Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral: A terrifying pub poltergeist

This week, 'paranormal havoc' at Wirral pub.

I know of most of Wirral's apparitions, such as the ghostly clergyman who floats through the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Bebington, the phantom Irish labourer who haunts Birkenhead Tunnel because he was killed during its construction and the solid-looking ghost of the loyal Centurion sentry who still guards Storeton Quarry, many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Of course, we mustn't forget the ghostly monks of Birkenhead Priory – still active by all accounts – and the frantic eerie cries of long-dead shipwrecked sailors that are often heard around the shores of Leasowe and Hilbre.

One ghostly World War One soldier even gets on a train at Birkenhead and travels to Liverpool, where he alights at James Street Station and vanishes.

But one of the most terrifying supernatural incidents in Wirral once got me into hot water.

When I mention a haunting, I am often careful not to mention true names and addresses because of the adverse publicity generated by the account of a supernatural incident.

Many years ago, on the Billy Butler Show, I named the pub in the following true story, and while some haunts of the drinker thrive when a ghost is said to be on the premises, sometimes the clientele will go elsewhere if the spirits are too violent and terrifying.

I was taken to task by the pub landlord, and promised him I'd never mention the pub’s name again.

So here is the strange story regarding a fairly well-known pub that still stands in the centre of Wirral in a rural setting, but I have had to change a few names.

One rainy evening in March 1999 the landlord, John Hythe, was chatting to his 21-year-old barmaid Katie, when something akin to a gale force wind swept through the bar and parlour of the pub.

For a moment, Hythe thought someone had opened the door to admit a blast from the March winds, but no door had been opened and the winds were non-existent that night.

The dartboard was thrown across the room, and an elderly regular drinker at the pub named Enid let out a scream.

She later said that something ice cold had passed through her chest and exited between her shoulder blades.

A man’s flat cap was thrown onto the bar counter, an unoccupied stool slid some five feet across the floor, and four men playing poker in the corner had their pack of cards scattered.

Katie the barmaid was as baffled as everyone else, and she told her boss, the landlord Hythe, that she thought she had seen a ghastly pale face whizz past her.

'You're letting your imagination get the better of you now, Katie,' Hythe had told her with an uneasy grin.

Three days later, the same inexplicable indoor gale howled through the pub, and all of the balls from the snooker table became airborne and flew across the parlour, hitting a woman in her forties and an old man, who had one of his teeth dislodged by the cue ball.

A table with cast iron legs slid across the parlour and hit a man in his twenties in his leg with such force, he had to be taken to hospital with a comminuted fracture.

Hythe and Katie knew that the weather was not to blame – this was something else, but neither of them wanted to mention the G word – ghost – but the customers did.

Many walked out that night and trekked to the nearest pub a mile distant. The following evening a stranger named John came into the pub. He wore spectacles and sported a van dyke beard, and talked so quietly when he ordered bitter shandy, Katie had to ask him to speak up.

On this night a group of Rugby players from Heswall came into the bar and a few of them started to chat Katie up, and one of them suggested an arm-wrestling contest in which the winner took Katie out – even though Katie had explained that she had a boyfriend.

One of the rugby players 'persuaded' the quiet-spoken John to stand under the dartboard with a box of matches on his head. The rowdy rugby men took turns in putting darts through the matchbox. 

Suddenly, that powerful paranormal gale from beyond hit the interior of the pub and the rugby men and most of the customers were struck by bottles, snooker balls, drinking glasses, ashtrays, and one man was almost knocked out by the dartboard as it was thrown across the parlour by the unknown force.

Some of those present later claimed to see strange beings with faces like devils fly from one wall of the pub to the other during the outbreak of poltergeist activity. The rugby players and six other people ran out of the pub, but the stranger John stayed put and seemed fascinated by the unearthly goings-on.

He told the landlord Mr Hythe that he was a student of the occult and requested permission to bring some of his ‘paraphernalia’ to the pub to get to the bottom of the highly disruptive activity.

Hythe consented to the request, hoping John would somehow be able to repel or cancel out the eldritch force that would spell the closure of the pub if it continued.

John returned with a small portmanteau case, from which he took out two dowsing rods.

He walked about the parlour and they pointed to the west and muttered: "This is the axis of influence." He took pictures with an electronic camera he had built himself and it captured terrifying, grainy pictures of faces that looked demonic.

On the next occasion when the wind from nowhere roared through the pub, John was waiting with the dowsing rod, camera, and a battery of electronic detectors.

He went away for a few days and when he returned came out with a strange tale that the landlord Hythe disbelieved at first.

John claimed that two occultists in the area were at war with one another and had been invoking demons 'from the Astral Planes' and sending them to one another to wreak havoc on each other’s homes – those demons had been passing through the pub on their way to their targets and had been causing all of the paranormal havoc.

John had visited both occultists and told them that the pub had been in 'the line of fire' – and fearful of attracting any publicity, the real-life magicians had called a truce.

John then left the premises, never to be heard from ever again, there were no further terrifying supernatural disturbances at the pub, and the clientele gradually returned.

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