HAUNTED WIRRAL: "We are not alone"

In this latest tale, Tom tells the tale of the Grange Hill UFO encounter.

FOR reasons of confidentiality, I have changed a few names in this story.

One dismal grey afternoon in September 1963, a 16-year-old named Terry stole a car from outside of Bunny's Garage on Market Street in Hoylake, minutes before the man who had bought the car was due to collect it.

Accompanying Terry in his act of car thievery was 14-year-old girlfriend Becky.

Constable Greg Burgess of Wallasey Police was in his patrol car when he spotted young Terry jumping traffic lights in the stolen vehicle.

PC Burgess overtook the car, signalled for the driver to stop, but Terry overtook him in a suicidal burst of speed and headed for Moreton Cross, where again, Burgess overtook him, but Terry somehow managed to overtake and came that close to smashing into the police car, he took off its wing mirror.

Burgess continued the pursuit and Terry was now clocking seventy down Hoylake Road, and Becky was telling him to go faster, but then something very strange took place.

The police patrol car started to slow down and Burgess stepped on the accelerator pedal but the engine was dead and the vehicle was freewheeling.

Then the policeman noticed the dark underside of a disc, about a hundred feet in diameter, floating above the road.

The disc descended and was at treetop level as it hovered over the stolen vehicle, and that car slowed down and stopped.

PC Burgess applied the brakes and halted about fifty yards from the strange scene.

A light shone down from the craft, which looked bi-convex in shape – like a classical "flying saucer" – and it seem to come from a hole that reminded the policeman of the adjustable aperture of a camera.

The beam of green light struck the stolen car, and then, after about ten seconds, the beam was switched off, and when PC Burgess looked up he heard a roll of thunder, and saw that the lenticular craft had gone.

He ran to the stationary stolen car, and he could already hear the screams of Terry's girlfriend.

Becky ran from the car with her hands over her ears, and when she saw Burgess she ran towards him.

She was hysterical and spoke incoherently about seeing horrible glowing faces in the car.

Terry was found semiconscious, slumped in the driving seat.

PC Burgess detained him and took him and Becky into custody, but never mentioned the UFO. It was 1963 and a policeman mentioning a flying saucer was not the done thing then.

PC Burgess only told his close friend – another copper named Eric Hartnell – about the strange craft, and Eric said he’d just seen some weird weather phenomenon – hence the thunder he’d heard that day.

"And how do you explain the engines of two cars failing at the same time, clever clogs?" Burgess asked.

Again, Eric blamed weather conditions.

Whenever the two mates were on duty at night, Eric would always point to a bright star or the lights of a plane and joke "Is that your flying saucer, Greg?" 

As chance would have it, three years later in November 1966, police constables Burgess and Hartnell were in their new Ford Anglia panda car, patrolling the night lanes of West Kirby when they were flagged down by a constable named Sutton on the beat on Column Road around 1.30am.

Sutton leaned into the driver window of the patrol car and said: "We had a few reports of a bright light over Grange Hill earlier. It might be a meteorite. 

"Probably been the moon," laughed Hartnell, "or someone's had too much moonshine." 

"No, I saw flashes of light up that way," said Sutton, "I think it's been a meteorite." 

"Well meteorites don't break the law," said Hartnell, taking the car out of neutral.

"What do you want us to do?" 

"Let's go and have a look, Eric," said an animated PC Burgess. 

Eric told Sutton: "Oh, here we go, him and his flying saucers." 

Burgess and Hartnell went to Lang Lane, where they could see an orange glow visible through the trees of Grange Hill.

They pulled up and used the public footpath to see what it was and Hartnell said it was probably a bonfire; Guy Fawkes Night had been about a week back.

But the men saw it was not a fire at all - it was a huge craft of some sort that had landed in a clearing on the hill, and the metal of its hull was glowing so brightly, the policemen had to shield their eyes.

An unearthly orange aura surrounded the craft. Hartnell said they should go back and radio in a report, but Burgess said, "Who are they?" and walked eagerly towards the UFO.

Two silhouetted figures, each about five feet and two inches in height with large heads, came out of the glare and took Burgess into the craft.

Hartnell blacked out.

When he came to, the craft had gone, and he was standing near the patrol car with Burgess recalled being taken into the craft.

He had been shown the body of a girl in a tube of blue liquid who had been exhumed from a nearby cemetery, and there were glass cases with a number of lizards collected from the hill.

Burgess had the feeling the occupants of that craft were somehow connected to the lizards; that they were of reptilian origin.

The case remains an intriguing mystery, and to me it says: We humans are not alone in this vast universe ...

• Haunted Liverpool 33 is out soon on Amazon.