Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral column: Two Easter mysteries

EINSTEIN'S famous equation, E=mc2, rocked the scientific world 119 years ago.

The equation revealed that matter and energy are but two sides of the same coin; that is, it proved that mass is a form of energy and that energy could also be converted into solid matter.

Imperial College London scientists recently transformed energy into a tangible substance by manipulating photons from a light beam, coaxing them into the material form of an electron and its counterpart, a positron.

This is the process by which teleportation could be achieved – the fictional Matter Transporter of Star Trek, where Scotty can convert Captain Kirk into energy then transmit him to a location on a planet’s surface where the energy is converted back into matter.

I have many accounts in my files of beings that have claimed to be energy forms who can switch between the two states of matter and energy. Here’s just one of these accounts.

In 1969, Easter Sunday fell on April 6 and upon that sunny day, a solicitor named Keith was driving through Wallasey Village on his way to his mother’s house on Denton Drive. He had her huge Easter egg beside him on the passenger seat and his thoughts were certainly not concerned with the murky world of the supernatural.

The figure of a blond man with shoulder-length hair appeared in the path of the car. He literally appeared to come out of nowhere.

He wore a Biblical-looking long white robe with baggy sleeves and a cincture of blue tied around his waist. He held his palms out to Keith, who quickly braked. The man walked towards the car and Keith wound down his window and said, ‘What are you playing at? Walking out in front of me like that, I could have killed you.’

‘I didn’t walk out in front of you, Keith,’ the stranger replied in a smooth-spoken voice, ‘I appeared in front of you; I am a form of energy that has become flesh. I have come to you to prevent a great tragedy that will blight your life.’

‘How do you know my name?’ Keith asked, naturally curious at how this oddly-dressed man had known his name.

‘Let me in, I have something very important to tell you,’ said the man, and he went around the car bonnet to the front passenger door. Keith would not normally let a stranger into his car but felt there was something intriguing and otherworldly about this man.

He leaned across the passenger seat, picked up his mum’s Easter egg and placed it on the backseat, and then he unlocked the door and the man got in and Keith noticed he was wearing sandals.

‘Thank-you,’ said the man, and then he turned to Keith and said, ‘you must drive very carefully down this road or you’ll kill a young boy who will run out.’

‘I’m the most careful driver on the road, there’s no way that could happen,’ said Keith, looking at the strange man, but he was told to keep his eyes on the road.

The road was clear and only a smartly-dressed man in a black suit and bowler hat dashed out holding a rolled up newspaper. He reached the other side of the road, and then Keith again turned to the man in the ‘Jesus robes’ and asked, ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘My name is not important – what is important is for you to keep your eyes on the road!’ shouted the man.

There was an ice cream van parked up ahead and a boy with blond hair ran out from this van holding an ice cream with a flake in it. 

The man stamped his sandalled foot on the brake and Keith’s car stopped, then stalled. Only for that man’s actions, Keith would have hit the boy, who walked on, looking only at the ice cream; he was completely unaware of the proceedings.

‘He – he just ran out from the ice-cream van,’ said Keith, and then he turned to see that the unknown robed man had gone.

There was an odour of ozone in the car that reminded Keith of the smell that lingered in the seaside air after a thunderstorm. Keith drove to his mum’s house on Denton Drive and told her what had happened.

She knew Keith, a solicitor by trade, was a very down to earth man who was not given to flights of fancy, and after listening to his strange story, she said, ‘I think he’s been some angel – a guardian angel or something – and if that’s true, and he was sent to save that boy’s life, that boy must be destined to do a lot of good – save a lot of lives perhaps, I don’t know; it’s a strange one.’

The following story is a strange one too, and it took place on Easter Sunday, 1991, which fell on 19 April that year.

A Rock Ferry man named Terry saw an advert in a newspaper which said, ‘Take the family to New Brighton this Easter and wallow in the nostalgia of a traditional seaside day out. You can enjoy a stroll down the prom, try your luck in the amusement arcades, enjoy all the fun of the indoor fair and build sandcastles on the beach.

'The kids will love it and all that sea air will help them build up an appetite for the candy floss, ice cream and good old fish and chips that no trip to the seaside is complete without.’

Within an hour, Terry, wife Sarah and their three young children were at New Brighton, and the day went perfectly with not a single cloud in the sky.

Around 5pm Terry and his family were about to go home when they saw something tragic which looked as if it was going to ruin their lovely day out. Terry’s wife Sarah was talking to an old friend on Tollemache Street, and Terry was trying to control his three kids when there was a bang, followed by screams. A little Jack Russell dog had been struck by a car. The animal was plainly dead.

It lay there on its side, its eyes wide open, and an elderly man Terry knew – a vet – went to look at the animal, and as Terry’s youngest child, a girl of five named Lucy, sobbed at the sight of the poor animal, the vet told the Jack Russell’s owner that his pet was ‘a goner’.

The motorist who had hit the dog drove back to the scene and said she had not seen the animal and she also started crying.

The pet owner shouted at the woman, accusing her of exceeding the speed limit, and she asked him what the dog was doing off its leash, and during the ensuing slanging match an old man in a brown corduroy suit came quietly upon the scene, and he knelt beside the lifeless Jack Russell, placed his hands over its eyes, and spoke what sounded like gibberish to all those around.

He then looked at little Lucy, and told her, ‘Don’t cry, he’s right as rain little girl,’ and then he turned to the vet and said, ‘this is a day for resurrections now, isn’t it?’

The vet motioned for the elderly man to get away from the animal’s body, but then there were gasps galore as the circle of people gathered around saw the Jack Russell get up and wag its tail.

The owner of the dog threw his arms around his beloved pet and unashamedly cried his eyes out, but then started laughing with joy.

The vet examined the dog, felt his ribs and so on, and said he did not know how, but the animal was now uninjured.

To this day, Lucy remembers that old man in the brown corduroy suit winking at her before he vanished into the crowds.

‘This is a day for resurrections, now, isn’t it?’ that enigmatic old miracle worker had said; now what on earth had he meant by that?

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