Ghosts feature many times in my books, and are also the subject of the many tales on this website, but what are they? In most people's minds, ghosts are assumed to be visitors from a supernatural realm. Statisticians say that around one in five people now believe in ghosts and around one in ten people claim to have seen one. In my experience, I would say that in Liverpool, there is a much higher incidence of ghostly encounters.
From my own research over the years, I would say that there are several common myths about ghosts. They don't always put in an appearance after dark, and are often encountered in broad daylight, sometimes looking as solid as you and I. One obvious giveaway is their outdated attire, but phantoms of the recently-departed usually wear contemporary clothes. It seems as if the shroud-draped shade is but a corny caricature.
Another myth is that "ghosts can't harm you", yet poltergeists have seriously injured many people by hurling objects at them and lifting them bodily into the air. Many years ago, one man in London was thrown out of a second floor window by a poltergeist and almost broke his neck. I investigated a poltergeist in Speke many years ago and had a nail driven through the palm of my left hand by one. The nail flew out of the door of a cupboard under the stairs of the haunted house and hit me with the force of a .22 pellet. I still have the scar as a souvenir. Poltergeists have also caused fires, and may be the cause of the occasional blazes which the investigators can't explain.
The sudden appearance of a ghost can cause traumatic shock and may even trigger cardiac arrest in a person who has heart trouble. So ghosts can physically harm you, although most spectres are benign entities. There is a chilling exception in a certain hotel in the north west. In the early 1950s, a beautiful young blonde lady – who was also a prostitute, nicknamed Pippa, booked into a certain room at the hotel in question with a client. The client, a married man in his fifties, found himself so stricken with guilt, he couldn't go through with the sex act and left the hotel room. About five minutes after he left, Pippa heard the sounds of someone laughing out in the corridor, and she peeped through the keyhole to see what was going on. She saw no one there, but something passed the keyhole twice. Then all of a sudden, something sharp and long was thrust through the keyhole, and pierced Pippa's left eyeball and passed so deep into the tissues of her face, the tip of the object – which seemed to be a knitting needle, emerged at the top of her right cheek.
Pippa collapsed, and was taken to hospital. She was no blind in her left eye. She told the police her client had perhaps carried out the act, perhaps as some warped act of revenge for coaxing him to come to the hotel. The police never traced the man, and probably never bothered looking anyway because Pippa was just a 'common prostitute' in there eyes (no pun intended).
About a month later, a couple in their forties – June and Charles Bragg, booked into the hotel, and occupied the room where Pippa had had her eyeball skewered. At around 1 in the morning, June Bragg woke up after hearing laughter outside her door. It sounded like male laughter, but rather high pitched. She listened at the door, and after a few moments the laughter stopped, and June felt an excruciating pain in her left wrist. When she looked down she saw that a long hat-pin, or perhaps a knitting needle had been thrust through the keyhole and straight through her wrist so that it came out the other side of her arm. As she screamed, the needle was withdrawn back through the keyhole.
June's husband leapt out the bed, and when he heard what had happened, he yanked open the hotel door and dashed out into the hotel corridor. There was no one about. The couple went to the reception desk and informed the old man who was on duty at that hour. He had seen no one go into the elevator or pass him on their way to the stairs. The police were notified, and an investigation began. The hotel manager admitted that, as far back as the late 1940s, there had been similar incidents, where someone had tapped on doors or caused a commotion, and that same person had then thrust a long needle through the keyhole, obviously intending to injure the guests. The needle attacks continued for another three years, and then they ended when the hotel was refurbished. The hotel manager and a bellboy were walking down the corridor one evening when they both heard footsteps approaching. Something neither of them could see brushed past the manager, and he felt something pierce the back of his hand. A spot of blood appeared at the point where something invisible at stabbed him, and then the eerie footsteps were heard running away down the corridor.
I have investigated this strange case in some depth now and will publish my findings and theory in a future publication.

Copyright Tom Slemen 2010. All rights reserved.