HAUNTED WIRRAL: Acre Lane's haunted house

In this latest tale, Tom explores the spooky story behind Acre Lane's haunted house.

I'VE changed a few names in this strange story for legal reasons.

In the late 1980s a family of five moved into a terraced house on Bromborough's Acre Lane.

The couple and their three children - Christina, aged 18, Lewis, aged 15 and 12-year-old Eddie, soon settled into the house, but around a week after the move into the property, Eddie woke the household up one night, screaming "Leave me alone!"

His father and mother rushed to his room and turned on the light to find the boy cowering under his duvet.

He told his parents a lady and a boy round his age had shaken him awake.

At first, Eddie had thought it was his Nan and his cousin Michael, but then he saw that he didn’t know them and they were both laughing and jeering at him – and then the boy had said: "We're dead!"

Eddie's father told him that he'd just had a nightmare and let the lad sleep with the light on.

At 4am Eddie's screams pierced the air again and this time, Christina ran to his room, followed by her parents.

The boy said the two ghosts had returned with another one, and she was dark, like a shadow – almost pure silhouette.

She had stroked Eddie's hair as she sang a song about a baby.

Eddie's testimony was later backed up by the couple who lived next door, for they had heard the ghosts taunting Eddie and the sound of someone singing.

The neighbouring couple then told the family that the house they'd moved into (which had been built in the 1930s) had something of a reputation for being haunted, but by whom - was unknown.

In February of that year, Christina discovered she was pregnant and she had recently split up with the father of the child – a trainee chef named Rob.

Christina didn't tell her parents, but when she was thirteen weeks the bump started to show so she told her mum she was 'in the club'.

The girl's mum said she was a fool 'falling pregnant' to Rob, and there was a row.

Christina ran in tears up to her bedroom and got into bed.

She heard her father arguing with her mother downstairs, and then the girl's dad came up and said: "It's not the end of the world, love; take no notice of your mother.

"We'll stand by you whatever you decide to do."

Christina stayed in bed, and cried herself to sleep.

She woke up around one in the morning and turned off the bedside lamp.

She noticed the full moon hanging in the sky beyond the net curtains, and she drifted off to sleep again – but then at half-past three that morning, Christina awoke to the sensation of someone stroking her baby bump.

She thought it was her mother at first, and then she heard someone sing a song that went: "Don't do it baby, don't let the teardrops start ..."

Christina rubbed her eyes and recoiled in terror; a silhouette of a thin young woman was kneeling on her bed, and she was stroking Christina's tummy as she sang the song.

In a flash, Christina got out of that bed and ran out the room onto the landing.

She saw her father going to the toilet and she was in such a shock she could hardly get her words out for a moment.

Her bleary-eyed father asked: "Was that you singing before?"

Christina clutched his upper arm and replied: "No - no, dad, there’s a woman in my bedroom – I think she’s a ghost!"

"What?" the girl's father asked – and then his eyes bulged and he looked at something behind Christina.

She turned and saw the silhouetted ghost peeping out from the doorway of her bedroom.

The eerie head quickly withdrew back into the room, and when Christina’s father bravely went into the room a minute later, he saw that it was empty.

A week after this, Christina's 15-year-old brother Lewis was in his bedroom one night, gazing out the window, when he saw the reflection of a young woman in the window.

She was standing behind him and he reflexively turned to see who she was – but when he looked behind, there was no one there.

Lewis then started to feel a 'presence' follow him about the house now and then.

A month before Christina was due to give birth, the ghost of the older woman and the boy paid her a visit at three in the morning and woke her up.

Off the top of her head, out of desperation, Christina recited the Lord’s Prayer, and the boy ran out of the room via the solid wall which partitioned Christina’s home from her neighbours.

After the ghost went into the wall, the female apparition backed into the same wall, and Christina could hear the voice of the man next door cry out "Keep away from us!" 

He later told Christina’s parents that he and his wife had seen the ghosts of the child and the woman come running through the wall of their bedroom – as they fled from Christina’s room.

The hauntings continued and the family later left the troubled dwelling.

The reason for the haunting of the house on Acre Lane remains unknown, and I hear that the ghosts are still active.

All of Tom Slemen’s books are on Amazon.