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 behind the Christmas ring...

The strange case of the Christmas Ring started one freezing Wednesday morning in the December of 2014.

A 22-year-old university student and busker named Ceri Woodhall was returning to her flat on Bennett’s Hill, Oxton, after the daily visit to the local musical instruments shop (where she tortured herself by playing a Rickenbacker she couldn’t afford).

She saw the removal men taking furniture and shelves out of the house next-door-but-one to the Pickfords van, and something small and glittery fell from an upturned leather wing back chair one of the removal guys was carrying.

It looked like a ring.

Ceri made a split-second decision which shocked her – she picked up the ring – and said nothing.

She walked into the house where her flat was located up a flight of stairs, picked up a bundle of envelopes (all containing bills) from the parcel shelf in the vestibule hall, and then the weird little man who lived downstairs – Mr Stroud – came out of his flat and smiled at Ceri before he left the house.

Ceri went to her door, aching to look at the ring.

She went into the flat and was surprised to see her flatmate Danica stretched out on the sofa, looking at something on eBay on her iPad.

She was supposed to be at the café, where she worked part-time.

It transpired that Danica had been sent home because the café owner had received a tip off about a visit from a health inspector, so he’d shut the place down for a week to clean the joint up.

And so, Ceri showed Danica the ring she’d more or less stolen.

It looked like an old engagement ring of the type Ceri’s mum wore – but Danica disagreed, and seemed to know what she was talking about as she screwed her eyes up and had a close look at the ring.

She told Ceri: "That’s Art Deco, and it’s got a millgrained edge setting, that has."

"Shurrup," Ceri grinned, and thought Danica was having her on.

"You don’t know anything about jewellery and diamonds."

"Er, my uncle’s a jeweller I’ll have you know," replied Danica, handing the ring back to her friend, "and he used to show me the diamonds in his shop. That’s worth a few bob that. Hey hang on, I’ve got one a jeweller’s eyepiece somewhere."

Danica threw the iPad on the sofa and went to rummage in her room.

Ceri had a fit of laughter when Danica returned with the monocle magnifier wedged in her left eye.

She took a look at the Art Deco ring, and immediately noticed something odd – there was a peculiar flaw in the diamond in the form of a shadowy number of facets which created the grey silhouette of a man in a hammer-tail coat.

Ceri had a look through the eyepiece and saw him too.

"It’s called pareidolia," said Danica, "when you see faces or patterns in things like clouds, or the Man in the Moon."

"He looks like a butler in that coat," said Ceri, "wonder how much it’s worth?"

"Not much with a flaw like that in it," opined Danica, "probably just of sentimental value to someone."

"I like it," Ceri slid the ring on her middle finger and it fitted perfectly.

The girls went to window shop in Birkenhead, and when they returned home, Ceri got the shock of her life.

Laid out on the sofa was the very Rickenbacker guitar she had been strumming at the musical instruments shop that morning, and it still had its £2,399 price tag on it!

"Who’s been in here?" asked Danica, eyeing the costly electric guitar.

Ceri picked up the Rickenbacker in a daze and explained how she had dreamt of owning that instrument for over a year.

Danica checked the rooms, imagining some thief was lurking about.

There was no one hiding anywhere in the flat, so who had gained access to the flat to drop off a guitar worth thousands, only to leave again.

It didn’t make sense.

The girls bumped into the downstairs neighbour Mr Stroud, and he said a “Mr Roby” had brought the guitar, and he described him as debonair – and looking like an old-fashioned butler.

He had spoken in a very refined voice – that’s all Mr Stroud could add.

Ceri soon realised that whenever she longed for something expensive, it would appear in her flat, and only Stroud could see the ghostly butler who appropriated the goods, and this really scared Danica, so she told Ceri to throw the ring away.

"I’m not throwing my 'Christmas Ring' away,’" said Ceri, her eyes alight with greed, "I’m not harming anyone, and he’s a harmless ghost."

"If the police trace all these stolen items to you, you’ll do time," Danica warned her friend.

In the meantime, expensive diamond necklaces, designer clothes and even a bottle of Boërl & Kroff Brut Rose champagne worth thousands of pound appeared at the flat, and still Ceri wanted more.

She even lusted for a Rolls Royce outside her door, but then on Christmas Eve she went window shopping at a jeweller’s for ‘more ideas’ – and forgot to bring the ring.

When she got home, the flat had been broken into – and all of the spoils of the Christmas Ring – and the ring itself – had been stolen.

Ceri never heard from Mr Roby again.

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

Haunted Liverpool 28 is another dazzling collection of supernatural fact by Tom Slemen, England’s greatest writer on the paranormal.