HAUNTED WIRRAL: Taylor Street's haunted house

In this latest tale, Tom explores the tale of Taylor Street's haunted house.

AS some of us get older we lose our open-mindedness and there are a few grumpy people who, because they are perhaps bitter at an unfortunate incident that has happened to them, or perhaps through disappointment because some childhood ambition was not fulfilled, turn to disbelief in life itself out of spite.

With all of the latest technology at the disposal of the human race - which includes the hundred-plus radio telescopes on the planet, the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope which will succeed it - we can still only see five per cent of the universe.

Yet I know many people who are militant atheists and they dictate their assurances that God does not exist as if they know everything about this unimaginably vast universe.

Just as Henry VIII knew nothing about cosmic rays and black holes, we know nothing about the other 95% of the cosmos – and we know next to nothing about the paranormal.

In the shadow of the brick-clad ventilation tower for the Queensway Tunnel on Birkenhead's Taylor Street, there once stood an unremarkable-looking terraced house, situated close to the corner of George Street.

It was one of several houses that would later be demolished to make way for a door and window manufacturing plant.

In the early 1970s, the house in question was derelict, and had a reputation for being haunted amongst older folk who warned children to stay away from the place – but curiosity is endless in kids, and the youngsters of the neighbourhood wondered just what haunted the house.

One nine-year-old boy named Kevin said there were no ghosts in the "bombdy" – old slang for a derelict dwelling – the ghost stories were just a way of keeping children out the old house because a tramp lived there.

That was Kevin's theory, anyway.

One grey and chilly Sunday afternoon in February 1975, Kevin and his gang of four were playing a game of "off-ground tick" in George Street when a pretty girl of about ten years of age approached them and smiled at the gang as they played.

She had long blonde hair, and wore a rather old-fashioned black dress, black stockings and a pair of highly-polished black ankle-length boots.

Her eyes were large and of pale blue.

Girls weren't allowed in Kevin's gang and the lads stopped playing and looked the girl up and down.

"Who are you?" Kevin asked the stranger.

She stood there for a while and just grinned, and then in an accent that was not local, the girl said: "Rosie. What's your name?"

"Ooh Rosie", mocked Peter, a member of the gang, trying to imitate the girl's posh voice.

"I am Sir Peter," he added and the others laughed, but Kevin didn't – he sensed there was something eerie about the girl.

"Would you like to come to my toy room?" Rosie asked, and she stood there with her arms at her sides.

"Why are you dressed like that?" Kevin asked, and his eyes travelled up and down Rosie’s funereal attire, but she never replied.

The gang moved forward and Peter put on his silly voice and said: "I would love to see your toyroom! Spiffing!"

"Very well then - come along," said Rosie, and she turned on her heels and marched silently towards the derelict house with that unsavoury reputation, followed by the four members of the gang.

Kevin walked some distance behind them all and tried to tell his friends they shouldn’t go with the girl but the boys were enthralled at the prospect of visiting this "toyroom".

The lads followed an agile Rosie up three flights of creaky, dusty cobwebbed stairs until they came to a room with flocked blue wallpaper and floral-patterned linoleum on the floor.

There was a huge white rocking horse there with a golden mane and red saddle, and Peter got on it and shouted "Giddy up!"

There were spinning tops and building blocks with letters (which one lad used to spell out coarse words), dolls, a miniature piano, a clockwork carousel which chimed Greensleeves and a large toy theatre.

There was also a wooden chest in the corner with hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades painted upon it.

Rosie pointed to the toy theatre and the curtains opened by themselves and a wooden horse on wheels rolled onto the little stage.

Puppets of players appeared on the stage dressed in togas, and Kevin asked "Who's doing all that? Who's moving the puppets?"

No reply came from a smiling Rosie.

The youngest member of the gang, Tim, who was just six, picked up a brass telescope, unfolded it and tried to look out the window when there was a loud click.

The boy screamed.

A spike had shot out of the eyepiece of the telescope through some spring-operated mechanism, and it would have punctured the boy's eyeball but instead it had grazed the side of his face.

As Kevin looked in shock at the spike, the gang heard a muffled voice say "Let me out!"

It was coming from that wooden chest in the corner.

Kevin told Tim to stop crying and he and the three gang members went to the box.

"Who's in there?" Kevin asked.

"Jack! Help me!" came the reply.

Peter looked at Kevin and said: ‘Let's go and tell the police" and the lid of the chest flew open. A scary-looking clown rocketed out of the box.

It had a collapsible torso like the bellows of a concertina and long red springs for arms with white gloves for hands, and it thrust a dagger at Kevin that cut his ear.

The children screamed, fled the room and almost fell down the stairs.

No-one believed the children's story and the 'toyroom' was later found to be empty. Just who Rosie was remains unknown.

* All Tom Slemen's books are available from Amazon.