A Witch Over Kensington RETIRED Liverpudlian businessman Brian Knox is 67 now and lives in a luxurious villa in the rugged hills of Sierra de Cádiz in southern Spain, where crystal clear night skies allow him to indulge in his lifelong hobby of astronomy. But it was in Kensington, Liverpool, back in October 1963 when Brian first turned a telescope towards the heavens and caught a glimpse of a mystery that has haunted him for years. On Hallowe’en 1963, at about 5pm, as Brian’s mother cooked the tea in their home on Saxony Road, her teenage son aimed his telescope at the newly-risen moon. As he focused on the face of the moon he saw a distinctive black solid figure that sent him running downstairs for his family: the silhouette of what looked like a witch on a broomstick. Brian’s bemused father refused to budge from his armchair, where he was watching TV, and Mrs Knox refused to leave the kitchen, but Brian’s two younger sisters, Carol and Annie, rushed to the telescope upstairs, and saw that there was indeed a witch hovering over Kensington. “I’m going to get a better look!” Annie said, then ran downstairs and got on her bike, and with her sister running after her, she pedalled off in the direction of the witch. When they reached Jubilee Drive they saw a gaggle of people looking and pointing at the moon. Now the sinister silhouette of the witch looked clearer – and nearer. An on-duty policeman said it was obviously a kite cut out to look like a witch by hoaxers, yet there wasn’t a breath of wind that night. A shopkeeper from Kensington High Street with a pair of binoculars said the figure was definitely that of a woman in an ankle-length dress, but it didn’t look like a broom she was holding on to but a vertical pole of some sort. All of a sudden, as kids clawed at his overalls, begging to have a look through the binoculars, the silhouetted witch darted away from the moon’s disc, and a wave of “oohs” filled the air as the onlookers watched it move off towards Edge Lane, where it was lost to sight. From his bedroom window, Brian Knox watched the spooky female outline vanish into the dusk, but his sister Annie was racing after the witch on her bike, and she and several other people claimed that they later saw the figure circle the whitewashed tower of Littlewoods near the Botanic Gardens in Wavertree Park before she vanished for good. Was it all mere hysteria that night in 1963, or did a bona fide broom-riding witch fly over Liverpool? Strangely enough, the area of the city where the witch was seen was later the scene of the Kensington Leprechaun mania (which was first documented in the ECHO) – but that, as they say, is another story.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 08:22:30 +0000
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