HAUNTED WIRRAL: The ghost got into the bed

This week, Tom tells the tale of the ghost that got into the bed.

IN March 1963, Hughie and Sandra, a couple in their early twenties were sitting in the laundrette on St Paul’s Road, Wallasey.

An old vagrant named George came in and said to Sandra "You said you were looking for a place, didn’t you?" 

Hughie looked at Sandra and asked, "Who's he?" Sandra shrugged and said she'd never set eyes on him before.

The vagrant smiled and told a baffled Sandra "You were talking to that woman in the chandlers down the road yisterday, saying you and your fellah were looking for a place." 

Sandra had indeed been chatting to a friend in the chandlers about the difficulties of finding a place to live, and thought it was creepy how the tramp had been eavesdropping.

"Anyway, love," said George, "there's a room going at a house on Oakdale Avenue, and it’s free.

"All you have to do is do some ironing, cooking, cleaning, etcetera, honest." 

"Take no notice of him, love," an old woman told the couple, and she nodded at George saying "he's soft in the head." 

"I'm not soft!" George roared at the elderly lady, "Stop putting it about that I’m soft!" 

George then told Sandra the number of the house where a room was available on Oakdale Avenue, and when the couple were leaving the laundrette with their smalls, they saw George climb into one of the dryers and close the circular door on himself.

"He's potty!" said Hughie, but Sandra went with her boyfriend to the house on Oakdale Avenue and a large square-shouldered man in his thirties with collar-length red hair and a van dyke beard answered.

He wore a colourful Norwegian lusekofte sweater and a churchwarden pipe levered up and down in his mouth as he spoke.

He confirmed what George had said – he and his wife were looking for a live-in couple to cook and clean in return for a rent-free large room.

The man was named Bill and his wife's name was Lorna.

Bill was from London and his wife was Scottish.

They invited Sandra and Hughie into their Bohemian lounge of bean bags, bongos, guitars, hanging tapestries on Tyrian purple walls, incense and hookah pipes.

Lorna was every inch the beatnik in her Egyptian-blue-tinted spectacles, black turtleneck sweater, black cigarette pants and black ballet flats.

There were books on French existentialism and a well-thumbed copy of Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception strewn across a settee along with LPs by Stockhausen, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

Bill and Lorna served the couple two glasses of Mateus rosé and the foursome smoked innumerable cheroots Lorna produced from a large vintage cedar cigar box until teatime, when Bill smilingly told Sandra and Hughie: "You've got the job!" 

Sandra went to her mother's house on Rice Lane with Hughie to get their belongings and they moved into the house on Oakdale Avenue on the very next day.

That evening after Sandra had cooked and served an excellent dinner, Bill and Lorna sat in the lounge, discussing their 'open marriage' and how they had chosen to be non-monogamous to escape the "hypocrisy of the bourgeois marriage ethos".

Hughie and Sandra couldn't fully comprehend what was being discussed, but when they got to bed, Sandra whispered to her boyfriend "I think they were trying to say they allow one another to see other people." 

"That's barley that," said Hughie, "how’s that a marriage? He better not start trying to touch you up." 

"Don’t be daft, Hugh," Sandra replied, hugging her partner, "I think he only goes for intellectuals anyway." 

The couple drifted off to sleep in their room, and at around 4am, Hughie awoke and realised there was another woman in the bed.

At first he thought it was Sandra – but she was on his right.

He felt the contours of the person to his left, and realising it was a woman, he got up and put on the light – but there was no one there.

He told Sandra what had happened and she told Hughie he’d been dreaming, but the same thing happened on the following morning around 3.15am.

On this occasion, Sandra got up to go to the toilet, and when she was gone, a woman got into the bed, and for a moment, Hughie thought it was his girlfriend, but then Sandra came back into the room and said "Who"s that?" 

She turned on the light – and the figure next to Hughie vanished.

"Thank God you saw her too!" said Hughie.

"That’s the woman I saw last time, Sandra – I told you I wasn't dreaming!" 

Three days later, the couple retired at 2am after a supper and a long discussion about politics with Bill and Lorna, and they soon fell asleep, and this time a bedside lamp was left on because Sandra was afraid the female ghost would turn up again.

At 4am, an icy hand stroking Hughie's head woke him up, and he turned – and there on his pillow rested the head of the female ghost.

She was gazing at him intently with huge eyes and her face looked almost skeletal.

Hughie swore and shook Sandra awake and the ghost vanished.

Enough was enough – the couple left the house and walked almost a mile to the house of Sandra’s mum on Rice Lane.

Sandra told Bill she and her boyfriend had left their job because of the ghost and he said he’d only lived in the property for a month and had no idea the place was haunted.

That house on Oakdale Avenue is still haunted by that unknown female ghost.

* All Tom Slemen's books and audiobooks are on Amazon.