A final salute of blasts and whistles rang out through the warm May air on Saturday 1962 as the last steam freight train left West Kirby, bound for Hooton along the single track railway line that ran parallel to the banks of the Dee.
Passenger service along the convict line – which had been established in 1886 – had been discontinued five years earlier and now came the permanent cessation of the line’s freight service.
The line had served countless coal merchants, the Cadbury’s factory in Moreton and carried many parcels, and there had been massive protests from Wirral passengers, but it all came to nothing and the line, which was branded ‘unremunerative’ by faceless bureaucrats ‘ was labeled, was closed.
In 1967 there were proposals to acquire the old track from West Kirby to Hooton, and that track bed eventually became the Wirral Way.
During the laborious uprooting of the 50 kilometer long steel railway rails and sleepers, some strange things – supernatural events – were said to have been observed.
There was a rumor that the remains of a witch had been found; she was buried face down with a stake through her back – meaning she must have been a witch of some power – because only certain types of witches were buried with such gruesome ritual precautions after the witch’s hanging.
The son of one of the navvies who excavated the section of railway line running parallel to Piper’s Lane, Heswall, was interviewed by me on the radio some years ago and he told of a terrifying incident related to him by his father , a religious man from Neston.
The man’s father had found human bones about five feet below the track, and it was cloudy and raining at the time. Suddenly there was a noise – it sounded like an explosion – and bones and stones and a human skull burst out of the ground and flew towards the workmen, who scattered in all directions.
A femur bone struck a worker repeatedly in the head and upper back, as if something invisible was using it as a club.
And then the remains fell to the ground and many of the workers would not return to the excavated track until an Irish priest had solemnly blessed it.
At the site of this violent poltergeist attack, which is now part of the Wirral Circular Trail, what can only be described as an atmosphere remains. Many cyclists who traverse this part of the 60 kilometer route have told me again and again how they feel the sudden change in the atmosphere on site – and some have even encountered the witch.
In December 2021, a 19-year-old Heswall boy called David was cycling with his 62-year-old uncle Richie, from West Kirby.
Richie had been pestered by his wife to take up cycling because he had been a lifelong smoker who had only recently quit smoking and was, by his own admission, a couch potato, perfectly content to spend as many hours in front of the television if he wanted. possible.
He had come up with so many excuses not to go out today, on this gloomy December afternoon, but his cousin had pushed him to go.
Richie cycled almost two miles along the Wirral Circular Trail from David’s house until he told his cousin he had a shooting pain in his right ankle.
It was getting dark now, and when Richie said he thought they should turn around and go to David’s house, they both saw a light further down the dark path, where the bare, gnarled branches of a tree hung over.
Uncle and cousin then saw lightning bolts of sparkling electricity shooting from the tree into the surrounding muddy ground – and then the figure of a woman appeared in a long white dress, and she had a shock of thick white hair and looked as if she were about forty years old used to be.
The light show of electrical discharges and colorful coronas was fascinating to David, but his uncle was terrified by the apparition.
The wind picked up and howled around the woman in white, and then she charged at David and Richie, and despite the latter’s claim that he had a sore ankle, he rode off like a bat out of hell on his mountain bike. felt something knock him off his bike and felt the slight tingling of an electric shock, first in his feet and then in his lower legs.
As the teenager lay stunned on his back, the eerie woman stood over him and in an accent that seemed to have a hint of Welsh in it, she shouted, “By the spirits of the ancient forests and the blood of the earth, I there is a heavy curse on you – a curse on you and your kind, doers of evil against the daughters of nature!’
David stood up, grabbed the handlebars of his bicycle and ran alongside. He saw the red taillight of his uncle’s bicycle further in the distance.
David got on the bike, but he felt hands dragging him back and he fell off the bike again.
The woman with the wild white hair was still ranting, but now he couldn’t understand what she was saying because it sounded like she was speaking Welsh. The lady’s eyes had a fiery light in them.
David got up, grabbed his bike and ran with it until he was out of breath, and then he got on the bike and managed to ride away. He heard the woman – and she had mistaken him for a witch – continuing her tirade.
When David caught up with his uncle, he told him about the curse she placed on him and Richie apologized for cycling away, but said the supernatural was the only thing that scared him. Richie then seemed to use the terrifying encounter as an excuse to stop cycling every day.
Nothing bad happened to David, but he lived for weeks in terror of the curse that would send him to an early grave.
Richie’s wife said the so-called witch was nothing more than someone who had dressed up to scare him and David, but that theory did not explain the flashes of electricity and spectacular aura the two men saw around the woman.
Going back a little further in time to 2018, and again, this was in December, three women were walking along the Wirral Circular Path.
This was a few days after Boxing Day and two of the women were trying to burn off the caloric excesses of Christmas, and the third woman was walking her dog.
Zeus, a great Alsatian. As the women approached a tree overhanging the path, Zeus, who was usually a very quiet animal, began to bark furiously at the tree.
All three women then saw the semi-transparent image of a woman in a white robe and long white hair, standing against the trunk of the tree with her hands covering her face.
She seemed to be crying, but when one of the women courageously asked the ghost what was wrong, it slowly disappeared into thin air, although the Alsatian continued to bark at the tree.
The lady in white remains a mystery; Is she the ghost of the person who was buried face down with a stake through her stomach?
What did that unknown person do to be risked in such a horrific way? Maybe one day we will know more.
Author: Tom Slemen, a Liverpool writer best known as the author of the best-selling Haunted Liverpool book series, which documents paranormal incidents and unsolved or unusual crimes. Check his books Amazon here.
