Michelle's Spectral Companion

This is a touching and rather sad tale that was investigated over thirty years ago in 1970 by several psychic research groups.

In October 1970 a single-parent family moved into a pleasant old Victorian house in Liverpool's Warwick Street. The children of this family were two boys, aged thirteen and twelve, and a girl aged ten named Michelle. Michelle had a terrible stutter, and was a very shy girl. Because of her speech impediment, she was often picked on in school. When her family moved into the house on Warwick Street, Michelle had to start at a new school - St Francis Xaviers - and as she was the 'new girl' at the school, and because she stuttered, the girl had a traumatic time settling in during the early weeks.
One evening just after 10 o'clock, Michelle was lying in bed, thinking about the ordeal she would have to go through at school in the morning, and she began to cry. Suddenly, a tall shadow appeared at the bottom of the bed, and a soft voice said: 'Please don't cry Michelle.'
Michelle was obviously startled and when she glanced down the bottom of the bed, she saw it was a young man, aged forty at the most, and he was dressed in a long black coat, and wore a flat peaked cap. He was very handsome and had a friendly face. He smiled, then sat on the edge of the bed. Michelle hid her face under the blankets and shouted her mum. Her mother came up and when her daughter mentioned the ghost, she told Michelle she'd had a nightmare. Later that night, Michelle felt something pressing down on the mattress at the bottom of the bed. She bravely looked up, and there was the ghost, only this time he was holding his cap in his hands and gazing at the child in a fatherly way. By the illumination of the Mini Mouse beside lamp, the apparition was quite solid-looking, and the startled girl could feel the weight of the ghost pressing down on the tip of her right toes.
This time, Michelle wasn't at all scared, and entered into conversation with the ghost. She asked him his name, and he said: 'John. John Pickering.' He told her that he had been the captain of a ship a long time ago. He said that he felt great sympathy for Michelle's mother, because she had no husband. Michelle's father had died from cancer three years previously. Captain Pickering told Michelle that when he had drowned many years ago, he had returned from his watery grave to see his wife Lorna and his beloved 10-year-old daughter Lucy.
Anyway, the ghost made regular night-time visits to Michelle. He would tell her amazing stories about the places he had visited in his travels on the oceans of the world, and he was evidently an artistic ghost, because he actually drew pictures on the blackboard in Michelle's room. These pictures baffled Michelle's family, because the girl could not draw anything better than a typical childish rendition of her hero Mickey Mouse!
Michelle's stutter gradually went away, and her English teachers were amazed at the girl's adventure stories. At first the teachers thought Michelle was copying the stories out of a book, because the historical details in the tales and the maritime terms she used were very accurate. When the teachers asked Michelle where got the stories from, she admitted they had been related to her by Captain John Pickering, her regular night visitor. The teachers assumed the girl was talking about an imaginary friend.
In 1975, Michelle's mother married, and the family moved to St Helens. On the last night at the Warwick Street house, Michelle, who was then fifteen, broke down and stayed in her room, sobbing. She had begged her mother and stepfather to stay at the house, but they were set on moving to the outskirts.
Michelle and her family were leaving the house, ready to go into the removal lorry, when the tearful teenager suddenly turned around and looked down the hall. She said, 'Goodbye. I love you.'
A faint, sad voice which seemed to float down from the top of the stairs sighed: 'Goodbye.'
Everyone heard it and all but Michelle thought it was creepy.
In 1987, Michelle and her husband made a nostalgic visit to the house on Warwick Street. They brought along their four-year-old daughter Faith. The house was empty and run down. Because it was boarded up, the couple couldn't inspect the premises. As Michelle and her husband were getting back into the car, their daughter Faith stopped in her tracks and waved at something. When her mum and dad looked to the house, they saw a man on the second floor peering out of a grimy window. He was waving. Moments later he wasn't there.
Research has established that there was a Captain John Pickering who lived in Warwick Street in the 19th century. He was presumably drowned when his ship was lost without a trace in the North Atlantic around 1869. He left a wife, Lorna and a young daughter named Lucy. This wasn't known until 1979.
In September 2000, I related the aforementioned tale on BBC Radio Merseyside's Billy Butler Show, and was afterwards contacted by a builder who had recently worked at the haunted address in Warwick Street. He told me that he and several workmates renovating the house concerned had often heard footsteps, encountered shadowy figures, and heard the eerie strains of a harmonica in the upper rooms of the building. The tunes of the invisible harmonica-player sounded like old sea shanties. The ghostly activity became so intense, the tough builders refused to work after dusk at the house on Warwick Street.

Many thanks to Tom Slemen for his permission to show some of his stories on my web site.

Copyright Tom Slemen 2000.