Far be it from us to say that celebrated local author Tom Slemen merely makes stuff up to fill his Haunted Liverpool series. We’re quite prepared to believe that Liverpool really does have enough ghost stories to fill 17 volumes. Hey, it’s a regular Salem’s Lot out there - be careful, people.

But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, Slemen ran out of spine-tingling Liverpool tales some time ago but needed inspiration to keep the money coming in.

What would he do?

Well, one way to keep the printers rolling would be to take ghost stories from other cities, and simply add a Liverpool connection where, previously, there was none.

Take, for example, the chilling tale of New Orleans socialite, Madame La Laurie. Well known to ghost aficionados in the states, her grizzly story concerns her torturing of slaves in the basement of her grand New Orleans mansion. There’s no connection to Liverpool. Or, at least, there wasn’t, until one turned up in one of Slemen’s collections. Funny that.

But what most intrigues us is a recent episode of one of our favourite podcasts, and yours too if you’ve any sense - WNYC’s excellent Radiolab.

In it, they tell the tale of a death mask - the mask which became the face of every CPR dummy around the world. Kissed by 300 million practicing Red Cross first-aiders.

The mask was taken from the face of a celebrated case of a mysterious, beautiful young woman who was found, floating - and very, very dead - in the Seine. No one knew who she was, or how she met her sad end.

Death masks were a common way for Parisians to commemorate - and preserve the likeness - of loved ones. And this one, with its veil of mystery and intrigue, became the thing to hang on every smart Parisian’s wall at the end of the 19th century.

But here’s the twist. Radiolab tells the tale of how, despite the mask’s fame - sensation even - in France, no-one over there has heard of its Liverpool connection. Maybe that’s because there isn’t one…

The episode tells of a guide at Liverpool’s excellent Chambre Hardman museum - where one of many copies of the mask hangs - who regales visitors with the story of twin girls from Liverpool, one of whom left for Paris to embark on a doomed love affair, after which she jumped from a bridge into the chilly Seine. This despite no such story emerging over there. Radiolab didn’t ask the obvious question - where did the guide get that story from?

But we did.

A quick Google later, and ta-dah, the deathly hand of Slemen is revealed. And, to add a nice little local twist, Slemen has the mask being bought in Lewis’s. Well, it’s not a Haunted Liverpool story without a good splash of authentic Liverpool colour, is it?

Of course, no matter how deeply you research the story, you won’t find a Liverpool connection anywhere else other than in Slemen’s tale.

Radiolab, bless them, might well have blown this particular out of the water. But we’re sure the Slemen ghostly bandwagon will rise again.

Listen to the Radiolab episode here.