The religious Order of Mercy was founded in Ireland on the banks of the Liffey in 1831, and the nuns of this Order - the Sisters of Mercy - were soon doing their good work in other parts of the world. One of their convents was built in England in Victorian times in the city of Liverpool on Mount Vernon Street, situated between the Paddington, Low Hill and Kensington areas. By the 1960s, the Convent of Mercy had closed, but it the building had quite a supernatural reputation.

In the early 1960s, two youths from Hall Lane in Low Hill decided to burgle a house on Mount Vernon Street, facing the derelict Convent of Mercy. The house in question was inhabited by an old spinster named Mrs Smith, and local gossip had it that the elderly woman had her life savings hidden at the house. Mrs Smith was regarded by the people in her neighbourhood as something of an eccentric because she had pictures of the Scared Heart and the Virgin Mary proudly on display in most of her windows. Her parlour, said some of the more secularly minded neighbours, was like the Vatican, with crucifixes on the walls and statues of the Saints and Jesus cluttered about. 

The following chilling story is from the annals of the now-defunct Lancashire Spiritualists Society, which was based in Liverpool, England, until 1939.

There stands a Victorian house in Bidston on the Wirral in north-west England, which was once the scene of a disturbing supernatural incident that allegedly occurred in 1920. The house was bought by two sisters who had been left a substantial legacy in 1919, and their names were Victoria and Margaret Webster. Margaret was 19 and Victoria was 24, and they originally came from Neston, but heard about the beautiful terraced house in Bidston after the death of their father, a wealthy shipping magnate who left his daughters thousands of pounds. Mrs Webster had died after giving birth to Margaret in 1901.

The following story is about an evil discarnate being which may have been responsible for thousands of deaths in 18th century Liverpool, England. The tale is the most incredible one I have ever researched, and it suggests a sinister conspiracy in high places. It all began in the early 1970s.

One wintry night in 1972, the Joneses, a family of four in Old Swan heard a faint regular thumping noise which sounded like a human heartbeat. The strange pulsation seemed to be coming from below, and getting stronger by the minute. By midnight, the throbbing vibration was driving the Jones family to distraction. The budgerigar became hysterical in its covered cage, the family dog started to howl, and the goldfish swam around their tank as the weird pulse shook it. 

 

In the month of May, 1866, Liverpool was hit by a cholera epidemic which killed hundreds. One of these unfortunate victims was a beautiful raven-haired girl who'd just turned 16, and her name was Maureen Allen. Maureen was the youngest member of an Irish family that had recently settled in Rose Place in the Everton district of the city.

Maureen was laid in a coffin, and the Irish custom of observing a 'wake' commenced, even though the authorities were opposed to this, because they didn't like the idea of a body that had died of cholera being put into an open coffin, but the Allen family told the powers-that-be to mind their own business, and the wake went ahead, as did the ritual drinking, feasting and lamentation, which went on all night during such occasions. On the evening of the wake at around 7 o'clock, every member of the Allen family headed for a pub in Great Homer Street to drown their sorrows. George's 19-year-old niece, Shannon, who had only been in Liverpool for a week, volunteered to mind the house.