TOM SLEMEN

Tom Slemen has written articles for the Liverpool Echo, Daily Post, Financial Times, and is a regular contributor to Prediction magazine. He has also written articles for several magazines in the United States and France. His radio documentary about Nostradamus, "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow" was broadcast on Montreal radio in 1992, attracting a record number of listeners. Tom's first book, Murder On Merseyside (Hale, 1994) detailed seventeen accounts of the murders and murderers of Merseyside, England. The book was very successful, but Tom's next work was a bigger success. Tom had held a long fascination with ghosts and the paranormal since a child, because he was brought up in a house in the city centre of Liverpool that was reputedly haunted. Tom's interest in local hauntings impelled him to visit his library, but there were no books on Liverpool ghosts to be found. Tom decided to write a book of his own, and he spent his time reseaching ghostly phenomena in Liverpool. He scanned miles of microfilmed newspapers in the city's Central Library and even visited allegedly haunted houses. He interviewed hundreds of people who claimed to have encountered phantoms and spectres, and was surprised at the integrity and diversity of witnesses. Policemen, doctors, solicitors, priests, garbage collectors, pilots - people from both ends of the social spectrum all gave chilling accounts of ghostsly goings-on. The research resulted in Tom's second book Haunted Liverpool (1995). The book was an unexpected bestseller. It was reprinted twice within a month and Tom was invited to talk about ghosts on Magic 1548, Liverpool's local independent radio station. The response from the listening public was phenomenal, confirming Tom's belief that interest in the supernatural was at an all-time high. The deluge of letters and phonecalls Tom received at the radio station were documented in a follow-up book, Haunted Liverpool 2(1996), which was also very successful. After guesting for 18 months at the radio station, Tom left to devote more time to writing a book with a less parochial flavour. Throughout 1997, Tom also collaborated with radio presenter Terry Lennaine to produce a nightly series of live dramatised ghost stories with a Gothic atmosphere. These stories were highly unusual, even by Tom's standards, and were dramatized and enlivened by the unique bass-toned voice of Terry Lennaine. The spine-tingling (and often gory) stories went down a storm with listeners across the north-west of England who had tuned into Lennaine in the dead of night.

The stories were so well-received, Lennaine produced a 90minute audio tape featuring 18 of the tales called The Other Side of Midnight. Tom's proceeds from the tape go to the Roy Castle Cancer Charity. Volume II of the tape is eagerly awaited. In 1998, Strange But True, Tom's book about mysterious people went on sale in Britain, the USA, Australia, and South Africa, and is currently selling well. That same year, Tom Slemen finally bowed to continual requests from his publishers and readers and wrote Haunted Liverpool 3. He also expanded and revised his first Haunted Liverpool book, adding 27 new stories.

Tom's Theory of Ghosts

Tom says that not all ghosts are visitors from a supernatural realm, and he believes that there are basically six categories of ghost: 1) Carnate: A solid-looking entity which you can touch. A carnate can interact with witnesses. Carnates may be responsible for some 'phantom hitch-hiker' incidents, where the ghost seems tangible. 2) Discarnate: An entity that has no physical body. Discarnates ususally manifest themselves after a drop in temperature (perhaps as they absorb thermal energy from the environment to 'power-up'). Poltergeists are usually discarnate. Some discarnate beings are spirits that have never lived in a body. 3) Psychological: These 'ghosts' are hallucinations which appear to one person for various subjective reasons: Hypnagogic (border of sleep) visions, tricks of the light (optical illusion), drugs, drink, schizophrenia, etc. 4) Doppelgangers: "Phantasms of the living"; projected images of a living person who is ill or experiencing a crisis. 5) Re-enacting ghosts: Solid or semi-transparent images and sounds of people and inanimate objects which appear to be limited in their movements and merely re-enact a specific scene at periodic intervals. These ghosts seem to be little more than hologram recordings from the past. Or could someone or something else in the future be 'replaying' historical events by tinkering with time? 6) Extra-dimensional beings: Entities which originate from outside of our dimension and possibly even our space-time continuum. Tom thinks that there are many myths about ghosts. Ghosts don't always put in an appearance after dark. They are often encountered in broad daylight and can look as solid as you or I. Many ghosts don't even look outdated and wear contemporary clothes. Another myth says that "Ghosts can't harm you", but Tom states that poltergeists have seriously injured people by throwing heavy objects at them. Also, the sudden appearance of an apparition can cause traumatic shock which can even result in a cardiac arrest if the victim has a history of heart trouble. So ghosts can physically harm you. If you have any questions about ghosts and the paranormal, or if you have had a spooky experience, please get in touch with Tom Slemen:

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