Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral column: Robots and humans

WE humans are living contradictions.

There are sceptics I know who deride and dismiss tales of ghosts and miracles yet eagerly consult their horoscopes each morning, seeking guidance from the stars, and some have their religious beliefs which are based on alleged miracles that contravene the laws of physics.

It still takes courage to say you saw a ghost, or a UFO but scepticism no longer reigns supreme. However, in 1972 people weren’t so open-minded and when a Wirral schoolteacher named Chris said that he had somehow stepped into the future to a time when Britain was a republic and seemed to have a sizeable robot population. 

Chris’s strange claim was met with snickering, rolling eyes, and whispers behind his back, and a few people questioned whether the art teacher should be working when he was obviously having some breakdown.

The incident took place in early July 1972, just before the Summer School Holidays. The art teacher of a school in Wirral took class 2b – 25 mixed pupils aged 13 - to Leasowe Castle and as soon as the school bus arrived there was trouble with two girls who had a fight and Chris had to separate them and – and the battling teens were almost as tall as their 5' 4" art teacher. The boys and girls set up their easels in the grounds of the castle and one of the female pupils who had been fighting earlier – a girl named Melanie – complained that she wanted to paint the castle in oils but she’d been given tubes of water colour instead.

'All of the class have watercolours, Melanie,' said Chris: 'we haven’t time for the paintings to dry so we’re using watercolours and here’s what I’d like all of you to do today – it’s called capriccio art – I want you to paint the castle, but not as it is now, but as you might imagine it in the days of, say, King Arthur, with knights jousting in front of it.'

A spectacled lad named Paul raised his hand and said: 'This castle was only built in the 1590s sir, and King Arthur was knocking about in the fifth and sixth centuries,' and Chris nodded as all of the pupils cheered, and pointed at him and chanted, 'Paul’s right and sir’s wrong.'

'Alright, shut up!' shouted Chris, waving his palms at the unruly class, trying to quell the noise. 'Yes, Paul is correct about the dates, but you’re missing the point here. Listen! This is not a history lesson; we are trying out capriccio art here so you can mix reality with fantasy and so you can paint knights, or even dragons, it’s up to you – got that? Let your imagination run riot.'

And then Chris waited till the class settled down on this hot day and he inspected each pupil’s attempt at capturing the castle in watercolour and adding something imaginary – but when Chris came to look at Melanie’s attempt he saw she had drawn another building by the castle, and he asked what it was.

'I don't know – it's over there,' said the schoolgirl, pointing the handle of her paintbrush at the building in question – a building that Chris had not noticed before, and yet he had been to Leasowe Castle just two months ago. It could not have been built since then.

'Where did that come from?' Chris muttered, and he walked towards the futuristic ten-storey building of steel and mirrored windows.

When Chris reached the baffling building he saw the huge sign over the entrance which read 'Republic House' and beneath it were the words 'Department of political science' and below that it said 'Wirral University'.

'Sir, what did you mean when you said “Where did it come from?” ‘ asked Melanie, right behind Chris. Her words startled him. She had followed him over to the unknown building. Chris thought the design of the place was beyond the avant-garde – this building looked space age in the art teacher’s eyes.

Melanie let out a scream, and Chris saw what she was screaming at; it looked like a plastic shop window mannequin, a tall white plastic figure, possibly female, and it was sprinting past him and his pupil.

'What the heck was that?' Chris asked, seeing the unearthly figure run down the road at a phenomenal speed – faster than a car. It turned left and vanished between two tall hedges, and Melanie asked him what the thing had been.

'I haven’t a clue, Melanie,' admitted Chris, and then he walked into the building, watching the automatic doors part as he approached – and Melanie went with him.

Chris walked gingerly down a corridor and saw no one. He had an awful sense of an imminent danger, and he said to Melanie, 'Come on, let’s go; there’s something very strange about this place.'

When teacher and pupil got outside in the sunshine, Melanie said, 'Sir, where’s everyone gone?'

Class 2b was missing - there was just a well-kept lawn there. In the distance there was a line of about ten marching white figures, and every one of them was identical to the one that had ran past Chris and Melanie earlier.

The sun glinted off the marching mannequins shiny skin and Chris whispered the word, 'Robots,' as he came to realise that he and his pupil had somehow stepped into the future.

Those figures marching his way looked like robots; they moved in perfect synchronisation and looked lifeless.

'Sir! The class is back, look!' Melanie shouted and pointed to the welcoming site of the 24 girls and boys, all standing at their easels.

Chris noticed the marching mechanical figures had now vanished. He turned – and saw that “Republic House“ had also completely disappeared.

Of course, when he returned to the school, Chris told the other teachers in the staff room what had happened and he was not believed.

He showed the doubters Melanie’s watercolour painting of Republic House and they still smirked and one of them suggested that Chris had dozed off in the summer heat in the grounds of Leasowe Castle and dreamed the whole thing.

Chris made it a habit to visit Leasowe Castle almost every week in the hope of seeing that enigmatic phantom building again and those bizarre-looking robots but he never experienced anything remotely paranormal.

I interviewed Melanie when she was in her fifties and her memory of the strange incident backed up the account Chris had given in every detail.

Chris died several years ago and he believed till the day he died that he and his pupil had somehow visited the future – that Republic House was some reference to the country being a republic at that time, and he believed the figures he saw were robots.

He later lived to see the development of humanoid robots, and today there are androids being developed that can outrun humans and perform tasks that their human creators cannot, such as working in extreme environments, at dangerous sea depths and even on the surface of the moon.

The only thing that worries me about Chris and Melanie’s timeslip was the absence of humans – perhaps they were there but simply out of sight somewhere – but something tells me we might have been superseded in that day and age.

I sincerely hope that my suspicions are unfounded, and that humanity still had a place in that future world.

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