WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.

In this latest tale, Tom asks who on earth was Johnnie Sweet?

IN the summer of 1950 a number of articles appeared in the newspapers in Wirral and Liverpool regarding the sinister activities of a "band of Satanists" who left a trail of shattered church statues, gravestones and memorials in their wake.

That trail stretched from Liverpool's Roman Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral (where the cultists caused irreparable damage to the massive tabernacle) to the smashing of forty-eight gravestones at cemeteries in new Brighton and Wallasey.

Police said they knew the same "band of fanatics" was responsible and held back information from the Press concerning certain weird symbols scrawled on church walls and memorials.

I now know that these symbols were letters from the Theban "witches" alphabet.

"All of this looks like the work of a small band of fanatics who must have an objection to any sort of religious show or ornamentation," said a senior police official.

He told reporters how the same people had uprooted the railings of New Brighton war memorial before going to smash hundreds of flower containers in Wallasey Cemetery.

Curiously, there were people - many of them in high positions in society - who seemed to sympathise with the cultists.

Anonymous letters written on expensive stationary were sent to the letter columns of newspapers saying the Church was dead and no longer relevant, and that it was time for a new religion based on the Devil.

One letter, signed, "A Citizen who wants change" published in a local newspaper stated, "Two thousand years of Christianity has produced nothing and got us nowhere - so perhaps we ought to consider the view of Lucifer and exercise the will to power.

"Let's demolish the churches or convert them to Satanism!”

It soon became clear to the police and authorities that there was a caucus of pro-Satan activists in Wirral and Liverpool, and today they have probably doubled in number.

In the summer of 1996, four 16-year-old schoolgirls in Birkenhead began to dabble with the Occult with a view to using the supernatural to further themselves in life.

The leader of these girls was Heather, and one evening in August 1996 she summoned her three school friends to her terraced home on Birkenhead's Primrose Road via the telephone and said she was going to hold an Ouija board session.

Heather used 26 Scrabble tiles for the letters and cut out ten squares of paper which she numbered from zero to nine, and around 8:45pm the Ouija session began in the girl's bedroom.

A candle was lit and placed within the circle of plastic letters tiles and paper numbered squares.

The light was turned off, and the moon peeped through the gap in the bedroom curtains.

The four forefingers of the schoolgirls rested on the base of the upturned wineglass and Heather intoned, "Spirits of the dead, please answer our questions tonight. Thank you spirits!"

Nothing happened for about ten seconds and there were a few giggles, but Heather focused on the swaying flame of the candle - and she gradually saw a man’s smiling face in it.

"Can you see a face in that candle?" she asked her three friends, and they smirked and some shook their heads.

Then Heather's best friend, Sandra, said: "I can see him - he's quite handsome. Oh my G-"

"Don’t say that G word, Sandra!" Heather interrupted her friend, and the glass slid about.

A girl named Cheryl had been appointed as the recorder of the spirit messages and was poised with her left hand and pen to write down the letters dictated by the sliding glass. ‘H-E-L-L-O’ said the glass.

There were sharp intakes of breath and excitement twinkled in the girl’s candlelit eyes.

"Hello", said Heather, "what is your name, spirit?"

The glass slid slowly to the Scrabble tiles, spelling out a name.

"J-O-H-N-N-I-E".

"Hello Johnnie", said Heather, but the glass shook and spelled out something else: "S-W-E-E-T".

"Johnnie Sweet?" Heather asked with a puzzled look.

"Is that your name?"

"Y-E-S" came the glass's reply.

"Nice name", said Sandra, jokily, but the flippant remark was born of nerves.

"W-H-A-T D-O Y-O-U W-A-N-T" said the glass.

"Erm," said a pretty blonde girl named Saskia, "I'd like to know, erm - "

"Saskia," said Heather, "remember, you shouldn’t ask about religious things or death."

"Is my Nan Theresa there?" Saskia asked.

"Y-E-S B-U-T S-H-E I-S B-U-S-Y" the glass spelled out, then added, "P-H-I-L I-S T-O-O".

"Phil was her husband - my granddad!" said Saskia, excited, "Oh my G-"

"Saskia! Don't say that word!" Heather told her sternly.

"Heather, can I ask Johnnie Sweet something?" Sandra queried, and Heather nodded and said, "As long as you don’t mention the G-word or ask when someone will die and that."

"Johnnie Sweet, can you please get us four girls rich boyfriends?" was the question posed by Sandra.

"Sandra! Be serious!" said Cheryl, "I’ve already got a boyfriend and so has Heather!"

"O-F C-O-U-R-S-E’ was the glass’s reply to Sandra’s request.

The glass was silent after that, but a week later, during a heatwave, the four girl’s sneaked out of their homes dressed in bikinis at three in the morning, and went to Flaybrick Cemetery.

Two curious lads asked the girls where they were going, and Heather said, ‘To communion.’

The lads followed the girls to Flaybrick Cemetery and watched the teenagers kneel on the steps of derelict church.

A figure in a hooded black robe appeared in a blaze of light at the top of those steps and the two lads ran off, terrified.

Those four girls all became engaged to rich men within a year, and two immigrated to California when they married at eighteen.

No one knows who the hooded man was they knelt before at Flaybrick, but some surmise it was the Devil, and who on earth was Johnnie Sweet?

* Haunted Liverpool 33 is out next week.