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Woolton, Liverpool (1974)

 The ghost walks in Quarry Street.

Ambulancemen tell of terror in training room.

Story by Steve Oldfield. Pictures by Eddie Barford.

Ambulancemen, who reckoned they had seen it all, are having to face up to a transparent truth – the flat-footed ghost of Quarry Street. He is pacing the rooms of their Woolton training centre. Ambulancemen who have seen him say he is dressed in a policeman’s uniform of the styel in use when the building was a police station many years ago. Now the Liverpool Parapsychological Society plans to set up tape-recorders and spend a night there to see if they can make contact.

Case-hardened ambulance men tell of: Lights going on moments after being switched off; Doors it would take three men to move swinging open; Bolts and padlocks undoing themselves; Clumping footsteps in the night; and the curious case of the window-pane found in the middle of the floor.

One ambulanceman was so frightened that he refused to go into the building, and others, equally terror-struck, have had to be transferred. Mr Albert Guinney, chief ambulance officer for Merseyside, siad: “When we came here in the late 1960s, I opened up a dusty old court room that had been locked since before the war. I sometimes wonder just what has been unleashed on the lads.” 

The 102-years-old building once housed condemned prisoners and had a gallows at the rear. Ambulanceman Brian Ward said: “The ghost takes the same path whenever he goes walkabout. He comes down the stairs from the court room, up to where the old cell door stands, and then out through the front. I first saw his shadow. But on a later occasion I came face to face with him. He is an old policeman, aged 50 to 60. On a still night he can be heard thumping across the floor.”

Ambulanceman Ben Smith said: “Frankly, when I worked here, he had me bloody scared. I remember a couple of times when the crew would lock up and go out at night. We would come back and every door would be open – even those we did not have keys to.”

The old court house in Quarry Street.

Ambulancemen Brian Ward (left) and Ben Smith in the old hanging yard at the back of the station.

Liverpool Echo, 2nd October 1974.

Dear Sir. Mystery of “The County Sergeant.”

Sir, – I was most interested to read your article on the Old Court House, Quarry STreet, Woolton (Echo, October 2). This used to be the police station for the Woolton area, and for some years I was the constable in charge of the station. I spent very many nights alone in the building.

The premises had the reputation of being haunted, and legend had it that an old county police sergeant had hanged himself in the court rooms. The ghost was known affectionately as “The county sergeant.”

During the years that I was posted there, I experienced many strange events. I frequently took a walk through the court rooms, in the dead of night, with a flash light, trying to find the cause of footsteps. The front door often used to open, and someone could be heard walking up to the court rooms and down the cell passageway.

On one occasion, in the early evening, as it grew dark, a painter and decorator was putting away his brushes in the court room and I heard him leap down the stairs, and his face was ashen with fright when I got to him. He claimed that a figure of a man had appeared. He was so scared that he vowed that he would never go upstairs again. 

I have seen colleagues standing on the doorstep, prefering to stand outside in the cold rather than go inside, because they were frightened of the noises. 

T.W. Mason, Liverpool Road South, Burscough.

Liverpool Echo, 9th October 1974.

No ghost, but who knows the real truth of Quarry Street?

Police Constable Mason, Sergeant Davies and Ambulanceman Ward could be right. Maybe the spirit of Quarry Street, dressed in uniform blue rather than fashionable ghostly white, still walks at night. But there’s good news for everyone who claims to have seen or heard “The Sergeant” make his ethereal way from the courtroom to the cells of the century-old former police station in Woolton. A dozen Liverpool experts are happily claiming today that the ghost has been well and truly laid. And, having spent last night through till breakfast-time sharing their vigil, I’m happy to back their judgement.

Members of the extra-sensory perception class at [C?] Institute and their tutor, Mr Joe Keeton, settled down at 11 p.m last night in the building. As dawn broke after an undisturbed silent watch in the unlit hall, where the police sergeant is reputed to have hung himself, they went their separate ways home, chattering happily among themselves about what a nice atmosphere the place has. Even in the dead of night, with the rain hammering on the window-panes, it’s hard to imagine anything eerie happening. Since the ambulancemen took over from the police, seven yeasr ago, the interior has been transformed into a comfortable, cosy training centre.

Your imagination will make you see and hear things, not your eyes and ears, my psychic expert had advised me before we set out. Last night in Quarry Street there was nothing much to see or hear but the dripping of rain from the gutters and the roar of an occasional passing car.

But let Mrs Kay Parker, of Heywood Road, Liverpool – a confirmed spiritualist for four years and the most receptive of Mr Keeton’s pupils – take u pthe story. “I experienced nothing but peace and contentment,” she said, in spontaneous reaction. “If there has been a spirit here, our presence seems to have released it.”

Liverpool Echo, 10th October 1974.