WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a series written by world-famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.
I've changed a few names in this strange story for reasons of confidentiality.
On the evening of Friday, November 29, 1974, a 24-year-old man named Barry Evanston was putting the finishing touches on the large new house he and his wife, Denise, had recently moved into.
Well, technically, Denise had bought the house - her father was loaded - but Barry had kept his promise by painting all the ceilings in their impressive four-bedroom home on Dawstone Road in Heswall.
Now it was Denise's turn to keep her word: she’d let Barry head out for a few drinks with his old mates and Uncle Patrick at the Cottage Loaf pub in Thurstaston.
Denise, however, was adamant Barry should take a cab. She worried about his driving after a drink, especially since Uncle Patrick was known for pushing rum on everyone at family gatherings.
Barry insisted he'd be fine and even begged Denise to join him, but she declined. She wasn’t one for pubs and had grown tired of Barry’s pub chatter about football and politics during their early dating days around Wirral and Liverpool.
So, with Denise's reluctant blessing, Barry borrowed her Triumph Stag and made the three-mile drive to the Cottage Loaf.
Back in the 1970s, attitudes towards drink-driving were far more lenient than they are today. Drinking and then getting behind the wheel was commonplace - something shocking by today’s standards but, alas, reflective of a bygone era.
At the pub, Uncle Patrick wasted no time. He started Barry off on the rum, despite Barry’s initial protests.
An elderly man sitting nearby, observing their antics, chimed in: ‘You’d best go easy on that, lad. Someone drinking here a few weeks back got done for driving over the limit—fined £35 and banned for a year.’
'Rubbish!' Patrick declared, downing his Lamb’s Navy. 'I’ve never heard of anyone getting done. You must’ve dreamt it.'
'I didn’t,' the old man retorted indignantly. 'It was in the papers. They took a blood sample—he was 65 milligrams over the limit!'
Patrick said to Barry, ‘Take no notice lad - he's away with the mixer that fellah; told us his cousin was Churchill’s double in the war a few weeks ago. He's nutty as a fruit cake.’
Still, Barry couldn’t help but feel uneasy. 'Maybe he’s got a point, Uncle. I don’t want to crash Denise’s car.' He sipped his rum more cautiously after that.
As the night wore on, Patrick challenged anyone who’d listen to an arm wrestle, defeating them all. By eleven o’clock, Barry decided it was time to head home. ‘Great seeing you, Uncle. Give my love to Auntie Sheila.’
‘I will, lad,’ Patrick said, pinching Barry’s cheek. ‘You be careful driving home - and keep the windows down; the fresh air will keep you awake.’
Barry took Patrick’s advice, rolling the windows down as he drove the Triumph Stag along the moonlit Telegraph Road.
The streetlights were sparse, and the full moon’s glow lit much of the way. About ten minutes into his journey, his headlights caught something pink at the roadside.
Slowing down, he realised it was a young blonde woman in a satin pink dress, holding out her thumb.
He pulled over, leaning across to call out, ‘You alright?’
The girl, who looked younger than he’d first thought, answered softly, ‘Can you give me a lift to Mere Lane?’
‘Yeah, get in,’ Barry said, unlocking the door. She climbed in, her white heels clicking softly against the floor. To Barry, she was stunning—eighteen, she said, and smelled of a heady, intoxicating perfume.
‘What are you doing out this late?’ Barry asked.
The girl hesitated, then quietly replied, ‘Mere Lane, please.’
She turned and smiled at him, and he couldn’t help but compliment her perfume. The girl gave her name as Ruby and said she was eighteen, then added, ‘almost nineteen’.
As the car pulled away, Andy Kim’s Rock Me Gently played on the radio. Still a bit tipsy, Barry sang along, ‘I have never been loved like this before.’
Ruby suddenly reached over and placed her hand on Barry’s left thigh. He turned, startled, to find her leaning in, her eyes glittering with mischief, her smile coy. 'How about it?' she murmured.
'Ruby! I’m a married man!' Barry protested, his voice shaking. He slowed the car and pulled over, but her intoxicating presence overwhelmed him.
One thing led to another, and when it was over, Barry adjusted his tie and glanced in the rear-view mirror, horrified to see his lipstick-smeared face. Before he could collect himself, headlights appeared behind in the rear-view mirror.
A police car pulled alongside, and a torch’s beam illuminated Barry’s face. ‘Everything alright, sir?’ asked a voice from the car.
‘Yes, constable,’ Barry stammered. ‘Just dropping this lady off at Mere Lane -’
But when he turned, the passenger seat was empty.
‘Night, sir,’ the policeman said, switching off the torch. The patrol car continued on its way down a moonlit Telegraph Road.
Baffled, Barry searched the car and the roadside but found no trace of Ruby. Unease gripped him as a chilling thought struck: had she been a ghost?
When he got home, he cleaned up quickly, hoping Denise wouldn’t notice anything. But she was still awake, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a glass of wine in hand. Her nose caught the lingering scent of perfume and her sharp eyes noticed something odd.
‘Barry - where’s your ring?’ she asked.
His wedding band was missing. Barry looked at his ring finger then said, 'I don’t know; it couldn’t have just fallen off.' And Denise immediately glared at him and said, 'No it couldn’t have.'
Barry searched the car and he wondered if Ruby had taken it during that unthinking moment of insanity in the car when he had - he couldn’t bring himself to think of what he had done. Denise grilled him and asked him to tell the truth and eventually he told her, and he blamed the drink and said Ruby had thrown herself at him.
He cried, Denise had never seen him shed tears before, and he said, ‘I was weak, Denise, and so stupid.’
After a cooling off period of a few days, Denise forgave him. Years later, Barry heard a strange story in the Cottage Loaf one night, just before last orders when the topic had turned to ghost stories.
A woman said that a man named John who had just been married had left the pub and had driven home down Telegraph Road and picked up a blonde hitch-hiker.
She asked for a lift to Mere Lane but before she reached the destination she threw herself on John and there was a “bit of hanky-panky and carrying on” and then she vanished, but not before taking his wedding ring.
They say Ruby had had an affair with the husband of a witch in the 1960s, and then she had died from an illness. She was buried in her favourite pink dress.
The witch performed a ritual on Ruby’s grave so she would rise and re-enact her seductions for eternity.
And then she would walk up Mere Lane and continue onto Irby Road, to Heswall Cemetery, where her grave is located.
All of Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are on Amazon.
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