Youngsters chose Hallowe’en to launch a new piece of artwork at Liverpool South Parkway in Merseyside telling the spooky tale about a witch said to haunt the local railway.

Students from St Benedict's College Student Support Centre in Garston created the artwork, in collaboration with Merseytravel and Liverpool artist Peter Ogunsiji.Laser cut into galvanised steel, the artwork tells of “Screeching Ginny”, a local folk story about a so-called witch in Cressington, who fell in love with a local boy and put a spell on him to make him love her. Her mother was able to break the spell and the local boy fell in love with another. The witch saw the boy with his new fiancee at the old Garston Dock Station and, in despair, threw herself into the front of an oncoming train.

The witch, and her screeches, are still said to haunt the railways around the area.

Councillor Mark Dowd, Chair of Merseytravel “This has been a fantastic project and the students have all taken an active part in creating this artwork. It’s only right we display their talents at Liverpool South Parkway.”Maria Checkland who works in Merseytravel’s Community Links team, was heavily involved in the project. She said: “The students have been brilliant throughout this project, and have come up with some really creative ideas for this artwork. We exchanged our views about what we thought Screeching Ginny would look like, and how we could tell the story in a simple way. “From that, Peter Ogunsiji took all their ideas away and created a design the students thought was great. It was then laser cut in galvanised steel, then taken back to the centre to be painted.”

Some of the students from St Benedicts (left to right – Kayleigh Byrom, James Matthews, Callum Brodie and Nathan Kelly, with headteacher (back) Jim McTague) joined Councillor Dowd (far left) and Peter Ogunsiji to unveil the artwork at Liverpool South Parkway (pictured).

The Story of Screeching Ginny
On 15th November 1959, a group of children were playing near the railway at Garston Dock Station. All of sudden, an ugly witch appeared and chased them, flying after them and screeching at the top of her voice. On St Mary’s Road she gave up the chase, but the children kept running. A local boy, aged 10, ran down Russell Road to where his gran was waiting for him. He told his gran about the witch. She told him it was Screeching Ginny. According to local folklore, Ginny was from a strange family who people thought were witches. They had moved to a house in Cressington. It was said that people who didn’t like the family died in strange circumstances. Ginny had fallen in love with a local boy, and put a spell on him to make him love her, but this was broken by her mother. The boy got engaged to someone else and Ginny was heartbroken. She followed him and his sweetheart to the station, where she ran screeching onto the tracks and was hit by a train. Her ghost is said to still haunt Garston Dock Station even after it closed in the 1940s.