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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 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: