HAUNTED WIRRAL: Stalked by a ghost

In this latest tale, Tom explores the creepy story of a ghost who stalked a young woman...

For reasons of confidentiality I’ve had to change a few names in the following strange story.

In March 1979, a pretty Birkenhead girl named Molly Lewis turned eighteen and her friends at the cake shop she worked in celebrated Molly’s birthday by taking her to the Hamilton Club on Henry Street, and there she met a handsome man in his late twenties named Jeff.

He was a very vain and self-assured man and said his nickname was Jeffrodisiac because he 'could stimulate desire in any woman.'

He hailed from Wallasey and worked as a garage mechanic.

He kept dancing with Molly until the rock band Slade came onstage, but at the end of the night he practically begged her to go out with him.

Molly thought Jeff was a bit too old for her but her friends said she should give him a chance.

Molly reluctantly started to date Jeff, and one Sunday evening the mechanic said he had to visit his Nan’s grave at a cemetery and Molly went with him.

It turned out it was all a weird ruse to get Molly alone with him in a secluded place and Jeff took things too far; he made out with Molly on a grave.

She screamed and slapped him and ended the relationship right there.

Not long after this, something quite strange happened; Molly kept seeing a certain man everywhere she went. She saw him looking through the window of the cake shop where she worked, then she saw him in a pub a day later when she was drinking with a workmate, and then Molly noticed the same person sitting behind her on a bus.

He was a slim six-footer with short cropped hair, large staring eyes, and he always wore a slate grey suit with a white open collar shirt.

Molly went down to Chester to do some shopping with her mum Elsie one Saturday, and she noticed that man again on Eastgate Street as she and her mother sat in Swinnertons Café. "Mum, that’s the man," Molly whispered to her mother, "you can see him can’t you?"

"Course I can see him," laughed Elsie, glancing at the stranger, "he’s not invisible."

"Only, I thought he might be a ghost," said Molly, blushing slightly, "because he just turns up and then he –"

The creepy admirer had gone.

Molly was so stunned by the sudden disappearance she let her dunked biscuit fall into her coffee.

"Molly, he’s just walked away into the crowds that’s all," said Mrs Lewis.

Molly continued to be shadowed everywhere she went by the man, and not everyone could see him; Molly’s workmate Donna couldn’t see him, even as he gazed into the cake shop through the window, and this worried Molly, because she wondered if she was hallucinating the man.

Then, in late November, there was a telephone call one evening from Molly’s Aunt Doris in Heswall.

She told her niece she was one of the lucky sixty people whose premium bond had come up, and was about to receive £5,000.

Doris had bought the premium bond for her niece last year, and she knew Molly would spend some of her newfound wealth on going to see her cousin Kelly in Sydney.

Molly got on really well with her cousin and during a trip 5 years ago she had sunned herself on Dee Why Beach.

Molly spent £446 for a return fare between London and Sydney, and was so glad to get away from wintry Wirral – and that weird obsessive stalker.

The teenager was soon ten thousand miles away baking under clear blue skies.

She planned to stay for a month, and three days into the holiday, Molly and Kelly were walking down Oaks Avenue on their way to the beach – when Molly caught a glimpse of that man.

He stood on the other side of the road.

Molly felt sick with fear and Kelly asked her what the matter was – but when Molly pointed to the man he had gone. She told Kelly about her stalker and her cousin said it must have been someone who just looked like him, as no one could be obsessed enough to follow someone ten thousand miles across the world.

Molly convinced herself she had been mistaken, but remained uneasy.

A week later, when Kelly was at work, Molly went to the beach by herself early one morning, and there was hardly another soul about.

She sat in the golden sand, gazing wistfully out to the Pacific – when she heard a voice to her right say, "Hello again."

She turned and saw it was that man – he had followed her - all the way to Australia.

He was crouched slightly and leaning forward, and Molly could see that his face and hands looked pale and almost grey.

His large dark penetrating eyes gazed at her, and he said, "My name is Roy Oliver. Yes, I’m dead, I’m a ghost, but I like you an awful lot."

Molly found herself running on all fours in the sand because her legs were so weak, but she managed to get up and ran away screaming.

She became so hysterical, her relatives advised her to go home early – and Molly did, her holiday completely ruined.

Molly almost suffered a nervous breakdown as ‘Roy’ continued to hound her for months, and one day, when Molly went to a cemetery with her Aunt Doris to put flowers on a relative’s grave, she saw the grave of one Roy Oliver; it was the very grave Jeff had pinned her down on that night.

After that revelation, the ghost stayed away for good.

Haunted Liverpool 32 is out now on Amazon.