On the eve of Hallowe’en, Greg O’Keeffe discovers some of the city’s spookiest spots and speaks to the people brave enough to work in them

THERE are not many cities with a ghostly legacy as potent as Liverpool’s. Supernatural believers claim the city bustles with sinister locations where souls linger, long after their owners have shuffled off this mortal coil.

The claims have even led to the development of Liverpool’s own ghost tourism scene, spear-headed by the Shiverpool tours which take guests around city spook hot-spots and combine a civic history lesson with some good old- fashioned ghost stories.

The haunted locations are varied and intriguing as much to city natives as to tourists. On the Shiverpool tour, brave participants are led around by the “Shiverghoul”, a guide dressed in Victorian garb; usually top hat, a lavish cape and Venetian mask.

They start at Hope Street’s famous Philharmonic Pub, reputed to have a resident banshee with a cry that can still send a bolt of terror through trembling spines.

On it goes to nearby Rodney Street and the sinister pyramid tomb of Will Mackenzie, a landmark which sits on the junction with Maryland Street. MacKenzie was a wealthy Victorian railway engineer, who was said to have once played the devil in a game of poker, gambling his soul. He lost, of course, and now sits rotting in that old tomb, a winning hand of cards strapped to his chest to cheat the devil.

Next stop is the Town Hall, constructed on top of secret tunnels where prisoners were dragged along from the Liverpool Jail, once opposite the Liver Buildings.

The story goes that the sad prisoners sometimes appear as clear as day, their faces contorted in anguish and pain, then slowly fade away into nothing.

Fenwick Street is home to the appropriately named Slaughter House pub, once an abattoir, where tales abounded of a butcher who developed a taste for human flesh. He could not reconcile his evil acts, so he hung himself from a beam in the pub which is still there today.

The newly-added jewel in the tour’s crown is St George’s Hall, according to Shiverpool creative director Alex Stone.

“Not many people are aware of how diverse the hall’s history is,” says Alex. “It was once the site of a lunatic asylum and also an infirmary.

“What is now St John’s Gardens also used to have a church and a cemetery on it. When they wanted to move it, they had to dig up 27,000 bodies and move them, but it was so expensive that they had to leave a few behind.

“Apparently, when they were landscaping the area, they were finding bones because bodies weren’t buried as deeply back then. Some still say there are bones underneath the gardens.

“Shiverpool is more of an experience than a tour, and we take people around the hall and into the former courts, sentencing members of the group for their crimes along the way.

“Many of the hall’s cleaners have spoken about malevolent and mischievous spirits. One woman was cleaning by the balcony above the great hall and she felt herself be pushed forward and nearly toppled over. It’s great that we have got the hall included in the tour because of all its spooky links, and we do tours all year round, too. Not just at Halloween.”

Over at the next stop, Hackin’s Hey, is one of the city’s oldest pubs, Ye Hole in Ye Wall, which has its own unsettling heritage.

Landlord Stephan Hoy explains the small building has been a pub since 1726, a staggering 283 years.

“This is a place rich in history and the paranormal,” says Stephan. “Adolf Hitler was said to have had a drink here when he was studying in Liverpool, and Nelson once tethered his horses in the back yard.

“But the thing I can vouch for with my own eyes is the ghost which haunts the pub. It’s the spirit of a Spanish sailor who was having a drink in here when the press gangs used to come in and force men to join the Navy.

“They dropped half a crown into the pewter tankards people supped from and if you drank from it, you had agreed. If you resisted, they would batter you and drag you off anyway for six years’ service on the seas.

“This sailor was having a drink when they tried to take him. He fought them and was knifed to death. There even used to be a plaque to him, but it was stolen in the 70s.

“I’ve seen his oilskin jacket moving around many times and my son, Jordan, was working behind the bar a few months ago when he clearly saw a man run upstairs to the attic.”

The final destination is St James Cemetery, below the Anglican Cathedral, on Upper Duke Street. Some 57,000 souls are interred there.

Late at nigh,t footsteps have been heard around the large monument erected for the Victorian MP William Huskisson.

So, for believers, there can be no doubt – Liverpool has enough haunted locations to leave your skin permanently crawling.

greg.okeeffe