Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral: Ghost car of Telegraph Road

This week, a terrifying motorist.

IT was a warm August morning at 3am in 2017.

A 32-year-old Heswall nurse named Jennifer was sitting in the back of a private cab on her way to her mother's home off Telegraph Road, Thurstaston, not far from the Cottage Loaf pub, a ten-minute journey of just over two miles.

If there was one thing that was worse than a chatty cab-driver to Jennifer, it was a silent one and the driver of this private cab had said nothing since he had picked her up and even then his words had been monosyllabic.

The nurse needed someone to talk to; Jennifer’s mother Margaret had called her to say she’d suffered a terrible panic attack.

Margaret had been having these attacks since she'd lost her husband last month. She would wake in the wee small hours and feel the empty space beside her and realise she'd lost her husband for good, and then came the gasping, the fighting for breath. Sometimes she held his old clothes and tried to smell his cologne.

The cab was travelling along Telegraph Road and had just passed the junction of Strathallan Close when Jennifer detected the distinctive fruity aroma of whisky – then the nurse turned to her right, and sitting there beside her was a slim red-haired man with a pasty face, and large eyes, possibly blue.

He wore a dark jacket and trousers and a greenish polo neck sweater. He had obviously appeared out of thin air and before the nurse could process this paranormal appearance, the man leaned sideways and said 'Hello', exhaling that whisky breath Jennifer had just detected.

She felt a cold hand on her lap, and Jennifer shouted to the quiescent cab driver, ‘Help!’ He muttered something back which sounded like a mumbled, ‘Sorry?’ 'I killed a looker like you once,' said the man, and he planted a cold kiss on the right side of Jennifer’s cheek, and now she really let out a scream.

The cabby pulled his car over and turned in his seat and said, 'What’s wrong?'

'I’m being – ' Jennifer was saying when she noticed the red-headed man had vanished from the backseat.

'He’s gone!' she said and asked the driver if she could sit next to him in the front of the cab and he sighed and moved books, magazines and a thermos flask off the front passenger seat. Jennifer sat next to the man and talked incessantly about her unearthly experience till she reached her mother’s house.

The cab driver said his vehicle wasn’t haunted and seemed sceptical of his fare’s account.

When Jennifer told her mother about her experience with the whisky-breathed ghost, her mum said: 'You probably nodded off love; it's all those long hours at the hospital and then this old nuisance drags you out of bed.'

Jennifer was certain that the ghost had not been the result of a microsleep.

She wondered what the ghost had meant when he had compared her to a "looker" – that was slang her mum used for someone who had good looks – and he had said he had killed her; was he the ghost of some murderer?

The nurse comforted her mum and by 4am, Jennifer was letting herself out of her mother's house. If she hadn't had a drink last night she would have driven her mum’s old car home but instead she had to get another private cab back.

She wanted to tell the young driver to take another route to reach her home in Heswall because she was wary of passing along that stretch of Telegraph Road where the ghost had appeared in the back of the cab, but she said nothing.

When the private cab passed the spot where the red-haired man had materialised besides her, she thought she felt the interior of the vehicle go colder.

Three days later, at around 12:20am, Jennifer was returning from a long exhausting shift at the hospital in her car, and was travelling along Telegraph Road in her vehicle when she saw an old-looking white car approaching.

She was not sure of the model but it looked of a vintage type.

That car dazzled her with its headlights and so Jennifer flashed her headlamps to tell the inconsiderate motorist to dip his or her headlights from high beam. The car suddenly accelerated and swung to the wrong side of the road.

It was heading straight for Jennifer.

Before the nurse had a chance to attempt an evasive manoeuvre, the car hit her head-on and Jennifer screamed – but then the nurse experienced a sensation she had never felt before – it was like an icy river flowing through her body – and the next thing she knew, she could see the red tail lamps of the car speeding away in her rear-view mirror.

The car had gone through her vehicle – passed straight through her and now it was speeding off into the night down Telegraph Road. Jennifer was in such a state of shock, she pulled over. She rolled down the window and gasped the cool night air.

Only then did she think of the ghost who had appeared in the back of the cab three nights ago. Was that phantom vehicle connected to him?

Then she saw a light coming down a deserted Telegraph Road in her mirrors.

As it drew nearer, the headlamps of the vehicle coming up behind her dimmed to an almost orange light.

She could see it was a white car and then realised it was the ghostly vehicle.

She started her car in a panic. That white car drove on the right-hand side of the road and kept a position parallel to Jennifer’s vehicle and she could see the pale, grinning face of the red-haired driver looking over at her.

There was a Ford Fiesta speeding down Telegraph Road from the opposite direction, and it was on a collision course with that old fashioned white car, and Jennifer slowed down and stopped because she feared the Fiesta driver might drive into her if he changed lanes to avoid what he would perceive as a real white car, but the vintage vehicle tore off and drove straight through the Fiesta and disappeared into the distance.

Jennifer could see the Fiesta slowing down behind her as the driver probably wondered what had just taken place.

The nurse got home and treated herself to a large vodka and tonic.

Why was she being haunted by that red-haired man in the car?

She went to bed at three in the morning and said her prayers – something she hadn't done in a very long time.

She told an orderly at the hospital where she worked named John about the ghostly stalker in the car, as she knew he had an interest in the paranormal, and he said, 'Be very careful Jenny; he sounds as if he's latched on to you because he knew someone who looked a lot like you when he was alive.'

'Yeah, and he said he killed her,' replied a worried Jennifer.

'Listen Jenny', said John, 'if he approaches you again or, heaven forbid, if he ever appears in your car, say, just recite these two words and they will repel him. Just say "Kyrie Eleison" – it means 'Lord Have Mercy' in Greek, and it will drive him away.'

Exactly a week after this advice from John, Jennifer was driving down Telegraph Road after a late shift, and the time was just after one in the morning.

A full moon hung over the road and Jennifer saw the white car in the distance coming her way; its roof reflected the lunar orb and she saw the headlamps were glimmering with a tired orange light. She knew it was him.

She drove on and this time, the ghost slowed his car and positioned his vehicle sideways in the middle of the road, creating a barrier.

This really annoyed Jennifer; she wasn't sure whether she should try and drive through the vehicle or whether it was solid at the moment.

She stopped her car and watched the red-haired man in dark clothes get out of the vehicle and walk towards her. He had something in his right hand; it looked like a knife.

Jennifer was now in two minds – she could reverse and turn around and speed away or she could confront this coward and utter those words John had told her to recite.

She chose the latter. The red-haired man arrived at the driver’s window and Jennifer lowered the window a few inches and the man said 'Guess what?'

Before he could say another word, Jennifer, utterly believing the words she was about to say would do their job, yelled 'Kyrie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!'

The man turned and she watched him run off and get back into the car, and she saw him turn the white vehicle around and drive back the way he had come and at one point the vehicle faded away in the moonlight.

Jennifer has not seen that car or its driver since.

All of Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are available from Amazon. Haunted Liverpool 37 is out soon.