Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral: Terrifying ghosts of the road

IN 1972, Bebington Council and Cheshire County Council discussed ways to cut out the dangerous Skew Bridge on Bromborough Road, as it had become a black spot.

It was proposed that Bebington Road should be diverted in front of the Unilever Research Laboratory and to the west of the railway before joining up with the planned diversion of Spital Road across Port Sunlight golf course.

Some weeks before the discussions about the black spot there had been a number of crashes where people had seen a "lady in white" standing near the Skew Bridge before the vehicles they were travelling in suddenly and inexplicably crashed.

One driver who sustained serious injuries in a crash on Bromborough Road said he felt the steering wheel twist as if a pair of invisible hands were turning it.

Reports of a ghost near the bridge had been reported decades before in the area, and some said the apparition looked medieval with a strange horned hat – probably a piece of female headgear known as an escoffion, which had two rounded horns and was highly popular in the Late Middle Ages (1250-1500).

The unusual thing about this white lady is the way she seems to move to different areas.

Most ghosts haunt a certain house or a specific spot, but this phantom, apparently hell-bent on distracting drivers to make them crash, has been seen not only along the length of Bromborough Road, but also in the vicinity of Mayer Hall and the Rose and Crown pub.

In 2009, a woman was about to post a letter at the pillar box at the entrance to Mayer Hall one evening when she was startled by a woman with ghastly pale face in medieval attire who somehow reached over the wall behind the pillar box and snatched the letter out of her hand.

She then vanished, along with the purloined letter.

The woman later found the letter and envelope torn to shreds outside the Rose and Crown pub. That same night a motorcyclist had to swerve in the nick of time to avoid what was undoubtedly the lady in white, for he later mentioned her horned hat.

The identity of the white lady is unknown, and she has a counterpart who haunts the Lever Causeway, Bebington, only this lady in white has a ghastly face, and to see this frightening face is said to be an omen of death or serious injury.

In late April 1973, a 39-year-old man named Martin, who lived on Thornton Road, Wirral, was having an affair with an 18-year-old librarian while his 30-year-old wife was heavily pregnant at home with their first child.

On this April Sunday afternoon, Martin told his wife he was just going to see an associate about a business proposal.

The associate lived in Oxton, Martin told his wife, and he set out for his real destination that afternoon – his 18-year-old mistress' flat in Barnston, which lay in the exact opposite direction to the imaginary business associate’s address.

As Martin was driving down the Lever Causeway, he saw it was practically deserted on this Sunday afternoon and so he checked his mirror once more to check there were no police cars about, and he floored the accelerator.

The sooner he got to his mistress, the more fun he could have before returning to his wife, who did not in a million years suspect that her husband was having an affair; she loved him so much, she wanted him to be there at the birth of their child in their own home. The truth would have broken her heart in three.

As Martin sped down the Lever Causeway, he noticed a white spot in the distance – in the middle of the road, so he slowed down a little, and as he neared the object he saw it looked like a person.

The trees bordering the road on each side of the unfaithful driver flashed past, and then Martin saw some lunatic of a woman was standing in the dead centre of the road.

She'd move out the way surely if she had any sense? Martin filled the air with swear words, most of them drowned out by the screech of the car’s tyres as he braked and the vehicle came curving to a halt.

When the cloud of dust thrown up by the tyres had cleared, Martin saw that the suicidal woman – who was dressed in some type of long white robe – was still standing there as still as a statue.

He smashed his fist into the car horn button and then he noticed her face; it looked very, very unsettling – inhuman – and then she grinned and pointed at him, and he went cold inside.

He drove off with a squeal of tyres, continuing on his way to the house of his mistress, and he kept thinking about that strange woman’s ghastly face – and then Martin suddenly lost control of the car and hit a tree, and the car spun around and whilst travelling backwards from the deflection it hit another tree, and Martin’s head whipped back and he felt as if his spine had been driven out through his chest.

He tried to move his head but almost passed out through excruciating pain – it was a pain he likened to having a large electrical current passed through the exposed nerves of all of his teeth.

He was taken to hospital, and of course, he had some explaining to do to his wife – who went into labour early with the shock of being told her husband was in hospital.

Martin told her he had picked up a piece of paper from his office desk with the wrong address and had to go to Barnston upon discovering his mistake – and then he had crashed on the Lever Causeway.

His wife was no fool and she suspected something was going on, but Martin immediately ended the affair with the librarian.

A few days after the accident, there was a three-car smash-up on the Lever Causeway where the one of the drivers was taken to Clatterbridge Hospital in a critical condition with serious head injuries.

When I mentioned the reports of the white lady with the terrifying face on the radio, I was inundated with emails and telephone calls, mainly from Wirral people who had either encountered her or heard reports about her over the years.

When you are next on the road, whether you are driving down the Lever Causeway, or Bromborough Road, or anywhere in Wirral – please - drive safely.

• All of Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are on Amazon.