WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.

In this latest tale, Tom explores the spooky story of The Lockdown Dream Demon.

NOT long after the Covid19 Lockdown began, on March 23, people across the country started having freakish and very lucid dreams.

Most of these disturbing dreams had an element of paranoia running through them, with the dreamer often being chased by strangers, and curiously, the dreams millions of people were having were very similar, according to YouGov polls, surveys by the likes of King’s College, London, as well as various articles in such staid publications as the NewScientist.

Locally, here on Wirral, there seems to have been a very sinister development of the Lockdown Dream Syndrome; some type of menacing paranormal entity is terrifying people in their dreams AND their waking lives, if the many reports of the 'bogeyman' I have received are to be believed.

I have investigated these 'dream demons' before and they always seem to appear in times of great stress.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were a high number of mysterious deaths of Laotian-Hmong refugees in the United States, and all of the victims were healthy young men who had died in their sleep after suffering from a series of nightmares featuring a weird bogeyman type of character.

Because most of the refugees who died had escaped from the Cambodian genocide, psychologists assumed the deaths were from heart failure suffered in the midst of graphic nightmares about the traumatic times the men had lived through - but this wasn't so.

The men had all spoken of being stalked by a weird figure in black in their dreams, and curiously, the sleep death phenomenon was later reported in other parts of the world, including Singapore, parts of Canada, and even England.

The American film director Wes Craven was intrigued by the spate of unexplained deaths apparently being caused by some demonic being during the hours of sleep, and he was inspired to create the Freddy Krueger character.

From my personal experience and investigations, I know that sinister paranormal beings called Shadow People, along with entities known historically as the Old Hags – can often enter dreams and scare a person to such an extent in a nightmare, the dreamer suffers a fatal heart attack.

In the second phase of this disturbing phenomenon, the entity seems to be able to enter the waking, physical world, and I have had reports of this happening locally.

In April of this year, Jenny, a 40-year-old woman living in a flat in Birkenhead began to have vivid nightmares of a small man in a black balaclava and a tight-fitting black one-piece suit who started chasing her.

The eyes of this creepy figure were glowing and set in huge circular black sockets.

He gave his name as Wincey – and sometimes Stanley, and the nightmares would always start with him knocking at Jenny's front door.

In the dream she would look through her wide-angle door viewer and see only the communal hall at first –and then "Wincey" would slide into view and his distorted, convex pallid face, as seen through the fish-eye lens would lean into the door viewer and he'd say: "Open the door you".

"Who are you?" Jenny would always say in the recurrent nightmare, and the eerie caller would spell out his name: "W-I-N-C-E-Y! Wincey!"

Jenny would then run into her living room and search for her mobile but before she could call the police, Wincey would be heard, padding along the hallway.

Then he'd appear in the doorway – with a knife.

He'd grin before he lunged at Jenny, and at that point she'd wake up in a sweat.

One evening Jenny’s friend Lisa – who lives on Rake Lane, Wallasey, called her in a very distressed state.

Lisa said she was having the same nightmare over and over about a little man in black with a knife named Stanley who would knock on her front door, and if Lisa would not let him in, he would come through the door like a ghost and chase her with the knife.

Jenny went cold when she heard this, and she recalled that in one of the dreams, "Wincey" had said his name was Stanley.

Jenny became so afraid, she telephoned her ex boyfriend and asked him to stay with her, but he said he couldn't because of the rules of the Lockdown.

Lisa was also living on her own and began to Skype Jenny for company, sometimes into the wee small hours.

In early May, Lisa was sitting up in bed at around 3am watching Netflix when she saw her bedroom door slowly open.

"Who's that?" she cried, getting out the bed to grab a chair to hit the intruder with, and a very weird and familiar head peeped around the door – it was Stanley, the terrifying bogeyman from her dream.

He withdrew his head and as Lisa screamed, she heard him shuffle down the hallway. Lisa put on her slippers and she ran out the house and walked aimlessly on a deserted Rake Lane, risking prosecution as she violated the Lockdown rules.

She eventually went back into her home and stayed in her bedroom with the bed pushed up against the door as she chatted to Jenny.

Days after this, Jenny heard a gentle tapping on her front door, and when she looked through the wide-angle viewer, she saw the distinctive face of "Wincey" peering in - and then he vanished.

She still feels a weird presence in her home after dark, as if the entity is watching her, and he often appears in her dreams.

I have had many emails from other people who are having realistic nightmares featuring weird figures, and from the descriptions given, some of these beings are very similar to Wincey ...

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