WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world-famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.
YOU can sometimes pick up some great bargains at second hand shops and charity shops, but it would seem you can also sometimes pick up a ghost as well.
In February 2002, Barbara from Birkenhead went to a car boot sale in Chester with boyfriend Liam.
They went to the car boot sale so early, that it was still dark when they pulled into the car park, so Liam had to fetch a flashlight from the boot.
Barbara found and bought a few items.
One item in particular that took her fancy was a small, black, shiny musical box with an intricate gold heart pattern inlaid on the lid.
She had been charmed by the delicate detail on it, and was pleased with herself for buying it, for only £3. She opened it, and it played the main theme to the opera The Merry Widow.
When the couple arrived back home later that day, Liam suddenly called for her attention.
"What's that?" he asked, looking around.
"What's what?" Barbara replied, without paying much attention, until she heard it too.
It was clearly the chimes of The Merry Widow, but Barbara could not understand why they could hear the tune, as the unusual little box wasn't in the room, it was definitely upstairs in the bedroom where she had placed it.
Barbara went upstairs to check. She found the box on her dressing table where she had proudly positioned it minutes earlier, and picked it up. Opening it, she heard the chimes begin. She snapped closed the lid, silencing the music, and placed it back on the dresser.
When Barbara went to work on the following day, she could not get the haunting song out of her mind, and stranger still, neither could her boyfriend. Liam worked in a garage, and he first noticed the spectral melody as the boss was talking to him in the office.
The chimes in his head became such a distraction, that Liam couldn't concentrate on his work. All he could hear was the accursed tune and it tormented him to distraction, so much so, that he had to go home. As he drove home, he was so affected, that he wondered if someone in the garage had somehow spiked his tea with some hallucinogenic drug.
When he got home, he was surprised to find that Barbara was already there. It transpired that she too had come home from work because of the haunting chimes relentlessly replaying in her mind.
They had driven her to absolute distraction as well. Later that day, she showed a neighbour the box, who commented that the music was strangely catchy.
Then, that evening, the neighbour reported that the eerie tune had invaded her mind as well. It was even affecting her sleep, because she could hear the irritating notes playing over and over again in her dreams.
A call was made to me at the studios of Radio Merseyside, and I visited Barbara and Liam's home in Birkenhead to take a look at the mysterious musical box.
Wary of its reputation, I was not too keen to open it, even though my curiosity urged me to do so. Barbara, Liam and their neighbour nervously suggested that I should open the box elsewhere.
As I examined it, I could find no markings on the outside which might have provided the name of its manufacturer.
Undaunted, I later visited the car boot sale where Barbara had purchased the box, even managed to trace the man who had sold it to her, but all he could remember was that an old woman had given him the box for nothing at a car boot sale in Rock Ferry.
I decided to mention the musical box on the radio, and described the tune it played. Immediately, a number of listeners called the station. Some claimed that they, too, had been afflicted with the never-ending tune after listening to the box.
One woman who visited a hearing specialist was diagnosed with tinnitus, but believed her condition had something to do with the mysterious black musical box and its ceaseless melody.
Then came the breakthrough.
A caller named Mr Lewis telephoned me and accurately described the intricate heart-shaped pattern on the lid.
He said that, after he had opened that exact same box in 1975, he had been unable to get the tune out of his head. It became so bad, that he had to sleep with the radio playing on his bedside table to drown out the tune.
In 1977, the tune had finally faded away, but it had been such an intrusion into his life, that it had broken up his marriage.
I asked him how he had come into possession of the musical box, and Mr Lewis said that he had moved into a house in Rock Ferry in 1974 and had found it there, along with other items, including an old Welsh Bible. Mr Lewis had subsequently heard a strange tale from his new neighbours.
They told him that the previous inhabitant of the house told them that his grandfather had poisoned himself many years ago in the 1890s for reasons unknown.
Beside his body, the man's wife had found the musical box lying open with the haunting melody still playing. It had undoubtedly been that same musical box with the gold heart on.
This is one story with no satisfactory ending. In this era, when radio stations and television programmes repeatedly bombard us with mindless pop tunes, it's easy to find yourself humming or whistling a catchy melody, but how can an old musical box implant such a devilishly interminable tune into the minds of those who innocently open its lid? And what is the significance of The Merry Widow? I remain baffled.
In the 1980s, a 30-year-old Bebington woman named Audrey attended a local jumble sale at a youth club, where she purchased an old-fashioned "candlestick telephone".
This type of telephone was popular from the late 19th century into the 1930s. The earpiece (called the receiver) was separate from the upright base, which had the mouthpiece fixed at the top.
Audrey had seen this type of phone in old Laurel and Hardy films and thought they looked stylish. She asked her boyfriend, Mike – an electrician by trade – to check the phone and its wiring, and he soon installed it in the hallway of her flat in Bebington.
That old telephone began to ring at one in the morning, and a man’s voice said: 'Hello, Sadie, it’s me. Wonderin' how I tracked you down, sugar? Well, I got a knack for that sorta thing, see?'
'I’m afraid you have the wrong number,' said Audrey, standing in her bare feet in the cold hallway.
'Oh, Audrey, is it now, huh? Well, whatever name you go by, doll, I'm comin' to get ya. No dame skips out on me without payin' the price,' said the voice on the other end of the line.
'You've got the wrong number – bye!' Audrey hung up and went back to bed. Her boyfriend, Mike, asked who had called at such an hour.
'Someone drunk, probably; someone asking for Sadie,' Audrey replied.
The vintage telephone rang five more times that morning, and it was always that same voice, asking for Sadie and threatening to visit because he’d been jilted.
In the end, Mike answered the telephone and warned the man to stop calling or he would contact the police.
On the following evening, while Mike was visiting his mother, the peculiar, persistent caller rang again. Audrey noticed something about him—something dated in the way he spoke and the slang he used.
On this occasion, he claimed he was "just down the road" and that he was going to pay a visit. Audrey hung up and left the phone off the hook. At 9pm on the dot, she heard someone open the gate outside. The silhouette of a tall man in a trilby appeared at the frosted glass pane of the front door, and then came the chilling, familiar voice.
'I told you I'd come here, Sadie – open the door!'
The letterbox opened, and a pair of dark eyes gazed in at Audrey, who let out a scream. That scream alerted the neighbours, but when they reached Audrey’s door, the man had gone.
Audrey was convinced the man had been some ghost – perhaps from the 1930s or 1940s – judging by the way he spoke. She believed that old-fashioned candlestick telephone had somehow brought the ghost out of the woodwork.
Mike disconnected the telephone and threw it in the bin, installing a normal push-button telephone instead. There were no more calls for Sadie, and no more menacing visits.
Tom Slemen’s latest book, Tales of the Haunted, as well as all of his other books and audiobooks, is available from Amazon.
