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

In this latest tale, terrifying encounters with a nightmare jester ...

PEOPLE have tried to unravel the world of dreams for thousands of years - from Daniel (from the eponymous Book of Daniel in the Old Testament) interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Sigmund Freud’s landmark book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) - but in my opinion, the misty world of those night visions remains cloaked in mystery.

Some dreams may just be caused by wish fulfilment or anxiety, but there are classes of dreams that hint at them being something quite unearthly.

We have dreams in which people have premonitions, and there are sinister dreams in which a certain character – often an archetypal one – appears, and this figure is also reported as being seen during the hours of sleep by other people across the world.

One of these alleged ubiquitous wanderers of our dreams is the entity known as "This Man". He is said to have a round face, bushy eyebrows that almost meet in the middle, and the tantalizingly familiar trespasser of the unconscious gazes at the dreamers, who notice him looking at them in the dream.

A police identikit type of picture of the eerie dream intruder was published in a national newspaper many years ago and people across the world - including many in the North West of England, contacted the newspaper to say they had seen him in their dreams on many occasions.

The most terrifying infiltrator of dreams is probably the entity I nickname the Cosmic Joker, and encounters with him in the unconscious state are thankfully rare – but I have many reports of him in my files, and he seems to be an omen of very bad luck – and often a stark warning of death.

When a woman in Heswall emailed me some years ago and said she'd had a vivid dream of a strange jester in black with silver skulls for bells on his foolscap, I immediately feared for her life.

She was describing a frightening being I had seen sketches of many times before, made by the lucky ones who survived meeting him in their dreams.

His face is pale with flaking skin and what look like cracks, and sometimes when he appears in the dream he merely points at the dreamer and says nothing, but shrieks with laughter, and on other occasions the Cosmic Joker speaks, sometime cryptically.

The woman in Heswall said he told her in the dream: "Friday will be your big day in church, my dear!"

The woman was due to marry on a Friday in a fortnight’s time, but died from a brain haemorrhage and her funeral service was held in the church on the day she was supposed to have been married. She was only 36.

Some would ascribe the death to a dark coincidence, and they may be correct in their assumption, but if that’s the case, why is the creepy jester seen in so many dreams – dreams dreamy by people who either have the worst luck – or lose their lives in some way that is related to something the ominous figure says in the dreams?

An armed robber from Rock Ferry was doing time in a Liverpool prison many years ago, when he hit on the idea of feigning illness by eating a certain substance (which I will not describe here) and became very poorly.

The criminal was deemed to be too seriously ill to continue his sentence and was sent home to recuperate.

He gradually got better and mocked the authorities for falling for his con-trick, and then one night he had a dream of a shadowy figure dressed in the garb of a medieval jester, and this strange 'figment' of the crook’s dream said: "You're going to be imprisoned again ma boy! But you won’t be behind bars!" 

And then he roared with laughter.

When the criminal awoke he told his girlfriend about the nightmare and she said it was just a bad dream caused by eating cheese before bedtime, and the felon went back to sleep, but when the girlfriend awoke at 10am, she saw her boyfriend lying in bed beside her with tears in his wide-open eyes.

He was breathing but did not respond to her when she nudged him.

An ambulance took the apparently paralysed conman to hospital where he was found to have locked-in syndrome – a neurological condition where a person cannot move a muscle, and yet they remain conscious.

It has been described as the soul being confined to a flesh and blood prison.

The criminal never regained the power to move and died some years later – perhaps fulfilling the chilling prediction of that jester who had appeared in his dream. One wonders if the mocking Cosmic Joker was seen by the unfortunate man as he lay in his bed, unable to move a millimetre.

Sometimes, it would seem that the evil scornful dream demon’s predictions can be prevented, though.

In 1969, a woman in Upton named Kate, who doted on her intelligent and artistic six-year-old son Ben, had a dream about a warped jester.

Ben had almost died from meningitis when he was two, and Kate was scared of losing him.

One night she had a very realistic dream where a jester dressed in black was holding a doll that looked like Ben and he said to Kate: "Ben’s got an old head on young shoulders, but he might just lose it!" and tore the head off. At that moment Kate awoke, screaming.

A week later she was on a train with her son, and as she was distracted, he climbed up on the seat and went to stick his head out the window, but Kate screamed and yanked him back. 

Seconds later a train coming from the opposite direction flashed past the window – and Kate thought she saw the face of the jester she had seen in her dream, reflected in the window – and he was scowling at her.

Sleep well tonight...

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