THE Archers pub on Mark Rake, Bromborough, opened in December 1957 and quite a few paranormal incidents allegedly happened on the premises in its lifetime, which unfortunately came to an end in 2013. Of all the strange occurrences that took place in the Archers, the most intriguing, in my opinion, anyway, unfolded one day around September 1958. An octogenarian Wirral Globe reader named Harry was there that day in the pub as a fresh-faced 20-year-old shop assistant on his lunch break and he was one of the people who witnessed the weird incident.
The conversation was the usual mixture of sport, politics, and in young Harry’s case he was discussing the previous evening's immensely popular TV comedy show, Hancock’s Half Hour , and quoting the titular comedian’s lines to a bemused girl named Janet, who worked in a local chemist. Sunlight was streaming through the windows, creating a blue haze in the bar as people smoked their cigarettes and pipes – this was decades away from the smoking ban of 2007 of course. Janet noticed it first – the cigarette smoke started to whirl about; it started with a thin ribbon of blue vapour that coiled lazily in the air, gathering into a delicate spiral.
It twisted and turned, and Janet drew Harry’s attention to it. In turn, Harry pointed out the inexplicable spiralling vortex to an old gent named Peter, who reacted by blowing a ring of his pipe smoke at the swirling column. Moments later, Peter excused himself to go to the toilet, leavin.