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

In this latest tale, Rod and Eric make a surprise discovery when take on a plastering job ...

THIS spherical island we know as earth hangs in a sea of infinite space, and we are surrounded on all sides by unfathomable mysteries, and we are also bracketed by mysteries at either end of our timeline.

No one knows for sure how the universe began – the "Big Bang" is just a theory, not a proven fact.

We're not even sure of our own planetary history from the mysterious death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago to the emergence of the human, and of course, we do not know what the future holds – it’s a mystery.

We can predict basic occurrences, such as global warming, but that's all.

In my experience I have found that some of the most incredible paranormal incidents tend to happen to everyday people.

Physicists spend their lives trying to detect ghostlike subatomic particles such as neutrinos; they carry out mind-numbing repetitive experiments over decades trying to detect gravity waves and the ensuing microscopic ripples in time, and they make a painstaking detailed scrutiny of the human genetic code hoping to find answers, but instead they find baffling mysteries, such as the "ghost people" - an extinct branch of human ancestry that has been discovered lurking inside the DNA of modern-day West Africans – and no one knows who they were or what became of them.

The things every scientist is looking for – some remarkable occurrence in the laws of physics, is instead experienced by the non-qualified layperson.

A bus driver experiences telepathy; a policewoman encounters poltergeist activity, or, in the following account, two cowboy workmen find what appears to have been a portal into another decade.

The story came my way via my slot talking about local mysteries on BBC Radio Merseyside.

In November 1987, a 66-year-old unqualified Birkenhead plasterer named Rod and his 22-year-old unemployed nephew Eric, photocopied 200 sheets advertising Rod’s Cheap Plastering Service and started posting them through the doors of upmarket houses in Birkenhead.

An elderly, rich but tight-fisted man named Charles, who owned an imposing mansion in The Woodlands, saw one of these leaflets.

His wife urged him to hire someone reputable to plaster a box room at the house, and she suggested E J Horrocks the local plastering contractors, but Charles opted instead for Rod’s Cheap Plastering Ltd and called the landline.

Rod answered and claimed he had just finished a plastering job on the Palace Hotel in the Sultanate of Oman.

Charles hired him to plaster the box room at a rate of £3 per hour. Rod set to work with his plasterer’s labourer - Eric.

It was Eric who noticed the wall was hollow as he tapped idly on it with a hammer and bolster as his uncle mixed the plaster.

"Hey, Uncle Rod, this wall’s hollow," he said.

Rod sighed and said: "You know what we forgot? The UniBond PVA; we'll just have to take a chance and just plaster it by ear." 

"Uncle, it’s dead hollow, listen," said Eric, and he rapped on the wall.

His uncle continued mixing the plaster, then said: "Be a laugh if there was a forgotten room behind there. It can happen in these big houses, you know?

"They seal rooms up, sometimes." 

"It’s really hollow there!" Eric hit a point in the wall with a hammer - and unwittingly put a hole in it.

"You stupid get!" growled Rod, "We'll have to fill that in now!" 

"I'm sorry," said Eric, sheepishly, then he pulled the hammer out the hole - and light shone out from that hole.

Rod stooped down and looked through the opening - and realised he was looking into a wardrobe with its door open.

"Hang on, this doesn’t make sense;" he said to Eric. "This house is detached - and that's an exterior wall. There should be nothing behind there." 

"It must be a secret room," said Eric, excitedly.

"Go and tell that Charles fellah what we've found," said Rod and Eric left the box room but he came back and said the place was empty.

"They must have gone out somewhere," said Rod, and curiosity got the better of him.

He tried to enlarge the hole but the wall was now too hard. Eric discovered the partition wall was weakest near the floor, and Rod let him knock a hole in what seemed like plasterboard.

"There's a room but no one in it," said Eric, and he noticed that the floor of the room next door was about two feet higher than the box room's floor.

"Can you crawl through that hole?" Rod asked, and Eric said, "Yeah, I think so. Hey, I wonder why this room was sealed up, Uncle?" 

"I haven't the foggiest idea why," said Rod, "what’s it like in there?" 

"Er, there's a woman in here," said Eric, and Rod heard him say, "I’m sorry." 

Rod stooped down and looked through the hole. There was a very attractive woman of about twenty, and she had on a blouse, pencil skirt and stilettos – and she looked like something out the 1950s.

She screamed, and hit Eric on the head with a large glass ashtray. Eric cried out in agony and the girl ran out of what appeared to be her bedroom.

Rod dragged his nephew from the hole and then they drew back as a tough-looking man in a cardigan and black pleated trousers came charging into the room - with a pistol.

Rod recognised the gun: it was an Enfield No. 2 - he'd (illegally) brought one home after World War Two.

"He came out a hole at the bottom of the wardrobe!" cried the girl and the man stooped down and looked into the hole - but then the hole faded away and now there was just a brick wall there.

The hole Eric had knocked through had vanished.

Thinking the whole episode was down to ghosts, Rod and his nephew abandoned the job and went home.

It’s easy to say it was a timeslip, but there was never any room next to that mansion in the past – and that little fact merely deepens the mystery.

• Haunted Liverpool 34 is out now on Amazon, as well as 36 Tom Slemen audiobooks.