HAUNTED WIRRAL: Wirral's lost land

In this latest tale, Tom explores the mystery behind Wirral's lost land...

Time devours all things, and it does it relentlessly and silently like a file that makes no noise as it erodes.

Time topples all civilisations in the end, and we only have to look at the Colosseum or the Acropolis of Athens to remind us of the fall of the once-great Roman and Greek empires.

And nearer to home we have many lost villages in England; places like Radley (often mistakenly called Raleigh) in Nottinghamshire, which vanished without a trace in the 12th century, and there are other places which have mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth in the North West.

Kilgrimol once existed between Lytham and Blackpool in the 12th century, and was either submerged by some type of tidal wave or perhaps simply buried by the constantly inward-drifting sands.

The most fascinating lost land in the North West has to be the arboreal kingdom known by occultists as 'The Realm' – this is an immense dominion which existed a long time ago – long before the Roman Invasion – probably about five thousand years ago.

The Realm was a territory which stretched from modern-day Meols to Formby, and was mostly made up of a forest to the south. Mirage-like apparitions have not only been seen of this long-vanished kingdom, I have also received many accounts of people who have physically entered it over the years through some timeslip.

The vestiges of the ancient forest of The Realm, can occasionally be seen at Dove Point, Meols, between the slipway and the groyne, if you’d care to check it out for yourself.

Alas, the only traces of the forest are petrified stumps of ancient oaks. In August 1983, two old friends, Martin, a doctor, and Ken, a retired chemist – both aged 62 – left their homes in Hoylake one sunny afternoon and went to call on a mutual friend at Meols, but getting no answer the men went to walk along Meols Parade to get some sea air in their lungs.

As Martin and Ken walked along, they noticed what they assumed to be a dark cloud on the beach, but could not see any fire. They then noticed a thick wooded area which went right up the beach and onto Bennet’s Lane.

The presence of this heavily wooded area naturally baffled the two men, and they went to explore the wood. Other locals saw the trees too, Ken recalled, but he and Martin were the first to enter the bizarre wood. Ken thought there was something very strange about the whole affair and told Martin they should turn back, but the latter was filled with rampant curiosity and said, "They must have planted all this as a sea-defence thing," and Ken shook his head and replied, "Defence from what? Let’s go back, Marty."

The inquisitive doctor took no notice and marched on through what seemed to be a sprawling forest of oaks and huge ferns, and it struck Ken that the place was looking more like the rainforests he had seen on the TV nature programmes more than a humble wood.

After walking for about ten minutes, Ken once again tried to talk Martin into leaving the baffling forest. He said, "Marty, we must be about half a mile out now, and the tide might come in!"

"We’ll go back in a minute," said Marty, looking at the floor of the forest, "can’t see any sand – this is all soil."

Ken then noticed a tall standing stone, similar to the ones seen at Stonehenge, only a bit smaller, and as he set eyes upon it, a blinding light radiated from the tip of the stone, and it became surrounded by a halo of various colours.

"What in God’s name is that?" Martin asked, startled by the luminous stone.

Suddenly, to the right of the stone, a tall figure, well over six feet in height, stepped out from behind the massive trunk of a tree.

It was someone dressed in a silvery suit of armour with a fearsome mask of metal built into the helmet.

Ken was a keen birdwatcher, and straight away he saw that there was an engraving of an oystercatcher on the breastplate of this menacing knight.

The armoured figure was resting his gauntlets on the pommel of the sword’s handle, and the tip of the blade was impaling the ground. The knight said nothing, and to the left, the standing stone was still giving off light and making a crackling, electrical sound.

Martin also noticed a second stone about twenty feet away, and that too was glowing. A beautiful red-headed lady in a blue satin hooded robe came from behind a tree, and with her was a huge panther-like cat, only it was white as snow.

She said something to the knight in a language Ken and Martin did not recognise, and he immediately lifted the sword above his head in a threatening manner, and at the same time the huge white cat growled and came over to the frightened men.

Ken and Martin turned and ran, and they could hear the growling big cat closing in and the clanking sound of the knight giving chase.

The men expected to be cut down by the huge sword or savaged by the cat any moment, but seconds later, they found themselves running across the sands. They looked back, and saw that the forest had vanished.

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