HAUNTED WIRRAL: The Barnston Road Bogeyman

In this latest tale, Tom explores the story of the Barnston Road Bogeyman...

Two very traumatic incidents took place that summer in 1974, and Judy and Pauline – who are now both aged 58 – remember these events as if they had happened only last week.

It was the first week of an infernal August, 1974, and Judy had received a Budgie bicycle for her birthday.

She was giving her best friend Pauline a “takey” down Barnston Road when the girls witnessed a collision between two cars which led to the driver of one vehicle – and her three young children – being hospitalised in Clatterbridge.

On the following day on the same stretch of Barnston Road, another alarming occurrence took place.

The time was half-past eight, the sun had set, and twilight was creeping across the sky.

At the Milner Road junction of Barnston Road, Pauline asked if she could ride the Budgie bike the two miles to her home on Sparks Lane and bring the bicycle back in the morning, but Judy shook her head and said, "No way Pauline, my mum would go spare – I’ve only just got it for me birthday."

And so, Pauline got on the back of the bicycle, about to ride as a ‘pinion passenger’ when a red convertible sports car of some sort came down Barnston Road from the north.

Although the sun had gone down, the driver of this impressive-looking car wore a pair of shades, and he halted the sleek vehicle alongside the Budgie bike. Judy noticed the car had a left-hand drive.

In a well-spoken voice the driver asked: "Am I going the right way to Landican Road?"

"No, it’s up there – that way!" shouted Pauline, pointing northwards – the direction the car had come from.

"Oh, I must have gone past it," muttered the driver, and he turned the car around and the vehicle crawled slowly alongside the bicycle.

"Could one of you possibly get in and show me the way?" he queried with a smile.

"Yes, I’m going that way, anyway," said Pauline, struggling to get off the bike, but Judy turned to her and gave her a strong disapproving glance.

"Pauline," said Judy under her breath, "don’t get in his car – he could be a murderer."

"I’m not a murderer or a sex maniac," laughed the stranger – he’d obviously overheard Judy’s whispered warning to her friend. "I’m actually a judge, so I’m on the right side of the law."

Pauline longed to get in a car that looked as if it could go pretty fast and she got into the vehicle and the man said, "Thank you. So, it’s straight up this road?"

Pauline nodded, and the car started to slowly accelerate. And then the driver turned right to look at Pauline close up, and when she saw his eyes she recoiled in terror.

Behind the polarised glass the man’s eyes were jet black with luminous blue irises!

Before Pauline could even try and jump out of the car there was a burst of speed and the inertia pressed the girl back into her seat as the sports car peeled rubber.

The vehicle was travelling at an uncontrollable speed towards a fork in the road with Barnston Road on one side and Storeton Lane on the other.

Pauline screamed because she thought the car was going to crash, but somehow the driver managed to negotiate the sudden bend in the road and the vehicle screeched and swerved down Storeton Lane, the side of the car missing a low sandstone wall by a few inches.

Storeton Lane was narrow, and hedgerows and trees flashed past as the driver threw back his head and screamed with laughter.

He took both hands off the steering wheel and seized Pauline’s left hand and pressed something into her palm.

The girl screamed as she felt an agonizing pain in her palm.

When she looked at her hand she saw she had a black circle with a symbol in it branded into her palm.

The car screeched on down Storeton Lane and on into Station Road, passing the old brickfields, and then it suddenly decelerated and came to a halt, and the maniac at the wheel turned to Pauline, pointed to her painful hand and said, "I put my mark on you, and now your soul is mine!"

The door next to Pauline opened by itself and the man shoved the girl out of the car and it tore off as he screamed with laughter.

Pauline walked miles in tears that evening till she saw a worried Judy pedalling towards her on her bike.

She told Judy what had happened and said she thought the man had been the Devil.

For seven years the mark on Pauline’s hand remained, and throughout that period she had many vivid nightmares about the sinister lunatic until one day the “mark” vanished from Pauline’s palm.

Unknown to Pauline, the demonic driver had been encountered before on Barnston Road and Chester High Road, with reports going back to the 1950s.

I have even found a case from the 19th century where a girl is given a ride to her home in Wittering Lane, Heswall, by a chivalrous dandy on horseback who also brands her hand so she will become his “slave in the life to come”.

A folklorist might say these are just recurring archetypal urban legends – a convenient catch-all explanation for anything beyond the periphery of our limited knowledge – but I think these entities are real, and I hope you won’t meet them on your travels...

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