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

In this week's tale, Bill steps back in time.

IN my opinion, there is very thin line between a haunting and a timeslip.

A case in point is the unknown woman - dressed in a hairnet and pinafore and slippers - who, on several occasions, has been seen to emerge from a solid locked door on Duke Street (close to the junction with Park Road North).

She goes to post a letter at the pillar box near the corner on Duke Street and returns the way she came.

A group of people watched this lady post the letter before turning and going back to the closed door - which is located between 130 and 128 Duke Street.

The woman once again passed straight through the door. One of the stunned witnesses to this ‘ghostly’ incident tried the door and found it to be securely locked.

Behind that door is an alleyway which goes behind the shops and the chippy on Duke Street, and so it is possible that the lady is someone from the past who once nipped out of her home via the backyard door to post a letter at the pillar box on Duke Street.

She may not be a ghost in the sense of her being some tormented spirit - and we may in fact be merely looking back a few decades, via a rift in time to catch a glimpse of the woman going about a mundane chore.

Some stunning timeslips came my way when I had a slot on local radio talking about strange local goings on.

A solicitor named Kenneth called to see me at the studios of BBC Radio Merseyside one afternoon in 2012 and told me how his father, Bill, once went missing from his home on Birkenhead's Portland Street in November 1975.

Bill was 66 at the time, and worked as a joiner.

His wife Rita had just left him because of his hard drinking and he had recently been barred from the Copperfield pub after punching a drinker.

On top of that, Bill had just been fined £10 for being drunk and disorderly.

He had been out all night before, due his drinking sprees, but on this occasion, went missing for a week and Bill’s brother notified the police.

Bill's son, Kenneth was only aged six at the time, and overheard his mother say: "Maybe he's dead - perhaps it’d be better if he was!" 

Bill turned up at the house of his mother in law after being seen by no one for nine days, and was cold stone sober, and swore to Rita he had finished with the drink after his experience.

Rita hadn't seen Bill sober for years and could tell something had happened to him. Over a cup of tea, Bill told Rita and her mother what had happened in the kitchen of the latter's home on Valerian Road.

Bill was a simple man and Rita and her mother knew he could not have invented the story he told them, which runs as follows.

On the Tuesday night of November 18, 1975, Bill was at Green Lane Railway Station in Tranmere, where he tried to get in on an all-night poker game with a friend named Mick.

The latter refused to bring him to the game because Bill didn’t have enough money.

In a drunken rage, Bill shoved Mick's head through a pane of glass at the railway station and ran off.

He made his way back to Birkenhead and spent over a tenner on ale in several pubs, then staggered into Birkenhead Park, where he was so drunk, he fell asleep under a tree.

He awoke in a sweat and saw a clear blue sky – and it felt like summer.

Bill looked about and saw palm trees in the park and thought he was still asleep. His face and hands were burning with the fierce sun.

Bill walked off towards the gates of the park, and saw three strange-looking policemen - in white uniforms. The helmets were even white, and they wore what Bill could only describe as armour of the types the old knight’s wore, only it was white and looked plastic.

The weird-looking police had guns in holsters and one was carrying a machine-gun.

One of the policemen held out a small black box and asked Bill who he was and said, "Why aren't you carrying ID?" 

The police got Bill to empty his pockets and seemed fascinated by the five pound note and coins that he had. The three futuristic lawmen talked among themselves, then one asked Bill: "What year have you come from?" 

Bill said: "Stop messing, lads; what’s going on?" And a silent vehicle came down out the sky and hovered near him, shining lights at Bill.

From Bill's description of this craft, it seems to have been some sort of drone - with gun barrels and a camera fitted to it.

"I said where are you from?" the policeman asked Bill again.

"It's 1975, isn't it?" Bill answered.

"We'll have to take you in," said one of the policemen, "this is very bizarre." 

Bill was taken to a building nearby where a woman talked to him in words he could hardly understand.

The gist of it was that Britain was a republic and a civil war had just ended, with the police and army having a hard time keeping the country stable.

Bill saw a tag on the woman's uniform that said "Albion" – but whether it was her name or some organisation the lady belonged to - he did not know.

After a long interrogation by the woman and two other people, Bill saw the room fade away around him and found himself disoriented outside Birkenhead Police Station.

Unless Bill hallucinated the entire incident, it’s possible he went into the future through a timeslip, to a time period when Britain had become, through rampant global warming, some tropical republic.

Whatever happened to Bill, he never touched alcohol again after that incident and was subsequently reunited with his wife and son.

• Tom Slemen’s Haunted Liverpool 34 is out now on Amazon.