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

In this latest tale, Holly passes through a life-changing cloud​ ...

I have changed a few names in this story out of respect for the confidentiality of the people featured in the account.

In the summer of 1963, a Barnston woman named Holly Stephens did a silly thing.

On her 53rd birthday, while her husband was at work, she went into the garage and decided to take his brand new MG MGB sports car for a spin.

She had never passed a driving test, did not even possess a provisional driving license, and of course, she was not insured.

Holly had asked her husband, Mark, to give her driving lessons on many occasions but he was a sexist man who treated his wife feudally and had told Holly that "women and cars do not mix".

Only last week he had mockingly stated that Holly had a butterfly brain that would prove dangerous if she was to ever get behind the wheel.

Well, Holly wanted to prove him wrong, so she took the gleaming sports car on the road. The intention was to drive just over five miles to Bebington, where an old flame named Roy was working at a filling station.

Holly still harboured feelings for Roy and regretted leaving him all those years ago when she was 21. She believed it was the biggest mistake of her life. Mark had more money and a future, but had been a cold fish, whereas Roy was unskilled but had been so romantic.

And so, Holly set off from her cottage home and after stalling the car once at the lights, she seemed to be alright.

She had watched her husband closely when he drove and had read a few library books on driving. By the time Holly reached a secluded stretch of Station Road she found herself brimming with confidence – and she floored the accelerator.

The sports car bulleted along and the hedges on each side of her became green blurs as the 53-year-old gripped the wheel and felt 18 again.

Holly noticed a cloud on the road, 70 yards ahead, as if something was on fire, and her reflexes were dull. Instead of going down the gears she put on the brakes and the resulting screech of tyres frightened her.

The mist coming in her direction had flashes of coloured light within it, and the sports car screamed into it. In the bizarre ground cloud, it was as dark as night for a moment, then Holly felt as if she was being electrocuted as coloured lights surrounded her.

She shook and trembled and her whole body went into spasms, even her tongue. And then the car had passed through the cloud, and Holly was able to bring it to a halt.

She pulled over, checked the rear view mirror, and saw that cloud dissipate. Then came the shock.

Holly looked at her eyes in the rear view mirror; they had no bags under them, no crow's feet, no drooping forehead skin.

She adjusted the mirror and checked the rest of her face – and saw her eyebrows had re-grown to their natural arch, and then Holly thought she was dreaming because she saw her whole face looked as it had been in her twenties – not a wrinkle on it.

She believed it was down to the shock of the encounter with that mist, and drove on slowly. Twenty minutes later she reached the filling station where Roy was on duty, and he noticed the impressive sports car on the forecourt, but didn’t seem to notice Holly.

"Hello stranger," she said, as he came over to the vehicle.

Roy was 55, but looked older, and an expression of amazement appeared on his face.

"Is that you? Holly?" he mumbled. She smiled, asked what the matter was and said: "Yeah, it's me Holly."

Roy narrowed his eyes and said: "Are you Holly’s daughter? Are you messing about?"

"No, it's me," Holly replied, and she got out the car and felt a little dizzy. Her heart palpitated.

"You can't be Holly, she’s my age," started Roy, but Holly interrupted him with a smile and a shake of her head and said: "You're two years older than me, Roy."

Roy invited his very young-looking old flame into the shop attached to the filling station and she told him what had happened, and she kept looking at her reflection in a window.

She said she had lost weight and that something had happened to her body.

"Those clothes are swimming on you," remarked Roy, admiring her figure, and he kept asking her if she’d been on a diet and something about taking monkey glands.

Holly had a faraway look in her eyes as she turned to Roy. She whispered: "That cloud; that cloud did something to me."

She told Roy she'd have to go home, as she wanted to undress and have a good look at herself in her wardrobe mirror, for she felt as if she had been rejuvenated.

Roy begged her to stay but she shook her head and left after promising she’d meet up with him in the near future.

Holly managed to reach her cottage without any more motoring mishaps, and went straight up to her room.

She stripped and looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror, and tears welled in her eyes. She was looking at the body she’d had when she was in her twenties.

When Mark came home, he was knocked sideways by his wife’s apparent rejuvenation, and she confessed to taking the car out, and about the mist she had driven through.

He forgave her for taking the sports car out, and could not keep his hands off Holly.

She became so afraid of ageing back to 53, but it would seem she stayed young, and she left Mark and dated Roy for a while, then moved to London to live the life of a young woman in the Swinging Sixties.

What became of Holly, the woman who lived twice, is, as they say, another story.

The life-changing cloud she passed through on Station Road was probably a time storm, a phenomenon that is well documented in the literature of the paranormal.

Would you like to be young again?

Or is one life enough?

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