The dead of night - A true and scary story from Tom Slemen

- THE DEAD OF NIGHT -

A sinister true Story about evil forces, official cover-ups and devil worship

The following story is about an evil discarnate being which may have been responsible for thousands of deaths in 18th century Liverpool, England. The tale is the most incredible one I have ever researched, and it suggests a sinister conspiracy in high places. It all began in the early 1970s.

One wintry night in 1972, the Joneses, a family of four in Old Swan heard a faint regular thumping noise which sounded like a human heartbeat. The strange pulsation seemed to be coming from below, and getting stronger by the minute. By midnight, the throbbing vibration was driving the Jones family to distraction. The budgerigar became hysterical in its covered cage, the family dog started to howl, and the goldfish swam around their tank as the weird pulse shook it. Mr Jones went outside and was intrigued to hear the eerie beating sound in the street. The old next-door neighbour Gladys came out and asked what the thumping sound was, and Mr Jones shrugged. About five minutes later, the vibration stopped suddenly, but it returned on various occasions over the following weeks, and was even investigated by the council. The sound could not be traced, but was of subterranean origin, and seemed most intense within a triangular area bounded by Broad Green Lane, St Oswald's Street, and Edge Lane Drive. One woman in the centre of this triangle had to move from her home in Cunningham Road because the deep vibrations gave her migraines. Meanwhile, in the home of the Jones family, a strange spate of incidents started to take place whenever the pounding heartbeat shook their dwelling. In September 1972, Mr Jones was putting the milk bottles out, when he heard the deep rhythmic thuds beginning once again. This time they seemed more heavy and nearer. Mrs Jones was enjoying a cosy bath at the time. She let out a shriek, and Mr Jones raced up the stairs to his wife. In the bathroom, five strange faces were appearing on the steamed-up window panes. The faces were contorted and looked like skulls. As Mr and Mrs Jones looked on, the faces melted away, leaving streaks of condensed water behind. Then the vibrating heartbeat stopped abruptly.

On the following day, old Gladys next door was taken into an ambulance. She'd just suffered a heart attack. Mr and Mrs Jones visited her in hospital that evening, and the old neighbour told them a curious tale. She said that she had dozed off in her armchair and had awoke to find the parlour crowded with horrible dead-looking people. The gruesome crowd had faces like skeletons and they were all leaning forward, watching Gladys intently. She was so terrified of the ghouls she screamed out and had a heart attack.

Later that week, Gladys died.

Around the same time one evening, Mr Jones's 18-year-old daughter knocked over a cup of tea. As she went to mop up the puddle of spilt tea from the coffee table, she let out a scream. Right in front of the Jones family, the puddle started to form the distinctive face of a grinning skull - then it suddenly evaporated.

On the following night, an old night watchman told Mr Jones that he had been on his way to work around 11.30 PM, when he had been chased by a bizarre-looking figure. It looked like a monk wearing a long black robe with a hood. The watchman said the weird figure seemed to come out of nowhere near Mr Jones's house and never made a sound as it ran after him. On the corner of Broad Green Lane and St Oswald's Street, the medieval looking figure gave up the chase and vanished.

A year later, the Jones family moved to another house in the city, as they were so eager to escape the ghostly goings-on at their old house. The year was 1973, and the council decided to knock down the row of houses where the Jones family had moved from. The houses were flattened, and the strange phenomena continued. An empty JCB was almost overturned as some powerful but invisible force lifted the vehicle so it was only resting on two wheels. The workmen looked on in stunned silence and felt a tremendous wind blowing from the direction of the overturning JCB. Seconds later, the vehicle dropped back onto its wheels again as if the thing lifting the JCB had decided to let go. Later that day, an incredible discovery was made by the operator of that JCB as he was clearing the rubble from the foundations of the demolished houses. The JCB driver saw what looked like a box protruding from a mound of uprooted rubble. A gang of demolition workers inspected the box and saw to their horror that it was an unmarked coffin. The authorities were notified, and this is where the mystery deepens in a most sinister way.

The demolition men were ordered to leave the site immediately and a cordon of secrecy was thrown around the area. However, the press learned of the unearthed coffin and reporters were amazed to discover that an phenomenal 3,561 coffins were buried beneath that street in Old Swan. The coffins were all unmarked and stacked sixteen feet deep. This site had never been a graveyard, and no one could determine just why thousands of people had been buried there. Stranger still, all the bodies were neatly grouped according to their ages, which ranged from children of ten or 12 to adults in their twenties and thirties. All the older skeletons had intact sets of teeth, which indicates that they were fairly young when they died. But just how the people in the mass grave had died was never established, but there were grisly rumours that their hearts had been removed. These peculiar claims were backed up by several people who had viewed the skeletons and noted that their breastbones had been smashed or removed, perhaps to retrieve the hearts of the corpses.

Archaeologists in London read of the astounding mass grave in Liverpool and immediately journeyed to the city to investigate, but for some mysterious reason, Liverpool City Council had the three thousand corpses cremated. When the archaeologists from London arrived in Liverpool, they were horrified to learn that the thousands of corpses had been exhumed and cremated. The ashes were then reburied in a special container. The authorities did all of this under a cloak of secrecy.

The angry and disappointed archaeologists branded the council as philistines and examined the site of the mass-burial pit. The site was definitely not a plague pit from the 15th century, and despite a thorough search of local historical records, the identities of the bodies could not be found. One investigator from the British Museum thought the mass burial had taken place in the early 1700s but couldn't be certain.

The strange hooded monk in black was seen again throughout the years, and continues to be seen in the vicinity of Broad Green Lane to this day. A group of mediums in the mid 1990s who investigated the bizarre case said they definitely felt the strong presence of an evil discarnate being in the neighbourhood where the mass grave was unearthed. One of the mediums said he felt as if multiple sacrifices to Satan had been carried out by Devil-worshipping monks in the locality of Old Swan centuries ago. He also hinted that there were three other sites of mass graves in Liverpool, and that the locations of these sites would form a huge cross facing the west. Traditional Christian churches face the east, where the sun rises, but the west has always been revered by followers of Satan.

It has since come to light that there are more mass graves in Liverpool, and yes, they do form a somewhat crude cross that faces the west. One of these graves was uncovered in the 1960s in Cobden Street in the Everton district. The Everton grave contained only three hundred bodies, but they too were grouped according to their age, and no one can determine when or why they were buried there. The other two mass graves are still being investigated and their locations are being kept secret.