HAUNTED WIRRAL: The ghost of the embalmed lady

In this latest tale, Tom explores the mystery behind the ghost of the embalmed lady...

The Victorian detached house still stands today on Birkenhead’s Park Road South, but nowadays it is divided into flats.

From time to time I receive a letter or email from a tenant at the flats, telling me of a female ghost, and they always mention the ghastly-looking eyes of the phantasm.

In the summer of 1977, this ghost was exceptionally active – so much so that it caused one person to suffer a heart attack.

The episode unfolded in early August 1977 when two nephews of the house’s owner moved into the dwelling.

The owner had recently died from a stroke at the age of 74 and had left the house to his oldest nephew Allan, who had just turned forty.

Allan and his 33-year-old brother Robin moved into the three-storey eight-bedroom house and brought their girlfriends with them. Allan’s fiancée was a 30-year-old willowy brunette named Georgina, a piano tutor and a very capable artist, and Robin’s girlfriend was 27-year-old Anna, who was currently out of work.

On their first night at the house on Park Road, the brothers and their partners planned to inspect the dwelling from cellar to attic – but they found the attic locked.

Allan was determined to get into the attic, as he thought his late uncle might have hoarded antique furniture in there. The executor of the will had told Allan that a priceless pair of Louis XVI Giltwood fauteuil chairs, a Burr walnut longcase clock and some miscellaneous militaria had gone missing from the house a few years ago but his uncle had not reported the apparent thefts to the police.

Allan convinced himself that the missing items had probably been squirrelled away in the attic by his late uncle.

He contemplated wrenching the attic door open with a crowbar but Georgina advised him to send for a locksmith instead, and Allan found one in the Yellow Pages and asked him to come out as soon as possible.

It was a Saturday, and the locksmith said he’d be there Monday morning.

A party was thrown at the house on the Saturday evening, and with the dwelling being detached, the brothers had no neighbours to complain about the records being played at full blast. A dozen guests had a whale of a time at the party, and around 10pm, Penny, a friend of Georgina, came into the lounge and beckoned the latter as she headed for the kitchen. Georgina went to see what she wanted.

"Georgie," she said to her friend, "I think I’ve just met my first ghost."

"What?" Georgina asked with a lopsided smile, but Penny nodded and told her, "As I left the toilet upstairs, I noticed her gliding along the landing towards me as if she was on castors. She wore a bell-bottom dress and was all in black. Her eyes looked terrifying – they bulged. Anyway, she started going backwards, as if she was on wheels, and then she just – well – vanished."

"I think you’ve probably had too many Martinis, Penny," was Georgina’s explanation regarding the alleged ghost.

However, as the evening drew on, more guests talked of the strange woman in the big skirt darting about the place, and then Georgina saw the backdated figure herself as she walked into the bedroom to look for a packet of cigarettes.

The ghost stood there by the window, its face in its hands, silently sobbing.

Before the thing could turn to look at her, Georgina turned on her heels and ran downstairs to tell Allan what she had seen.

He thought his brother had told Georgina to say she had seen a ghost because ghosts were the one thing that scared him, but Georgina was furious at the suggestion.

At 3am, Georgina and Allan went to bed, and left a handful of guests downstairs singing and dancing.

At around 4am, something awakened Georgina.

It was dark but the faint light of the summer’s pre-dawn was slowly filtering into the room. She thought she saw a head peep over the bottom of the bed for a moment. Yes! There it was! Something was moving down there.

Georgina wondered if it was Penny messing about, and she shook Allan awake.

"What is it?" he groaned, and Georgina said, "There’s someone at the end of the bed, honest!"

With great effort, Allan lifted his head and looked – then froze in terror. The pallid face of a woman with her hair done up in a bun was looking at him over the end of the bed.

Her eyes looked inhuman and dead as the eyes of a doll. Georgina screamed and the unknown woman jumped onto the bed and her clammy skeletal hands grabbed Allan by the throat.

"Stay out of the attic or you will surely die!" she screeched – and then she vanished. The shock of the violent encounter with the ghost caused Allan to suffer a cardiac arrest and he was taken to hospital.

On the Monday morning, Allan’s brother Robin admitted the locksmith, who promptly opened the attic door. Inside, they found the embalmed body of the very woman who had been haunting the house, sitting in a cobwebbed high-back chair. I discovered that this lady, a spinster and the beloved aunt of Robin’s late uncle, had been so afraid of being buried alive, she had arranged in her will to be embalmed after death and left sitting in the attic, which had been sealed after she had been ‘put into position.'

The embalmer had not done a very good job of preserving the woman’s eyes.

Her body was interred days after the grisly discovery, but she still haunts that house on Park Road South...

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