HAUNTED WIRRAL: Out of the frying pan ...

In this latest tale, Penny has a terrifying encounter during a trip back in time ...

IN June 1972 in the middle of a heat wave, a pretty 22-year-old Birkenhead girl named Penny Richards returned to the two-bedroom flat she shared with boyfriend David near New Brighton Station.

The rent was due today - £7 - and Penny told David all she could borrow was five quid from her best friend, Denise.

"So where are we going to find the other two nicker, eh?" growled David, lying across the sofa in shorts and a string-vest.

"You've got two pounds and something on you – " said Penny, timidly and David got up from the sofa and slapped her across the face. The impact sent Penny sideways onto an armchair.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" yelled David. "Penny, I'm sorry, my nerves are gone today. It’s because I've been off the ale for three days."

He tried to pick Penny up off the chair but she pushed his hands away and sobbed.

"Penny, I've stopped drinking for you, and now all I've got is a few bob for the horses.

"All I've got in the way of pleasure is a few bets today."

David pointed to the crumpled newspaper on the floor where he had ticked off his selection for the Windsor Castle Stakes and the Britannia Handicap at Royal Ascot.

"That's it, David, it's over", said Penny, and she went into the bedroom with her excuse of a boyfriend following at her heels.

She couldn't reach the suitcase on top of the wardrobe and as she stepped onto the unmade bed in an effort to get the case, David grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.

"You're not walking out on me on rent day!" he snarled at Penny, and snatched the handbag she had slung over her shoulder and opened it, looking for the five pounds borrowed from Denise.

It was ale, betting and ciggie money to David, but he couldn’t find it - because Penny had the five pound notes clutched in her little fist.

Realising she had the money on her, David handed the handbag back to her and grabbed her throat - then squeezed.

"Give me it now or I'll do you in!" he threatened, and she looked at those thick black eyebrows that met in the middle, and his dark brown penetrating eyes full of so much hatred.

He then pushed her onto the bed but she rolled over it and fell out of sight for a moment.

When Penny came up she hit him hard with the heel of one of her platform shoes, and she saw blood gush out of his nose upon impact.

He stumbled backwards, stunned, and Penny fled from the bedroom and into the hallway.

She got out of that flat listening to David's threats of murder.

She ran through the sunny New Brighton streets, unsure whether to go home to her parents in Birkenhead or go to her friend Denise house on Westmoreland Road; she decided on the latter.

Thinking David would look for her at the bus stop or the train station, Penny flagged down a Hackney cab and told the driver to take her to Westmoreland Road.

When she reached Denise's home she knocked on the door but there was no answer.

Penny walked off - into a strange out-of-season mist which had a smell of ozone.

When it cleared, Westmoreland Road had changed.

The blue wrought iron gate of Denise’s home was now wooden and green, and there wasn't a car parked on the road.

A little girl in a white dress and a huge white frilly bonnet walked past Penny, and then came the clip-clop of horse's hooves; it was a man on a horse-drawn cart.

Penny then noticed the old-fashioned lamp post with its lantern of four sides of glass.

The strange thought immediately arose in the young woman's mind: have I gone back in time?

She hurried around the corner, but the road was cobbled there, and a hansom cab was pulling up at a grand-looking house.

The tall man who left the hansom triggered a cold shudder down Penny’s spine, because although he was wearing a top hat, cape and a fine dark suit, he was the exact double of David – her ex.

He had bushy sideburns and long hair, and as he paid the driver of the hansom, he noticed Penny, looked her up and down, then said, "What's your business, miss?"

Penny froze inside.

The man looked like a Victorian version of her brute of a boyfriend.

She turned and ran, but seconds later the David lookalike had seized her from behind, and as he grabbed Penny, his top hat fell off, revealing a head of wavy dark-brown hair.

His eyebrows were thick, and met in the middle - just like David's eyebrows - and the Victorian counterpart's eyes were also of a dark bistre brown.

He held Penny by her upper arms and said: "Well, well, my problems are over, it would seem."

"Sir, what is the matter?" came a faint voice over the outdated man's right shoulder.

It was an elderly man dressed in a dark blue suit.

Penny got the impression the man was a butler.

"I've just found our maid," said the man holding Penny.

He embraced her and said to the older man: "Not stout but capable of giving me much pleasure."

As the elder man picked up the top hat, Penny screamed and somehow wriggled free of the old-fashioned scoundrel.

She ran past startled people - all of them dressed in the fashion of a long bygone era - and she could hear David's doppelganger crying for her to come back, and when Penny saw a modern car coming down Seabank Road, she started crying.

She was back in 1972.

She refused to go near Denise's home ever again, and although Penny’s parents said she had imagined the strange incident because of the physical abuse she'd received at the hands of David, the young lady was convinced she had somehow gone back in time when she had encountered that mist - and had met some ancestor of her former boyfriend.

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