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

In this latest tale, Tom explores Wirral's mysterious angel sightings...

Angels are said to be pure spiritual beings which never incarnate in human form; they are energy forms which can become material at will to produce temporary solid-looking bodies, and science has only recently caught up with this process.

Einstein’s well known equation: E=mc2 told the world that matter was a form of energy and that energy could also become matter, and scientists at Imperial College London recently converted energy into solid matter by turning a pair of photons from a light beam into an electron and its antiparticle – a positron.

The biggest and most violent energy-to-matter event was undoubtedly the incident we call the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

Some religions believe God said “Let there be light” whereas atheists believe the Universe just appeared out of a mysterious cataclysmic explosion – and if you think about it, believers and non-believers are describing the same thing. Angels, then, are said to be masters of this mass-energy conversion technique, often appearing as bright and colourful lights if the many descriptions of angels that are reported to me are anything to go by – but angels can also appear as ordinary-looking humans, but they are always described as well above average height. Let me start with an account of an encounter with an angelic being that radiated blinding light.

This was on a pleasant warm July morning at 1:30am in 1996. The Johnson family of Woodchurch were returning from a day out with relatives in Hooton, and they were travelling north along the M53.

Mr Johnson, aged forty, was at the wheel of the car, his wife was sat in the front passenger seat, listening to the radio.

In the back of the car sat the couple’s two children, 14-year-old Marc and his 12-year-old sister Leanne. As the car passed Raby Mere, Mr Johnson thought he saw an orange-reddish light about a mile ahead, just a few degrees above the horizon, but surmised it was the lights of a plane.

Minutes later, as the car carrying the family was about 400 yards from the Brimstage Road bridge – which crosses over the M53, the orange light returned, and everyone in the car saw it. "Dad? What on earth is that?" Leanne asked, leaning forward and lowering her head to see the strange flare-like light.

"It’s gone under the bridge," said Mr Johnson, gingerly slowing the vehicle.

"Oh my God, look!" cried Mrs Johnson. The light hovered under the bridge, and when the car was about thirty yards away, the Johnson family could see the glowing white figure of a woman with her arms outstretched with her palms towards them. The blazing orange and yellow halo around the levitating figure’s head was so bright, it was like looking at the sun.

"Pull over!" said a powerful female voice which seemed to come from the radio.

Mr Johnson stopped the car, unsure what to do, and once again the voice boomed: "Pull over!"

Mr Johnson drove onto the hard shoulder, and as he did, a speeding car with its headlights switched off came out of nowhere with squealing tyres, and it weaved about as if it was being driven by a drunk.

If Mr Johnson hadn’t pulled over, the car would have smashed into his vehicle from behind at around 80mph. The family saw the glowing female fly up into the night sky and vanish.

The Johnsons sat there in silence, and a police car pulled up in front of them.

The policeman walked to the vehicle and Mr Johnson said, "You won’t believe what we just saw," to which the policeman replied, "I saw it too." He then looked silently at the full moon in the sky.

"It was an angel," said Mrs Johnson, "and she saved our lives."

"I’ve seen them before, and er – never mind;" the policeman hesitated, then walked back to his car saying, "anyway, you lot get home." Mr Johnson wondered for many years what the policeman was going to say regarding the angel.

Mrs Johnson had been having a crisis of faith around this time, but that encounter with the glowing entity – whatever it was – helped her to regain her belief in God.

Another type of angel – one in the form of a tall handsome man in a midnight blue suit – is alleged to have saved the lives of a Birkenhead couple – Burt and Maureen Wheeler - on the Saturday morning of 9 May 1970.

Burt and Maureen were in the Famous Army Stores on Birkenhead’s Grange Road around 11:30am when a tall debonair gentleman came on the scene and told Maureen, "You and your husband must leave here now."

The smartly-dressed stranger did not speak with a local accent, and he followed Maureen as she walked to her husband to tell him what the man had just told her.

"Why have we got to leave?" asked an annoyed Burt. Maureen and Burt then saw what looked like orange flames in the eyes of the stranger, and this really unnerved them.

The man then vanished and the couple was suddenly filled with panic and ran out of the store.

Minutes later a blaze broke out in a fitting room on the first floor of the store. Firemen fought the blaze for about half an hour.

Burt and Maureen then realised that the tall mysterious stranger had saved their lives and to this day Maureen believes he was some guardian angel.

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