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1896: The Blue Lady - a good old fashioned ghost

Updated: Dec 27, 2022



From the book Southern English Roads of 1896 we read:


Cuckfield Place too has the honour of being haunted with a good old-fashioned ghost in the shape of a blue lady, who does not confine herself to one chamber, but takes the ‘run of the house’, going where she listeth from midnight to cock-crowing.


But as we saw the time-toned mansion on that bright sunny morning, it looked anything but a gloomy or a haunted abode. However, one should view such places in the subdued gloaming or in the mystic moonlight to be in accord with the old - world legends that have gathered round their time-worn walls, as Scott advised people to visit 'fair Melrose', though he confessed to a brother poet, Bernard Barton, that he had never ‘gone a bat-hunting to see the ruins himself’, and added in verse:-


And meditate with awe,

On scenes the author never saw,

Who never wandered by the moon

To see what could be seen by noon.


Source

On Southern English Roads, James John Hissey, P150, 1896.


Note: Cuckfield Place is today called Cuckfield Park, and we understand that the Blue Lady has not made her presence felt to the current owners of the house.


Photo - I managed to get a shot, but she was a bit busy that day and had to rush off - she had a delivery of spirits from Tesco, I gather. Best I could do sorry.


Contributed by Malcolm Davison.

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