WELCOME to Haunted Wirral, a feature series written by world famous psychic researcher, Tom Slemen for the Globe.

In this latest tale, Tom examines some 'terrifying timeslips'.

ON the morning of Thursday January 12, 1995, an enormous black cat, described by several people as a black panther, made headlines in the local press after it was seen prowling around Garden Hey Road, Saughall Massie.

A wildlife officer from Wirral Country Park saw prints left by the feline in a field and was of the opinion that the animal had been an unusually large feral cat – but those who came face to face with the creature insisted it was a panther.

More encounters with the enigmatic panther were reported, and one wintry afternoon in February of that year, it was chased by several locals down Barnacle Road and across a snowy field where it was seen to fade away like the Cheshire Cat.

The tracks of the enormous cat stopped at the point where it had inexplicably vanished.

In October 2018, a couple walking their dog along Twickenham Drive, Leasowe, saw a huge wild animal that looked like a cross between a tiger and a tabby cat creeping up on them from the grounds of Leasowe Library.

The couple slowly turned around and dragged their dog - which was barking furiously at the bizarre-looking animal - and expected to be attacked, but when one of the couple looked back the animal had gone.

This same huge cat was seen many more times in the area and from the numerous descriptions of its sloping back, colour, markings, and huge fanged teeth, the unidentified animal must have borne a striking resemblance to the scimitar-toothed cat - which died out in these parts 1.5 million years ago.

The scimitar-toothed cat could not live in Leasowe without being noticed, as it would have to consume a lot of animals and livestock on a regular basis, and like the mysterious Surrey Puma and other phantom big cats of the UK, the Leasowe "leopard" had a habit of vanishing into thin air.

There is a possibility, however, and it will seem far-fetched to some, that these animals belonging to bygone epochs might be coming through some time-barrier which separates the present from the remote past.

Niels Bohr, the philosopher and quantum physicist, once remarked: "Imagine the impossible; it may be the truth."

Let us take his advice.

We have the Loch Ness Monster, the Beast of Bodmin, and many other creatures that belong in prehistory and for all we know they might be animals that temporarily intrude into our geological time period - officially labelled the Quaternary - through some breach in the fabric of time and space.

When people, inadvertently, venture through these weak spots in the spacetime continuum, they could be perceived as ghosts (if they came from our past), or UFO occupants (if they come from the future).

Weeks after Lockdown was declared earlier this year, a Wallasey woman named Pat sent me an irate email to remind me that she had foreseen the Covid pandemic back in the Easter of 1983.

Pat had sent me a letter detailing her timeslip back in 2002. She had been recovering from hepatitis and although she felt weak, she went to visit her sister in Birkenhead.

After Pat’s son had dropped her off at her sister’s house on Birkenhead’s Victoria Road, Pat knocked on the door for some time but could not get an answer.

A neighbour next door came out with her little girl to tell Pat that her sister had gone to Wales the day before.

Pat gave a carrier bag with Easter Eggs to the woman and told her to give some of the eggs to her daughter.

Pat then walked off, intending to telephone her son at a public call box to get a lift home - when she saw a woman wearing the type of face mask a surgeon would wear on the other side of Victoria Road.

Then Pat saw two young men - also wearing the same type of masks - on Borough Road.

Almost every person Pat saw from then on was wearing face masks, and this baffled her.

She saw a hackney cab and hailed it, and when she got in the vehicle she asked the driver why everyone was wearing masks and he returned a bemused look and said, "Eh?"

Pat looked out the windows of the cab, and now the masked people were nowhere to be seen.

Pat is convinced this was some weird premonition of the future Covid pandemic.

If some premonitions - or possible timeslips - are considered to be real glimpses of the future, then we may have much greater threats to face than Covid.

One morning in September 1981, John and Peter, two 18-year-old men, went to call on the home of their friend Brian, who lived in Charter House, a 10-storey block of flats off Wallasey's Church Street, but as the lads turned the corner of Brighton Street, they felt as if they had walked into an oven.

Stifling heat closed in on the two young men and a strange orange glow covered the neighbourhood, as if the sun was setting.

John and Peter then found themselves surrounded by around a dozen men in gas masks and what looked like radiation or "hazmat" suits - and these men were armed.

There were also black and yellow striped cones and barriers on the street.

The men in masks just stood there watching the distressed youths.

John began to choke in the intense heat, and Peter also found it hard to breathe.

The two teens collapsed, and when they came to, the men in the suits and masks and unbearable heat had gone and everything was back to normal.

If this was a timeslip, what on earth are we in store for in our future?

• Haunted Liverpool 33 is out soon.