The Ghost Next Door — Michael White

Me dad use to say that in Liverpool there was always a ghost next door. As a kid I spent many a dark night huddled under the covers in case the ghost from next door decided it liked our house better, because we didn’t seem to have our own ghost so there must definitely be one at number eleven. But as I grew up I began to realise that what he had really meant was that Liverpool as a city was full of stories about ghosts. Scousers love stories, of course, and if they include a ghost or something unexplained happening, all the better. I suppose it's that mix of Irish and Welsh as well as God knows what else. It just seems to invite tall tales.Dad even had a tale of his own. When he was a kid him and his mates used to play down by Garston docks and there was an abandoned warehouse there that was pretty much just bits of roof left with no walls at all. Just a few metal beams holding what was left of the roof up. Bloody health and safety would have a fit at the thought of kids being able to knock about there these days, but when me dad was a kid that was where they used to play. There was even a little watchman's hut there that was more or less still intact even though it hadn't been used for years and one day they were all playing there when the watchman turned up, and waving at them he went into the hut. Now they all thought that this was a bit odd because, as I say, there was nothing for him to actually watch over any more and after a while they plucked up courage to go and knock on the door to the small shed and ask him what he thought he was doing.I imagine you probably know where this is heading, because of course when they finally got fed up of knocking on the hut door and opened it the small shed was completely empty. In fact, it looked as if it had been empty for years. There was no other way out of there and they hadn't taken their eyes off it since the old bloke had arrived. Needless to say, they got out of there pretty quick!So you see, everyone in Liverpool has a ghost story to tell. Everyone seems to have a favourite one, and sometimes they grow in the telling. It would be fair to say that most of them are complete nonsense, but then you never know. You just never know. That's the hook...