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 mystery surrounding the angel over Wallasey...

One swelteringly hot but breezy afternoon in June 1920, a 12-year-old truant named Michael Donnelly and his best friend Davy Johnson - a Welsh lad with bright red hair - went down to Seacombe to try out their home-made kite on the beach.

The warm zephyrs lifted the diamond-shaped kite – made from old shirts ‘found’ in the wardrobe of Michael’s father and a cross of balsa wood – and then a cool wind from the north sent the kite into a steady ascension of the clear Wedgewood-blue heavens.

Michael quickly unreeled the bobbin of string as Davy kept pestering him for a go at manoeuvring the quadrilateral aerofoil but Michael started running with the kite, kicking sand onto carefully-laid blankets and gingham picnic cloths on the beach, much to the annoyance of the leisure-seekers.

"Michael! A thing in the sky’s got hold of the kite!" claimed Davy, hand held over his squinting eyes as if he was saluting that devil of a sun.

Michael raced onwards.

He thought Davy was just fibbing so he could make him look skywards and grab the bobbin whilst distracted.

But the drag of the kite in the hundreds of feet of string dramatically lessened – and Michael turned and looked at the eye-smarting sky and saw a figure as long as his thumbnail.

It had fluttering white robes – and was they wings attached to whoever that thing was?

"It’s an angel!" Davy declared, and he said to a spectacled old woman who was sitting in a deckchair enjoying an ice cream cornet: "Hey missus, there’s an angel in the sky and it’s got our kite!"

The woman smiled as Davy pointed into the blue – and then she looked up and adjusted her glasses.

"What is that?" she muttered, "Looks like a person."

Many heads were soon being craned back and people removed their sunglasses and narrowed their disbelieving eyes as they watched the angel hover in the azure heavens with the kite in its hands.

The alabaster-white figure was apparently examining the kite as it hung in the sky as steady as a morning moon. Meanwhile, across the Mersey, Tom, an 18-year-old junior clerk with Cunard, was idly gazing out the office window of the company’s majestic waterfront building when something caught his eye in the sky over Wallasey.

High above the busy comings and goings of the ships on the sparkling Mersey, there was an ivory-white figure, and Tom’s young eyes could make out the outstretched wings on this startling vision.

Tom called to another young clerk named William and, pointing towards Wirral, he asked him: "Can you see that thing in the sky there?"

William thinned his eyes and said, "Oh yes! Is it a balloon?"

"That’s no balloon," Tom replied, "it looks like an angel with a pair of wings – can you see them?"

"Yes I can," said William slowly, "what on earth is it?"

"Oh look at that! There’s a plane flying close to it!" said Tom, noticing what seemed to be a biplane flying high over the beach.

Tom and many other colleagues at Cunard saw the angel return days later, and they watched it fly over the Mariner’s Home and St Mary’s Church.

The winged entity was also seen to hide in clouds.

When it made its final departure, the angel flew at an incredible speed towards New Brighton until it was lost to sight.

Decades later Tom would relate the sighting of the 'Wallasey Angel' to reporter Derek Whale, and the story would be published in the Liverpool Echo in April 1977.

I mentioned the angel incident on a local radio programme and received many calls, emails and letters regarding the incident, including a letter from 94-year-old Michael Donnelly – the boy who’d had his kite swiped by the angel.

He never got his kite back, as the angel had flown off 'like a rocket' when an RAF biplane flew close to the celestial visitor.

How do we explain these angelic beings?

The rational part of my mind has great difficulty accepting them, and yet I have received hundreds of reports of angels intervening in the lives of everyday people over the years, but most of them are not described as having wings; they often do their good deeds dressed in contemporary clothes.

I’ll feature some of these accounts of angelic visitations in Wirral in my Globe column in the coming weeks.

In the meantime – keep watching the skies – you never know...

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