Good and Friendly ghosts - a story from Tom Slemen

- GOOD AND FRIENDLY GHOSTS -

THE 'BLOKE'

The following incident took place at a certain house in Liverpool, England in 1985. The ghost in the story is still active, but as the people who currently live in the haunted house aren't yet fully aware that they have a resident ghost on their premises, the street can't be mentioned in the story.

In the late summer of 1985, a 12-year-old boy named Alan was sitting having breakfast with his family, when suddenly, a jar of marmalade in front of him slid a few inches across the tablecloth, startling everyone. The boy's parents and 7-year-old daughter were naturally quite astonished, but Alan just smirked and whispered, "Stop it, Jarvis."

His mother's mouth dropped, and she looked at the marmalade jar, then looked at Alan and said, "How did you do that?"

"I didn't Mum." said Alan, "Jarvis did it."

"Who?" asked Alan's father, who had been reading the newspaper.

"The bloke from upstairs." Alan replied, and resumed eating his cornflakes.

"Eh? What bloke son?" Alan's father was very intrigued at his son's comments.

Alan had a lot of explaining to do. He said, "Well, Dad, this bloke comes into my room of a night. He tells me stories sometimes, and he looks as if he's a ghost, cos you can see through him. He's like a fuzzy shadow, and I told him that I'd never tell anyone about him. He said he's French and his name's Jarvis something. I can't remember his second name. It isn't Smith or anything."

Alan's parents looked at each other, not knowing whether to laugh or be concerned. Alan's sister, Kelly, giggled and put her hand to her mouth. She said, "Stop telling fibs Alan. There's no bloke upstairs in your room. Stop giving him pocket money Dad, cos he's telling lies."

That night, Alan's Dad left his bedroom to go to the toilet, and as he walked past his son's bedroom, he heard a conversation. He thought his son was talking in his sleep, and opened the door to look in, and saw Alan sitting up in bed with his bedside lamp on. Near the foot of the bed there was an outline of a shady figure which vanished as he looked at it. Alan's Dad slapped the light switch to turn the light on and looked in complete disbelief at the space at the end of Alan's bed where the ghostly figure had stood seconds before. He grabbed his son by the arm and yanked him out the bed, then dragged him to his bedroom, where he closed the door and put a chair against it. Alan's Mum woke up and asked what all the noise was about. Her husband said, "I saw it! I saw the ghost. He's bloody right! There is a ghost in his room! I can't believe what I saw."

Alan said, "Oh calm down, Dad. It's okay. Jarvis is all right. He's sound, honest."

"I'm frightened." said Alan's mother, and she got up and turned the light on.
"Shall we stay over at your mum's?" Alan's father asked his wife.

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming love?" Alan's mother asked her husband.

"I know what I saw!" he shouted, and suddenly there was a rapping at the door. Alan's parents jumped and his mum screamed.

"Mummy." said a girl's voice. It was little Kelly. She'd woken up with all the commotion.

Kelly's parents opened the door and took her in the room. "It's all right Kelly. You can sleep with Mummy and Daddy tonight." said Kelly's mum.

"I'm tired Dad, " complained Alan, and he yawned and said, "I want to sleep in my own bed."

"No you can't. There's a - you know what in there - " replied his father in a harsh voice. He couldn't mention the ghost in case he scared Kelly, but he seemed to be the most terrified.

The whole family slept in the same double bed and hardly got any sleep. Throughout the night, Alan's parents kept jumping at every little sound.

On the following day, when the kids were at school, Alan's parents visited a Catholic priest. He was very sympathetic and said he himself had seen a ghost many years ago and told them that he thought he was a bit psychic. He promised he'd visit the house in the evening and bless Alan's bedroom. The priest turned up and interviewed Alan in his bedroom for over an hour, taking notes throughout. After talking at length to the child, the priest came down to the living room and checked a few details he'd taken down in his notebook. He sat facing Alan's parents and Kelly, and said, "Is it true that there was a break-in about three months back?"

"Yes, " said Alan's father, "but nothing was taken. They broke in through the back door. Why?"

"And the robbers took nothing. Don't you find that unusual?" said the priest, scratching his head. He looked at Alan's parents over his spectacles.

"What do you mean?" said Alan's mum.

"According to your son, the ghost, Jarvis, scared the robbers away from the house." said the priest.

Alan's parents looked at each other in disbelief, and the priest quoted the other notes from his little black book, "Er, let me see. Then there was a chip pan that went on fire, but a damp tea-towel mysteriously put the fire out - even though no one remembers who put the towel on the fire? Then you madam, " the priest addressed little Kelly. He said, "You were playing in the street with Alan and ran out in front of a car to get an ice cream, and something lifted you off your feet and pulled you out the path of the car. Is that true?"

"Oh yeah Mum. That's right. I forgot." said Kelly.

"And you sir," the priest addressed Alan's father, "lost your car keys, and looked everywhere for them - then found them on the roof of your car. Is that true?"

"Yes. That was weird. But what are you driving at?" said Alan's dad.

"All the work of one ghost named Jarvis. Your son says he's a friendly ghost who looks after you all like a guardian angel. I can't exorcise good ghosts, only evil spirits. You'd be better just turning a blind eye to him. He's done a lot of good." the priest then chuckled, and after drinking a cup of tea, left the house.

Unfortunately, only Alan and Kelly could accept poor Jarvis, and so Alan's cowardly parents moved their family from the house. According to Alan, on the last night in the house, he heard Jarvis crying.

'KINDRED SPIRITS'

This is a weird, but touching story which allegedly took place in the Dingle area of Liverpool, England in the early 1980s. The case has been investigated by a staggering number of paranormal investigators, and yet the tale has had no publicity at all - until now. It is the story of a lonely old bachelor named John Blythe.

John Blythe was born in 1907 in Aigburth district of Liverpool. Even from an early age, Mr Blythe realised he could see things his four older brothers and two sisters couldn't see. One of his earliest memories was a smiling, kind-looking man with a long beard rocking his cradle. Years later, when he was seven, John Blythe saw a portrait of the bearded man in his mother's bedroom, and he was told that the man was his granddad who had died in 1902 - five years before John had been born. In other words, a ghost had rocked John's cradle.

At the age of 13, when John's school friends were discovering the opposite sex, John told his puzzled mother that he had sent a love letter to the beautiful auburn-haired girl across the road. John asked his mother if she knew the girl's name. Mrs Blythe said that there was no girl living in the house opposite, just two old brothers. It soon transpired that the love-struck teenager was infatuated - with the ghost of a girl who had committed suicide at the house across the street forty years before. Almost every day John would go missing for hours, and return late each night, all dewy-eyed, telling his parents that he had just walked Emily home.

John's intrigued parents asked the boy where he had been on his 'date', and their blushing son told them that he had been walking hand-in-hand with Emily around the Palm House in Sefton Park. Mrs Blythe was naturally worried about her son's tales, and rather than believe that he was courting a phantom, she surmised that he was just confused and fantasising the episodes he'd mentioned. But one day, John Blythe came home in tears. He said that Emily would be 'going away' soon because her house was to be demolished. John said that Emily wouldn't be able to live in the new house that would be built over her one. And sure enough, just under a year later, the house facing John Blythe's was condemned and knocked down. John was devastated, and almost starved to death because the heartbroken teenager refused to eat.

Around this time, an elderly man who heard about John's so-called imaginary girlfriend confirmed that a girl named Emily Webster did once live at the house that stood facing the Blythes house. The girl in question hanged herself from the stairs after discovering that her fiancee intended to marry another girl.

During the Second World War, John Blythe served in the Irish Guards, but refused to shoot at the enemy. Whenever he confronted the German troops he would fire over their heads. He was almost discharged from his platoon because the sergeant thought he was insane when private Blythe threw up his arms after saying there were Germans closing in all around. Minutes later, over two hundred bodies of German troops were found scattered in the next field. Blythe said that he had mistaken the bewildered ghosts wandering the field for living German soldiers. Blythe's eerie comments naturally put the wind up the other platoon members, and his sergeant told him to shut up about his weird experiences in future.

John Blythe continued to live in this world and the next one for the next forty years, and was often misunderstood and sneered at because of his talk about the 'invisible society' of kindred spirits that was all around us. He finally moved into a terraced house in Colebrooke Road in the Dingle area of Liverpool, and at this final residence old John Blythe happily settled down with his family; a family of assorted ghosts, that is.

John's nephews and nieces regarded their old uncle as an eccentric but loveable soul, and constantly advised him to move into sheltered accommodation. But Mr Blythe said he was happy with his 'spirit-wife' Deliah, who had departed the world of the living in 1900. The other members of Mr Blythe's adopted phantom family were Edward Goode, a refined top-hatted Victorian gent who was fascinated by the television set and the telephone, and Mrs Ludwig, an old German maid who had also lived at the house in the 19th century. There were two other family members, and they were the 12-year-old twins Thomas and Alice, but they were always moving backwards and forwards between this world and the hereafter for some reason.

John Blythe's living nephews and nieces obviously assumed that there uncle was going senile and making all the tales of his spirit family up. But something later took place which made everyone have second thoughts about the family of ghosts.
In March 1980, John Blythe tripped and fell down the stairs at his Dingle home. He lay unconscious at the foot of the stairs with blood dripping from a gash to his forehead and a badly-broken arm. He most probably would have died there, if someone hadn't telephoned Mr Blythe's nephew, Steven.

Steven's phone rang incessantly at 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, and when the young man answered, an excited, well-spoken voice said: "Please send help. I beseech you to send assistance, for Mr Blythe has suffered a terrible fall at his home."

Steven thought the call was a prank, as he didn't recognise the caller's voice, and so he said: "Who is this?"
And the caller replied: "My name is Edward, and I live at Mr Blythe's address. Please come at once or he will not be long for this world!"

Steven said: "Look, if this is some - "

But the caller hung up.

Steven hastily got dressed and drove from his Knotty Ash home all the way to the Colebrooke Street house. He hammered on the knocker but could get no answer. He pushed back the flap of the letterbox and saw something that he was to remember for the rest of his life. A concerned-looking man in a black outdated suit and a long top hat was crouched over a man slumped at the foot of the steps. Steve saw that the man on the floor was his Uncle. Nearby two twins were giggling and pointing at the inert-looking Mr Blythe. They were a boy and a girl of about 10 or 12 years of age, dressed in matching royal blue satin outfits embroidered with pearls.

Steven shouted "Hey! What's going on. Open the door." And he stood back and waited. But the door never opened. Steven looked through the letterbox - and saw that the top-hatted stranger and the twins were nowhere to be seen. Mr Blythe's nephew backed up and charged at the door. He did this three more times, and the neighbours of the adjoining houses came out to see what the racket was about on this sunny Sunday morning. When they learned that Mr Blythe was unconscious, the neighbours also put their weight behind the door, which finally yielded. An ambulance was called for, and Mr Blythe was taken to hospital. In his hospital bed, the old man asked his nephew how he had known about the fall down the stairs. Steven said that a mysterious man named Edward had telephoned him. Mr Blythe gave a broad smile, then said: "He finally did it then."

"Did what?" one of the old man's niece's asked.

Mr Blythe tried to explain. He said: "Mr Goode was always trying to use the telephone. He was absolutely intrigued by the workings of it, but he used to hold the receiver upside down and couldn't dial properly. He must have called you."

Sadly, Mr Blythe passed away in his sleep on Christmas Eve of that year. Strangely enough, the sounds of a woman laughing were heard in his bedroom that night when his nephews visited him. Perhaps it was Mr Blythe's spectral wife Deliah, overjoyed because her husband had crossed over to join her in the spirit world. And here's the strange epilogue to this incredible story. In 1996, one of Mr Blythe's niece's phoned up a certain highly-rated medium being featured on a local Liverpool radio station. She asked the psychic if there was anybody on the "other side" with any messages for her. The psychic said "Your uncle John is over there. He said something about a house in the Dingle and that he's with his wife Deliah and the twins. The funny thing I'm picking up is that these people go way, way back."

Mr Blythe's niece was absolutely shocked at the medium's comments.

The radio psychic then said: "Who's Edward? He keeps saying something about a telephone."