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

In this latest tale, Tom explores the mystery of the weird monk of Woodchurch Road...

She saw his left shoe first, protruding from around the corner of the Cock and Pullet pub, and what a strange shoe it was: long and black and pointed like a medieval crakow – like something out of Blackadder, Lilli thought, and then she saw his pale face barely visible in the shade of the black hood as he peeped around the corner at her and Becci – two 21-year-old students walking back to their digs (on Ridley Street) from a party on Storeton Road.

There was ice as hard as glass layering the pavements of Woodchurch Road upon this glacial morning in December 2010, and snow was starting to fall again, and being 6:30am the sun had not yet risen, so only the dismal amber glow of a nearby sodium streetlight threw some feeble illumination on the grey streetscape.

But that black hooded figure with the pointed shoes stood out stark as he peeped at the students from the alleyway at the side of the pub, and what made the entity seem even more scary was his abnormal height, for the girls estimated he must have been between ten and twelve feet in height.

The tallest man in medical history – Robert Pershing Wadlow – was just 8 feet and 11 inches tall in comparison.

I asked the girls if the giant of Woodchurch Road had perhaps been two hoaxers, one sitting on the shoulders of the other under that elongated funereal habit – but my suggestion was quickly dismissed by the students.

‘No, it was a real person, a giant, and he moved naturally,’ Becci recalled, with goosebumps rising on her arms. The towering hooded man stepped out from behind that corner, and Lilli and Becci turned, ready to run, but were both wearing heels and the ice-slicked pavement made a rapid retreat impossible.

Lilli fell, grazing her knee, and then Becci almost slipped and landed on her palms, hurting her wrist.

Somehow the students managed to hold onto one another as they got to their feet, and Becci took off her shoes and ran barefoot with her soles almost sticking to the cruel stinging ice.

She stopped at one point and turned, then dragged Lilli – who had fallen again – up Woodchurch Road.

Becci saw the Brobdingnagian bogeyman walking slowly and silently towards her and Lilli, and he was bent over, as if he was stooping to get a better look at them.

Somehow the students managed to run along the skating-rink sidewalks of Woodchurch Road until they saw that their menacing monastic pursuer had vanished.

The girls returned to the scene of the party on Storeton Road, half a mile away, where a few revellers were still drinking, and of course, no one believed the seemingly far-fetched story of the students, who were now gulping down scotch to steady their nerves and fire up the circulation after their chilling ordeal.

I mentioned the ‘giant monk’ in black on a radio programme not long afterwards and received intriguing calls and emails from people ranging from milkmen and policemen to postmen and even a former prostitute who had plied her trade on the peripheries of Oxton, and they had all allegedly seen an entity which tallied very close to the description given by the students, although the height given by witnesses varied between 7 and 10 feet, and the earliest report dated from 1967.

I delved into the history of the pub – the Cock and Pullet – where the students had first seen the überlanky monk, peeping around the corner – but I could find no religious orders associated with the drinking establishment, which was originally called the Royal Oak (after a massive oak tree that stood in front of the pub in the middle of Woodchurch Road).

A former policemen told me how, one snowy morning in January 1970 at around 1.30am, he and a colleague were on the beat on Bessborough Road when they saw a very tall shadowy figure on Derwent Road, about sixty yards away.

The weird gangling lurker was apparently looking through one of the dimly-lit bay windows of a terraced house on the corner of Bentley Road.

The policemen sensed that the peeping Tom was unearthly, but crept up on it, and when they were within about 15 yards of him, they saw that the prowler had on a long black robe and his face was hidden by a hood of the sort you associate with monks.

The thing turned towards the policemen, apparently startled, and flitted away from them ‘as if he was on wheels’ recalled one of the constables.

It turned the corner into Normanston Road, and when the policemen gingerly turned that same corner seconds later, they saw no one about.

They split up and walked on opposite sides of Normanston Road, shining their torches down the eleven alleyways of the road as well as every nook and cranny.

The hyper-agile ‘monk’ was nowhere to be seen – and what the thing was remains a mystery.

These apparitions can lay dormant for years, and then they usually start to walk again, and I will not be in the least bit surprised if the mysterious monk of Woodchurch Road starts dong the rounds again in the near future...

Over the forthcoming weeks Tom will tell you more tales of the mysterious and the uncanny in the Globe.

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