school holidays of 2012, the divorced father of 14-year-old Chloe went into hospital for a serious operation and the girl's Aunt Samantha was supposed to look after her, but Samantha herself ended up hospitalised after a car crash in the Midlands.

Chloe's mother had remarried years ago and lived in Spain, but Chloe thought she could easily look after herself at the palatial house on Prenton's Brancote Road.

She invited her best friend Mia to stay over with her until her father was discharged from hospital.

Chloe used her father's credit cards to buy things for herself – mostly from the big online stores – because she believed in retail therapy – that buying things for herself would help her get through what she called "the darkest days" of her life.

She bought clothes, make-up, jewellery, vinyl records (a new craze of Chloe's) art supplies (she liked to draw and purchased over 200 Copic markers) and she had a habit of ordering pizzas almost every day for dinner and tea.

Two days into Mia's residency at Chloe's house, the latter decided to play Slipknot's Psychosocial at full blast on the music centre, and minutes later the neighbour’s 17-year-old nephew Matt came knocking on the front door.

He was a stocky young man with spectacles and when Chloe answered he seemed shy and tongue-tied for a few moments.

Then in a low, monotone voice he said: "Could you keep the noise down? My Auntie's in bed with a migraine."

Chloe pouted, looked Matt right in the eyes and said: "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll just go and tell my idiot friend to turn it down. Oh, by the way, my name's Chloe," the teen added, and thrust out her hand, startling Matt he went red as they shook hands.

"And you are?" she asked.

"Matt", came the reply, and he slowly turned and walked away and Chloe shouted after him "Matt, wait!"

Matt turned and behind his glasses his eyes were wide.

He looked petrified.

"Do you know how to put a garden shed up?" was the random question from Chloe.

It just so happened that Matt was a natural born DIY man who excelled at carpentry at school and loved building things.

The offer to erect a shed was much more exciting to him than meeting a potential girlfriend.

Matt and Chloe were soon sitting side by side at the kitchen table looking at the bigger garden sheds on the laptop's listings.

"Okay, don't laugh," said Chloe, "but here's my scatty idea.

"I want to open my own nightclub in the back garden, just like made of wood like a shed but huge, and I want to call it The 27 Club. I got the name -" "Yeah, I know," said Matt in his monotonous voice, "Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and all that."

"Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin died aged 27 as well," added Mia, sitting on the opposite side of the table.

"I think there are, like, restrictions – you can only have a shed so big or you need planning permission," said Matt.

Chloe squeezed his hand and said: "I'll deal with all that. I just want you to build a massive shed covering half the back garden."

"It'll cost you a bomb", said Matt, looking at the girl's hand clenched around his.

"But I mean, I won't charge for my labour."

Chloe smiled and fanned her dad's credit card under Matt's face.

"Money's no problem," she said.

"I think I'm in love", Chloe told Mia on the following sunny morning as the girls watched Matt in his navy-blue bib and brace carrying planks and wooden panels into the garden.

Mia rolled her eyes and warned Chloe: "Your dad will go nuts when he sees how much you’ve spent on his card."

In the space of one week, Matt, working from 8am till 8pm each day, completed the gigantic garden shed, and even wired the place up so it had lights and outlets via a mains cable to the house.

Huge speakers were also mounted on the walls.

Chloe bought a disco lights laser projector unit and as a bizarre finishing touch she purchased a massive vintage carpet off eBay which Matt laid down on the "club" floor.

Chloe drew up a guest list for the opening night of her very own club, and Mia made a drinks list.

At 10pm on the day the club was finished, the girls danced about to Metallica's old hit Enter Sandman and Matt played the role of DJ, when something very strange happened.

About 50 weird figures of men (and a few women), dressed in 18th century clothes and white periwigs appeared.

All of them wore Lone Ranger-style masks and most were seated on old-fashioned chairs.

Many of these eerie, outdated people had swords and daggers and were all watching Chloe and Mira dancing.

The girls were unaware of the ghosts, but Matt stopped the music and the girls stopped dancing – then saw the crowd of unearthly old-fashioned masked strangers.

A group of the ghostly figures got to their feet and, armed with swords and daggers rushed at the girls.

The teens ran out of the glorified garden shed and were relieved that the ghosts did not follow them out.

When Matt ventured back into the shed some time later, there was no one there.

It was then that he noticed the pattern on the old carpet – it depicted a group of 18th century men and women.

The shed was eventually dismantled by Chloe's furious father and the apparently haunted carpet was thrown into a skip.

Tom Slemen's Haunted Liverpool 31 is out now on Amazon