HAUNTED WIRRAL: The dead carollers

As part of this festive weekend, here's a spooky seasonal tale ...

EVERSINCE the ghost of one Jacob Marley appeared to Scrooge 178 years ago in that timeless Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, the Season of Goodwill has become a traditional time for the telling of ghost stories.

What better time to settle down in the hearthside glow of a fire to read a supernatural tale or to even tell one?

Let me tell you about a rather eerie Yuletide incident which took place on Birkenhead's Shrewsbury Road back in the early 1970s.

A highly religious family of five – comprising of mother and father (both in their forties) and their three sons, aged from 18 to nine, came to Birkenhead from Crewe (and some accounts say the family hailed from Chester).

They went carolling around the Wirral Peninsula and after they had given harmonious renditions of such enduring classics such O Holy Night, In the Bleak Midwinter, We Three Kings and Hark the Herald Angels Sing, the head of the family of carollers would ask for donations that would go to various charities.

When the family arrived on Shrewsbury Road a fortnight before Christmas, they called at the house of Jeff, the living embodiment of Scrooge.

Jeff was a scrap metal dealer and a penny-pinching tight-fisted grouch who made his wife June's life hell.

June had to haggle with the butcher and had to find bargains in every store she visited, because Jeff would scrutinise the shopping list and woe to poor June if she exceeded her 'shopping allowance'.

On this wintry night, Jeff was moaning about the carol singers calling at his door. He told June: "Three times in six nights I have answered that bleedin' door between half-six and ten o’clock to find two children – a different pair each time – always aged seven to ten – offering to sing carols!" 

"That's what children do, Jeff," said June, "it's nearly Christmas. That's how they make a few bob." 

"No, listen you dozy mare," Jeff interrupted, "where are their parents, eh? Those kids could be invited into a house and murdered and god knows what else, and then their mothers and fathers would be crying all over the news.

"They should either bring their parents with them - if they have any, that is, or the law should ban carol singing because it's a pain in the backside anyway. I'm usually having me tea, or having a bath, or watching something good on the telly and they start banging the knocker off its hinges – " 

"Alright Jeff, you're giving me a headache;" groaned June, "every year you’re like this. You wanted to ban Christmas one year!" 

"And they bleedin' well should!" ranted Jeff, "Oliver Cromwell was right! It's just all about money, and the Church stole the whole idea off the Druids anyway. They – " 

There was a heavy knock at the door.

"Here we go!" Jeff seethed, "I should wire that knocker to the mains." 

He went to the front door and before he could even speak, the family of five carollers launched into Good King Wenceslas.

"Wait a mo! Hang on!" Jeff yelled at the singers. They stopped singing.

"If you're going to sing it, at least sing it right. It's 'Good King Wenceslas LAST looked out!' You dropped the "last".

"'I'm sorry friend but I beg to disagree," said the father of the family, "It's 'Good King Wenceslas looked out'. You've misheard it." 

"That's it! Beat it! Go on! Clear off!" bawled Jeff, waving the five of them away. "You think people are made of money! I come home from work after a hard day and I can’t even have me tea in peace." 

And he closed the door on them. June heard her husband's ridiculous tirade and she never spoke to him for about an hour.

Jeff went to the pub after his tea, and friend Eddie agreed with him about banning carol singers.

Three nights after this, Jeff was sitting in bed with June around 11:30pm, tackling a newspaper crossword, when he asked, "Can you hear that?" 

June, who was reading a paperback, replied without facing Jeff; "Hear what?" 

"Have you left the radio on down in the kitchen?" Jeff asked, angling his head sideways.

June said she had definitely switched the radio off. Jeff filled in a few squares in the crossword then said: "There it is again; can't you hear that, June?" 

"Is it next door's telly?" she asked him, but Jeff shook his head, then narrowed his eyes as he concentrated to make sense of what he was hearing.

"It's that carol, Good King Wenceslas – listen!" 

"I can’t hear anything,’ admitted June.

"Listen – you must be going deaf; "Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel”... I can hear it clearly. It sounds like those five Bible-thumpers." 

"Who?" a bemused June enquired.

"That family of religious fanatics; they’ve been carolling all over Birkenhead," answered Jeff.

"What would they be doing singing carols this time at night?’ asked June, "It's nearly midnight." 

Jeff shrugged, "It’s definitely them, June; I'm not hearing things." 

The carollers' voices then faded into the distance.

Jeff fell asleep around 1am, but at 1:40am, June shook him awake. "Jeff! Wake up! Those carol singers are singing right outside our door!" 

Jeff could hear them singing Good King Wenceslas at the top of their voices.

Enough was enough!

What was their game singing so loud at this time in the morning?

Jeff threw on his trousers and shirt and went to the front door.

He undid the bolt and swung open the door, ready to give the inconsiderate carol singers a piece of his mind - but saw the singers had skulls for heads, and their jaws were wide open as the five grotesque figures gave a perfect performance of Good King Wenceslas.

The singers were not wearing masks – Jeff could see they really were skulls, and their hands were also skeletal.

He stumbled back into the hallway and slammed the door, and he heard the carollers stop and screech with laughter.

They tapped their bony fingers and fists on the front door, and Jeff put on the bolt and swore at them.

He heard June scream upstairs; she had looked out the window at the freakish spectacle.

After a few minutes the five sinister singers walked off down Shrewsbury Road, and Jeff saw people living opposite peeping out from their curtains to see who had made the racket.

The next day, Eddie, Jeff’s friend down the pub, told him some news that chilled him to the bone.

"That family of carol singers you were going on about were killed in a car crash last night.

"The father lost control on a bend on Barnston Road and hit a tree.

"That’s a real black spot down by Thingwall that is." 

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