ONE sunny spring morning in April 1966, a 30-year-old woman named Siân was making cakes in the kitchen of her home on Earlston Road, Wallasey, as she listened to Jimmy Young's radio show on the BBC's Light Programme.

Siân was humming along to The Seekers' hit, I’ll Never Find Another You when she happened to take a step back from the table she was making the cakes on – and she was startled to feel someone behind her.

She yelped as she turned to see a tall bearded red-headed man in a black suit standing there and his face had a ghastly pale bluish colour to it which contrasted sharply with his ginger hair.

Siân then recognised the man – it was Roy, a person she had dated ten years ago at college.

"Roy! How did you get in? What are you doing here?" Siân asked, backing away.

She saw that he was not even looking at her; his dead eyes, staring at the wall opposite, were set in an expressionless face.

"They're burying me in Bebington Cemetery;" Roy said, in a flat, unemotional voice, and then he added: "I've come to say goodbye. Can I have a last kiss?"

And he slowly turned to look at Siân, but she screamed and ran out of her home and hurried across the road to the house of her best friend, Rita and told her what had just happened.

Rita did not doubt Siân, as her friend never told lies, and it was clear that she was in shock; she had flour on her hands and still wore her apron.

Rita accompanied Siân back to her house but there was no sign of Roy anywhere. Later that day when Siân’s husband Roddy came home, she told him about the ghost, and he said he'd only seen Roy about a week ago on Seabank Road.

Roddy telephoned a friend who lived near Roy in Bebington and was told that he had indeed passed away – from a brain haemorrhage – and had been interred in Bebington Cemetery earlier in the day – at 10:30am.

Siân went cold when she learned this – and realised Roy’s ghost had paid her a visit as his body was being laid to rest for all eternity.

These types of hauntings are cases of what I term "the passing caller" - where someone who passes over calls on a person who was close to them in life.

On some occasions the final call is made to a person who is baffled by the visitation, as in the next case.

Sid and Donna, a couple in their early forties who lived at Plymyard Avenue, Bromborough, booked a vacation – via Flair Holidays – to Costa Blanca in 1974.

Sid was a hardworking bricklayer and Donna was a conscientious kitchen worker at a comprehensive school, so they were really looking forward to their two-week Spanish holiday.

On the first night at the hotel in Costa Blanca, Sid and Donna had their suppers: paella with quail and Serrano ham for Sid, and pork ribs with membrillo for Donna. Of course, they imbibed abundant amounts of Viña Sol and a well-meaning waiter introduced Donna to mojitos.

The couple dragged themselves to bed just after midnight and despite encouragement from Donna, Sid could just about manage a kiss before he fell asleep on top of his wife.

Donna shoved him aside and she too dozed off. At 3am, Donna shook Sid awake and whispered: "Sid, there's a man in our room."

Sid rubbed his eyes, then narrowed them as he tried to focus on the figure standing at the end of the bed.

"Switch the light on!" he told his wife and Donna reached out and turned on the bedside lamp.

By now the figure of a man of about thirty in a tuxedo had come around to Donna's side of the bed, and she gasped: "Terry – what are you doing here?"

"Who the hell's Terry?" asked Sid, levering himself up in the bed.

"The bingo caller at the club," Donna replied, with a quizzical smile on her face.

"Saying goodbye to you is a way of saying "I love you" for the last time," said Terry softly, and he seemed to have tears in his eyes.

"Goodbye," he told Donna in a broken voice.

And he vanished in an instant.

Donna gripped her husband's hand and said: "Oh my God; he was a ghost!"

There was a long pause, and then a suspicious Sid said: "If Terry has snuffed it, why would he come and visit you and not his wife?"

"I haven't a clue," replied Donna, "I – I can't believe I saw a ghost. Aren’t you amazed, Sid?"

Sid wriggled his hand free from Donna's hand and said: "I'm amazed alright; amazed I didn't know my missus was carrying on behind my back with the bingo caller!"

Donna's face turned red, and she turned to her husband on the bed and said: "I did not carry on with Terry – he just had a thing for me – how could you even think I’d be unfaithful?"

"Well why have you gone red as a beetroot?" asked Sid: "And if you did go with him, you're a cradle-snatcher, he looked young enough to be your son."

The couple eventually calmed down and somehow managed to get back to sleep, but the strange incident did cast a shadow over the rest of the holiday.

When Sid and Donna came home, the news soon reached them: Terry, the popular bingo caller, had suffered a heart attack, and he'd only been 32.

He had been lying in his coffin around the time his ghost had appeared to Sid and Donna in their hotel room at the Costa Blanca.

Terry had lain in the coffin during the wake dressed in the smart attire he’d always worn as a bingo caller – a tuxedo.

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