Farmers Arms, Frankby, Wirral

Dec 4 2006 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

O WHISTLE and I'll Come To You My Lad is a classic spinechiller from the master of the macabre MR James, custom-made to have the reader looking fearfully over their shoulder during these long winter nights.

To cut a short story even shorter, it involves a dream in which the uneasy slumberer is being chased by a creature of the unspeakable. It keeps gaining and gaining until - Zoinks! - it makes the final leap from mindscape into terrifying reality.

The tale sprang to mind when the Pub Column spoke to Adam Johnson, the 21-year-old assistant manager of the Farmers Arms, in Frankby, Wirral, which this year celebrated its 140th anniversary.

Despite his tender years, Adam - who is helping to run the pub while the newlymarried owners Steve and Laura Edmunds are away on honeymoon - is well acquainted with the grand old history of this welcoming rural outpost, haunted by its own peculiar offspring of the supernatural (cue dun dun duuuuur! music) - The Frankby Fog.

Through the years, the legend of the Fog has grown and regulars tread warily back home on cold clear winter nights when the gibbous moon is a-shining for fear of being chased by the sinister dark grey shadow that emerges from the thick mist that materialises as if from nowhere on the silent surrounding fields.

There is the tale of one landlord letting out a final "staybehind" reveller and locking up, only to be roused minutes later by frantic rapping and howling to be let back in. Framed on the doorstep was the petrified reveller, with the Fog and its fiendish denizen rapidly approaching from behind.

He leapt back in and the door was slammed shut. Seconds later, wham! the pub was rocked to its foundations as the Fog and its menacing companion hit home - but were repelled.

Phew! All of which is in profound contrast to the benign evening when Post Arts Editor Mr Phil "all right moosh" Key and yours truly sauntered in and made ourselves comfortable in the shell-like womb of the pub's leatherbound seat by the open fire place.

This is not the only relaxing bolthole to be found in the appropriately named Farmers, which has served as a rural retreat for countless toilers of the fields through the decades and who have been framed in written aspic thanks to the 66-page history of the pub written by one former landlord, Kenneth B Senar.