Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral: Two impossible phone calls

IN November 1974, a 76-year-old Bidston woman named Alma tried to telephone her youngest sister Gloria in Frodsham.

Gloria had recently lost her husband and Alma wanted to invite her down for dinner and a chat to try and cheer her up.

Alma always had difficulty dialling numbers on the old analogue telephones because she had painful arthritis in her fingers.

For those too young to remember these vintage telephones, they had a dial with 10 numbered holes in (0 to 9), and you inserted the tip of your index finger into the hole corresponding to each of the digits of the number you were calling and you turned the dial with a downward pulling motion. Today, of course, you merely tap buttons on a landline phone or gently poke the virtual keys on a smartphone’s touch screen to make a call.

Back in 1975, Alma dialled the number on her rotary telephone and waited – but she never got through to her sister. She had evidently misdialled and she heard a man's well spoken voice answer. 'You don’t sound like Gloria,' quipped Alma, smiling, 'I must have dialled the wrong number.'

'Who the Devil is this?' the man suddenly snapped. 'May I inquire as to the identity of this caller?'

‘Alma;’ laughed the pensioner, ‘you’re not George, Gloria’s brother-in-law, are you?’

‘This is not a civilian number. Now tell me who you are!’ the man yelled down the telephone, giving Alma quite a start.

‘There’s no need to shout,’ protested Alma, ‘it was an innocent mistake. Who are you anyway? You sound too bloody pompous for my liking.’

‘How dare you insult me,’ gasped the man, ‘you’re talking to Lieutenant-Colonel Roberts, the commanding officer of the Wirral battalion of the Home Guard. Now, for the last time – who are you and how did you obtain this number?’

Alma supplied the stuck-up man with her full name, and as she did, she heard a sound at the other end of the phone that she hadn't heard for thirty years: an air raid siren kicking off. ‘Sounds like World War Two there,’ Alma joked.

There was a pause, and then the Lieutenant-Colonel asked, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The air-raid siren. Sounds like the war's still on.’ Alma said, about to hang up.

‘Of course the war's still on,’ said the military man, ‘is this supposed to be some practical joke?’

‘The war ended years ago,’ said Alma, wondering if she was a victim of the Candid Camera show – a highly popular reality television show where the public were secretly filmed by hidden cameras as they were duped into believing in bizarre staged incidents.

The Lieutenant-Colonel was heard to whisper to someone and the resumed the surreal conversation. ‘If we trace you, you could be thrown into prison for this lark you know? You're wasting my valuable time woman.’

‘Eh? It's 1974. The war's been over for years.’ Alma retorted, then she heard the unmistakable rumble of bombing coming over the phone.

'We'll deal with you later, you idiot!’ ranted Lieutenant-Colonel Roberts, and he slammed the phone down.

Alma listened eagerly for the officer to pick up the handset of his telephone, but he never did.

Alma never knew if she had been the victim of an elaborate hoax, or whether she had really had talked with someone in wartime Britain.

It so happens that in March 1941, a Mr Joseph Roberts, the Coroner of Birkenhead, was gazetted as the commanding officer of a Home Guard battalion in Wirral with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

This information does not, or course, prove that Alma somehow managed to telephone a person back in the 1940s, but how would such a prank be staged and what purpose would the joke serve?

If it was a case of a phone call across time, something similar happened in 1988, except this was a case of a telephone call from the future.

In late March 1988, a lady in her twenties named Sue received a frantic telephone call from her mother, saying there had been a blaze in a pet food factory very close to the place where Sue worked in Wallasey.

Sue was off work on this day because she was ill. Her mother said she was relieved to hear her voice because she thought she might have been injured - or worse.

The giant industrial oven used to bake dog biscuits at the factory in Wallasey had caught fire and five fire engines were tackling the blaze, Sue’s mother told her.

The police had warned the public to stay away from the scene of the blaze in case an explosion occurred because of a chain reaction with the effects of the intense heat on the dust-filled atmosphere at the factory.

When Sue went to work on the following day, she talked to a friend who worked at the pet food factory and was told there had been no fire there. Sue visited her mother and angrily asked, ‘Where do you get your information from? There was no fire at the pet food factory.’

The mystery then deepened because Sue’s mother denied making the telephone call.

A year later, on March 14, 1989, a blaze broke out at the pet food factory in Wallasey when the industrial oven used to bake dog biscuits caught fire.

Five fire engines tackled the blaze and police told the public to stay well away from the fire because of possible chain reaction caused by the dust-filled atmosphere at the factory.

Sue was not in work that day because she had a stomach bug, but her mother telephoned her home and when she answered the call, her mum said, 'Am I glad to hear your voice, love. There’s a big fire at the pet food factory on top of your works.'

Sue experienced déjà vu – she had heard all of this from her mother a year back.

So there we have two cases where a telephone call seems to have been made to a different time period – but how? It’s ironic how the clock rules all our lives, yet we know virtually nothing about the workings of time.

Our ignorance regarding the nature of time reminds me of a thought-provoking remark Einstein once made. He said: ‘What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?’

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