Sweet Watercolor Memories - Playing Poker with the Devil
As you wander down Rodney Street in Liverpool you can’t help but notice a large Edwardian building that sits square in the middle of the length of this famous street.
Upon closer inspection, you can tell that what used to be a church (St Andrew’s Church) has now been converted into high-end flats and student accommodation for the upper middle-class students that increasingly come to Liverpool for its world-class medical and sciences degrees.
Sat lonely and forlorn on the grounds is an almost masonic-looking pyramid with a gruesome legend attached to it.
According to this legend, William Mackenzie (a prominent civil engineer who worked on the Leeds to Liverpool canal) has his body interred inside this pyramid tomb. Known to be an inveterate gambler, William bet and lost his soul in a game of poker to Satan. But figuring that if they did not bury him, the devil could not claim his prize, William is said to have been placed sitting upright in this tomb with a winning hand of poker grasped in his skeletal hand.
The legend goes that you can see the ghost of William Mackenzie walking Rodney St late at night as if trapped in eternal limbo, kept from either heaven or hell.
However, like so many of these types of legends, I am sorry to be the one to tell you it is a load of steaming 18th-century horse manure, as the pyramid monument was erected seventeen years after William Mackenzie’s death in 1868 by his brother.
When the mists are low to the ground, oft can be seen a group of young drama students called the Shiverpool Liverpool ghost walk, leading a gaggle of tourists down Rodney street, followed by a deathly scream as one of them leaps out from a nearby alleyway dressed in full 1800s clothing to give the paying public the shock of their lives.
This just goes to show, you should never let the truth get in the way of a good myth or legend.
Thanks for reading 🌿
All photos and media design used in this post are my own.
Camera Used: Samsung S7 Smart Phone.
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