WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.

In this latest tale, Tom recounts the tale of the woman who slept with a ghost.

I'VE changed a few names for legal reasons in this strange story.

In August 1968, estate agents Denison & Chapple had the following notice printed in the local newspapers:

To be offered at auction (subject to conditions and not having been sold) on Tuesday, 20th August, 1968, at 3pm, at the Property Exchange, 14 Cook Street, Liverpool 3 – Lot1: Childer Cottage, Willaston; a large detached sandstone cottage with a slate roof, having a garage and large side and front gardens.

Built in 1697, scheduled as a building of architectural and historical interest as a Class 2 building under Section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947...etc.

A 30-year-old nouveau riche pop record producer named Giles Barrell obtained the cottage in Willaston for a five-figure sum and moved in his things, which in his eyes, included his 24-year-old fiancée Judith Conway.

The cottage had three bedrooms, a scullery, and a large living room dominated by a massive fireplace with an alcove that allowed a chair on either side.

As soon as Judith set foot in the cottage she had the uncanny feeling someone - or something - was watching her and asked Giles about the presence, but he said it was all in her mind.

He threw a big house-warming party and introduced Judith to a 'close friend' named Godfrey and suggested she should look at him as her 'second boyfriend'.

At the wild party, Giles kept plying Judith with drinks and removing her clothes, and at the end of the night drunkenly told her: "Me, you and Godfrey, just the three of us - the perfect couple."

Judith was furious.

She had no intention of letting Godfrey share their bed, so slept in a room on her own and locked the door.

At four in the morning she was awakened by a loud crack.

She thought it was Giles at first but then she saw this person was well over six-feet in height and broad-shouldered.

When Judith switched on the bedside lamp she beheld a stranger - who was wearing a domino mask, the type the Lone Ranger famously wears in the films and comics.

There was a long scar on the intruder's left cheek.

He wore a white shirt, old-fashioned waistcoat and broad tie and had on riding boots. He was also holding a whip in his hand.

"Get out of my bed and remove yourself from my house you harlot!" he shouted in a deep voice and whipped Judith's left shoulder, drawing blood.

She screamed for help and couldn't find the key she'd locked the door with.

"Women are the snares of Satan!" he cried, then the whip struck her back and Judith almost fainted with the pain.

She slumped to the floor and the sadistic brute held the sole of his riding boot inches over her face. He snarled: "Wine and strumpets empty men's wallets!"

Giles and Godfrey, hearing Judith's screams, started kicking the other side of the door, and the masked man punched the door, then turned and stormed off into a corner of the room, before vanishing into thin air.

Judith hid under the bed and the door exploded and almost came off its hinges as Giles and Godfrey burst into the room.

The men believed Judith had experienced a nightmare, but were unable to explain the whip marks on her body.

As the days went by, Giles spent more and more time in the recording studios down in London, and sometimes never returned for a week.

One lonely evening in September, the man with the whip appeared in the kitchen of the cottage.

He seized Judith, pushed her against a door and forced hard kisses upon her lips.

He said he was sorry for the harm he had inflicted upon her and now told the young woman he had fallen in love with her.

When she tried to scream he held his hand over her mouth.

"My name is Richard" he said, his steely blue eyes bulging behind his mask, "and from this moment you are mine; mind, body and soul!"

When he removed his hand from Judith's mouth she gasped: "You're a ghost" and almost fainted.

"Yes, but a clever one, Judith," Richard replied, "do I not feel solid to the touch? I will kill the man you are engaged to, by the Hell that burns below us!"

Judith screamed and Richard turned in a huff and disappeared.

Day after day he appeared to Judith, telling her how much he loved her, and one night he actually got into the bed with her, and he was more loving and gentle than anyone she had ever slept with.

She removed his mask and Richard had the face of an angel.

Around this time, Giles announced he had booked a church and arranged everything for the wedding in October - without even consulting Judith.

Invisible hands later turned the steering wheel of Giles' car as he drove to work and he crashed, but survived.

There was an outbreak of poltergeist activity at the cottage and knives were thrown at Giles.

When Judith told him a ghost she loved was behind the attempts on his life, Giles said she was insane and left her.

Richard eventually told Judith that a "higher force" would soon stop him visiting the world of the living, but he promised he'd be waiting for her on the other side when she died, and sadly, in the 1970s Judith passed away from a short illness.

I often wonder if she was reunited with Richard.

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