Our latest spooky tale by Tom Slemen this festive season, focuses on a popular city centre hotel that has stood the test of time...
On Boxing Day in 1994, at around 8:20pm, a 26-year-old Huyton lady named Georgina was sitting on her sofa with her boyfriend Ray snoring beside her as she watched seasonal episode of The Bill , when the landline telephone warbled. Georgina answered the call.
It was Chipper – the nickname of Alec, her colleague in an electrical engineering firm. He got his nickname because he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of every silicon chip, its serial number and what it did, from op-amps to complex logic gates.
Chipper said: "You busy, Georgie?" and Georgina said she wasn’t and asked where they were needed. Chipper said: "There’s some electrical fault in the alarm down in the Adelphi. I asked Roger first [another employee in the electrical firm] but he’s got the flu."
Georgina said: "On the ale, more like" and within a few minutes, she had left a note on the refrigerator door for boyfriend Ray, telling him she’d been called out on a job, and her Vauxhall Corsa was travelling down Lordens Road. Georgina turned onto East Prescot Road, and the traffic lights were against her tonight, so what should have been a half-hour trip took forty-five minutes.
She arrived at the Adelphi Hotel a few minutes after Chipper, and she went into the foyer with her usual tools. With it being Christmas Eve, town was super busy, and a few drunks were singing at the entrance to the hotel.
Chipper said: "Something keeps tripping it, I’m told, but I’m not too au fait on these new alarms."
Georgina said: "So you called me out. I could have come down here on me tod, Chipper," but her colleague said: "Nah, not on barmpot night. Anyway, you can educate me."
Georgina opened the control panel after trying unsuccessfully to reset the alarm, and she noticed something odd; there was a lot of static electricity around the alarm console. Her blonde hair stood on end with the charge and Chipper said: "Is that with the static?"
She said: "Yeah, I’ve never seen this before, what the hell’s causing it?"
Chipper said: "I’m just going to check on the van, Georgie," eyeing a rowdy gang of lads through the panes of the revolving door. "Be back in a mo," he said, and he went out through the revolving door to guard the van, which was parked round the corner on Copperas Hill.
As Georgina was testing the components of the alarm, she overheard a quaint-sounding conversation going on somewhere behind her. Two well-spoken men were talking, and one of them said: "He tipped the chambermaid and the parlour maid and even the hall porter, but he was not very forthcoming with the rest of the hotel staff."
The other voice said in reply: "So, he did not leave any gratuities for the others? Well, that is most disgraceful for a man of his standing, Mr Jones. Now, I trust you will excuse me, for I must make sure everything is perfect for the dinner to celebrate the Royal Wedding."
"Royal Wedding?" muttered Georgina, and she wondered what regal wedding that would be. Georgina turned – and received quite a shock. The place had changed. There were candlelit dining tables and elaborate, expensive chairs around them, set for what was obviously some important event.
A tall immaculately-attired waiter stood there holding a silver serving tray, and he was gazing at Georgina with an intense puzzled expression. "What on earth are you?" he asked Georgina, and she recognised his voice; he had been one of the men talking about a Royal Wedding.
"I’m the electrician, what are you ?" Georgina retorted, peeved at the man’s strange question. "You’re a woman", the waiter replied, setting the tray down on one of the set tables, "is this some silly practical joke?"
"I’m fixing the alarm," Georgina told him, and turned to point at the control panel hanging from a spaghetti-like mass of multicoloured wires – but the alarm’s panel had gone; there was just wood panelling there. Georgina couldn’t help but swear, and the waiter said: "Really. I think you should leave now, before it becomes a matter for the police."
At that precise moment, Georgina realised she had somehow gone back in time to the hotel as it was decades before, and a numbness inside of her changed to panic. A young man of about fifteen years of age came into the vast room, and he had on a round brimless drum-shaped hat held on a by a strap that went under his chin – like the bell-boy’s Georgina had seen in films of bygone days, and the tall waiter said to the lad, "Martin, you will eject this – this vagrant immediately."
Georgina then heard a voice cry out what sounded like a name in the next room and the waiter shouted back, "I’m coming Mr Towel." and then he left. The bell-boy meekly asked Georgina to follow him out of the hotel, and she walked outside – and saw trams trundling along with a clanging noise. Stunned, Georgina turned to the boy and asked, "What year is this?"
The boy looked at her in a perplexed manner. "What’s the year?" she yelled at him, and the boy stepped back and said: "It’s 1922. You’re potty." And then he went back into the hotel.
Georgina walked past people dressed in the fashions of the 1920s, and received some strange looks, because she was in jeans, a tee shirt and trainers, and had a tool belt strung around her. "Oi!" came a voice from behind the electrician, and she turned – and saw a policeman hurrying towards her.
Walking with him was the bell-boy. Georgina ran around the corner and her ears popped. There was Chipper’s van on Copperas Hill – 1996 had returned. Chipper had been looking for her for the last ten minutes.
Georgina fixed the alarm, and told Chipper what had happened, and how she believed she had somehow gone back in time. Chipper was a superstitious soul, and he didn’t think his colleague had been in some timeslip – he thought ghosts were to blame.
But Georgina said the experienced had been so real – as if she had actually been in the past. She recalled the static electricity; had that caused the slip in time or had the timeslip caused the static? She later discovered there had been a Royal Wedding in February 1922 when a Princess Mary had married a Viscount.
All Tom Slemen’s books and audiobooks are available from Amazon.
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