Haunted Wirral: The restless evil ghost on Bidston Hill

IN 1919, Wirral shipping magnate George Webster died and left his fortune to his daughters, 24-year-old Victoria, and 19-year-old Margaret.

Years before the mother of Victoria and Margaret had died in 1901 whilst giving birth to Margaret.

With their inherited wealth the sisters bought a beautiful house in Bidston and soon settled into their new home. One night, in December 1920, Victoria went out on the town with her boyfriend William, leaving young Margaret at home.

By midnight, Victoria still hadn't returned, so Margaret went to bed and read a book by candlelight.

A heavy downpour of hailstones clattered on the bedroom windows and Margaret thought the hail would break the panes because the shower became so loud.

During this cacophony, as the windows were pelted with unusually hard hail, the nervous teenager Margaret thought she heard a noise downstairs and she went down to look; she hoped it was her sister returning home for she had never been so scared in this old house as she was upon this night.

As Margaret walked across the hall to check the front door, she realised that she'd forgotten to put the safety guard around the fire in the parlour.

However, just before Margaret entered the parlour, she saw something moving in the shadows of the hallway.

It was a very strange looking man; what was that on his head? He had on a wig of snowy ringlets that crowned his pallid countenance, reminiscent of those wigs worn by the venerable judges of yore. His whole attire, an assemblage of faded silks and worn embroidery, draped about him in an air of faded elegance, the fabric trailing languidly past his knees.

And there was that whiff of something stale, a faint aroma of decay that permeated the hallway with its noxious presence.

Margaret could see him a little clearer now; his long silvery-blue embroidered jacket hung down past his knees, and instead of trousers, the man wore breeches and stockings that came up almost to his knees.

The black shiny square-toed shoes with buckles that the man wore were equally out of date, but what alarmed Margaret most was the stranger's face, because it was plastered in white-make up. That face looked partly decomposed, and it smiled as Margaret looked on in shock.

With a frantic urgency, the girl sought refuge within the confines of the parlour and she dashed in there, and then her trembling hand wrenching the heavy door, shut it behind her with a loud sigh.

Pressing her back against its solid surface, she could feel the rapid cadence of her heart thumping in her chest, a drumbeat of primal fear.

This was like a nightmare that had spilled over into the waking world.

The eerie intruder charged at the door from the other side and sent Margaret flying across the room. With unearthly agility the weird figure chased Margaret around a table, screaming with laughter.

'Ha! Now, my fair damsel," he intoned with a thin eerie raspy voice, "tarry thee, for I am compelled to claim thee!"

Margaret screamed, and her eyes bulged at the sight of the sinister man.

'Now, hark my pretty one,' he said in a chilling voice, 'you will stay put for I must have you!'

He finally leapt across the table and landed on Margaret, before assaulting her. All of this time, the girl was too scared to scream, but as he tore at her clothes, she reached for the poker in the fire, and he was so absorbed in his despicable assault he did not see her reach for the iron, and she pushed its glowing orange tip into the attacker's face.

With a shrill agonized scream, the evil assailant lashed out in retaliation, clawing at Margaret's face.

She let out a scream and struck his head with the poker and the archaic-looking attacker fled from the parlour and ran down into the labyrinthine wine cellar.

Margaret Webster ran out of the house and into the hail-covered street, slipping and falling several times.

Her sister Victoria and her beau William were coming down the road, and when they saw Margaret with her clothes torn and her neck discoloured with love bites, they asked her what had been going on.

Shaking with the December cold and with chattering teeth, Margaret recounted the harrowing ordeal that had befallen her and she was disbelieved at first.

William inspected the maze-like cellar and found nobody lurking down there.

However, weeks later, Victoria and William briefly caught a glimpse of the sinister man in the powdered wig peering out at them through a window in the house one Sunday morning as the couple returned from church.

The neighbours also told the sisters how their own daughters – twins - had seen the white-wigged stranger standing over their bed in the dead of night. In 1922, workmen were digging up the cellar of the Webster's home to repair a burst water pipe, when they unearthed a strange coffin with an inverted pentagram carved into its lid.

When the coffin was opened by the authorities, they saw that the skeleton not only wore a long white curly wig, but also a tattered silvery-blue coat.

Local historians working on information supplied by an occultist, unearthed a chilling revelation in a little known archive: it would seem that in the year 1730, upon the very soil upon which the Webster home was standing, there was interred the mortal remains of a nefarious soul known as Richard Tilly, practitioner of the black arts and profane rites.

There are sickening acts Tilly carried out, which, if I were to describe them in the Wirral Globe, would result in the newspaper’s offices being raided by the police under the Obscene Publications Act.

Denied the sanctified repose of a Christian burial, Richard Tilly's corpse found its final resting place upon the unhallowed slopes of Bidston Hill, concealed within a shallow grave, its location known only to those privy to the darkest secrets of the occult.

Yet, even in death, Tilly's malevolent spirit refused to be contained. Somehow, his condemned soul has escaped the burning pits of Hell and his restless shade continues to wander the world of the living for sins untold.

So many people over the years have described seeing a man in a white periwig and long old-fashioned coat walking with square-toed buckled shoes upon the slopes of Bidston Hill.

In recent years, another alleged spirit has been seen to accompany Tilly – a kind-faced spirit guide in white with a blue aura who apparently tries to persuade Tilly to accompany him to face his creator.

In November 2022 two ghost investigators saw the spirit guide walk past them on Bidston Hill at 3am, and they described him as broad-shouldered, with a smiling face framed with white curly hair, dressed in what looked like 18th century clothes made of white satin.

A medium walking her dog on the hill around that time claimed she saw both Tilly and his spirit guide – and the latter, speaking in a quaint accent, told the psychic that his name was John and that she must stay off the hill for the next three days because he was attempting to move on ‘a very troubled soul’.

The two figures, dressed in 18th century style clothes then vanished into the November fog.

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