The Blue Lady
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fairy shadows in the sky. If I should grow black wings and fly to ask all that I wondered why, would you give answer or would you lie? Listen to Spooked. Stay tuned.

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Sometimes you have to break from tradition to make something better, or in this case, a smoother spirit. Martel Blue Swift is made of French cognac, but because it's finished in bourbon barrels from America, they're not allowed to call it cognac. The shockingly smooth taste is rich and aromatic with distinctive hints of toasted oak from the bourbon casks, making it perfect for cocktails. Martel Blue Swift. Defy expectations. Enjoy our quality responsibly.

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Within the four walls of our trailer, northern Michigan woods. Tough. Trying to dodge my parents in that tiny space. Their anger, their sadness, their rage. Low boil. Please remain at a low boil. Keep my head down. Down. Stay out the way. Stay shadow. Stay silent. So, despite the winter cold, I spend long hours in the forest. Not born to this land.

Not raised here, but I know these trails. These woods, the creeks, the ponds, the fields. I know them because it's better outside freezing. That is an easy nine-year-old target inside. I like to imagine that this land knows me, looks out for me. One late afternoon wandering the woods, the air snaps from just cold to frigid.

Painful, bitter. I pull my hood tight over my head. Still can't go back home. Not yet. Keep walking through the snow. Instead, head up, looking up. I see the flash of red.

Brilliant crimson, he's hopping from one branch to the other. A cardinal. Clucking. Singing. Stole at me just because I can't fly. It makes no sense how much he stands out. Beautiful. Against his backdrop. So almost silly, makes me want to laugh looking up at him. A right foot.

Instead of patting on snow, crunches through ice, then my leg is sinking, falling, arm failing, shock of wet, cold, cold, cold, my arm in the water, pushing me out of the water, rolling, rolling. Three seconds? Four seconds, maybe? But that's all it takes to crack through this ice, to flop back on the snow. Stupid, stupid! Now my right leg...

and right arm are wet in this cold and I know that I'm in trouble deep trouble you can never be wet here never so I run but I'm so far away I don't know how far away I can't remember and the cold hurts branding iron pain hurts blinding so cold my leg my arm my fingers I can't stop to scream pure pain agony it hurts and it doesn't hurt

I can't feel. Swallow, panic, panic because I know this is worse. That pain is good. When there is no pain, you lose limbs, parts. Run, run, run, run. Blind, run, run. My left hand can barely twist the doorknob open, barely. Stop letting the heat out my house. Dark figures huddle around the TV, flickering gloom. My father shelling peanuts.

No one turns their head to look at me. I staggered toward the restroom crying, crying hands like paddles trying to turn on the water. Let me turn on the water. Let me turn on the water. I want to turn on hot water, but I know better. Cold water first. Cold water until you can feel. And when I can feel, it hurts all over again. Hear myself silent sobbing. Just a little bit of hot water now.

Just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit more. Pulling frozen fingers apart with my teeth outside. Inside. It doesn't matter. Spook starts now. Now then, we begin. Far from the Michigan woods, where Emma Louise Tully is but six years old and her parents live by the Sharon Rectory. A crumbling, 200-plus-year-old manor in the Irish countryside

Very nice indeed. Spooked. Moving into Sharon, I was apprehensive. I just could never see it to be a home, a forever home for me and my family because it just had this big scary look to it. It's not your typical house, everyday house. It's a very large stone building surrounded by woodland. When my parents bought the house, it was in complete ruins. The whole place was falling apart. So I could never see it to be a home.

Emma doesn't know this at the time, but she's not the only person who is scared of Sharon Rectory. In town, there's a bit of lore surrounding the house. A lot of people say that it's haunted. My parents, they were hearing stories, but they were both skeptical. I suppose the way they seen it was that they wouldn't believe it until they seen it for themselves. It was the bank holiday, August, when we moved in. My new bedroom is upstairs and it's right next to my parents' room.

And in the opposite end of the room, there is a door that leads to the back staircase. This back staircase, it just, even with the lights on in it, it still looks dark. It just creeped me out. I start to hear strange noises come from these back staircase. I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs and it seems to creep up the stairs halfway and stop. And then it might...

continue then and then it'll stop again. I'm thinking in my head, is this really only in my head or am I actually hearing something for real? One night I could hear the footsteps. I'm watching the door and I could see a mist, a blue mist form in the middle of the room. It wasn't a heavy kind of a fog. It was light. It was transparent.

I'm seeing what looks to be like a lady form. The top of her forms burst so I could see her head and her hair. Her dress started to form. It's a long dress and it's not of this era. I don't see a face. There's just blank. It's just nothing. It's just emptiness. I just couldn't watch her anymore. I was under the covers. I'm trying not to breathe because I feel like if I breathe she'll hear me.

and I don't know what she's going to do. I don't know what her intentions are. I'm starting to sweat. Eventually I come up for air and I don't see her in the room anymore. This continues to happen night after night and it's terrifying.

Sometimes you have to break from tradition to make something better, or in this case, a smoother spirit. Martel Blue Swift is made of French cognac, but because it's finished in bourbon barrels from America, they're not allowed to call it cognac. The shockingly smooth taste is rich and aromatic with distinctive hints of toasted oak from the bourbon casks, making it perfect for cocktails. Martel Blue Swift. Defy expectations. Enjoy our quality responsibly.

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I didn't know whether or not to tell my parents because I didn't know that if they would believe me or not or if they would be thinking that I'm making this up because I want to go back to our old house. It was about a couple of weeks later. I'm lying in my bed and I could hear the footsteps coming up the back staircase. I instantly pull the covers over my head. I'm lying there hoping that this would be another night where...

She'll just pass through the room and I try and fall asleep. I could feel like an almost weight sat beside me and I could feel her presence right close to me. I pull the covers back and I can see her sitting at the bottom of my bed. She was facing me and I could see her look at me with a featureless face. Her head just turned to me. I was under the covers again.

I could still feel her beside me and I could hear a very, very faint light kind of humming. It was just enough to make out and I feel that she's trying to comfort me but I don't feel any comfort. So scared. It lasts for a few seconds and then it's silence and all I can hear is my breath. At this point, Emma decides that she has to talk to her mum.

I'm afraid that she's not going to believe me. I tell her and she kind of pauses for a second and she tells me that she has seen her too and so has my dad. They would see her standing at the bottom of the bed and then my mum would often see her too beside my dad and my dad mightn't have been able to see her the time my mum was able to see her.

It was one, I think, night he put his hammer out the side of the bed and he says, where is she at? And mum says that she's seen his hand go straight through her. My mum's telling me that it's okay, that it's not going to hurt you, that it's just something that's in the house that we just can't explain right now. Emma's mum, Lisa, starts researching the house and she discovers something tragic.

About 200 years earlier, a group of men came to assassinate a minister who was staying at Sharon Rectory. The men surrounded the house and shot at the windows. A stray bullet hit the lady of the house, Sarah Waller, in her shoulder. She died later that night. Whenever my mum found out about her passing in the house, from then on we just started to call her Mrs. Waller. I think it's respectful just to call her by her name rather than the Blue Lady.

Over time, she's kind of making her presence known more. We could hear the piano up in the living room start to play itself. It sounds like playing ballroom music. The doors would bang. There's furniture being moved. There was a trunk at the bottom of my parents' bed and it had like a lock at the bottom of it. Maybe 6.30 in the morning, it would have banged and banged until they got up.

I suppose in her time that maybe that's the time that people woke up and she was expecting it from us too. My mum would have always bought like secondhand furniture from carpet sales or from charity shops and she picked up three pictures of it was like a Greek mythology. This one particular picture I didn't like because it was like these ladies were sacrificing another lady to a tiger.

I says to dad I didn't want that one up on the wall and he was like we're just gonna have to put them up he says because we're not going to be able to listen to your mum if we don't get them up. We were sitting down in the kitchen that evening having dinner and there was an almighty bang through the house. My dad ran up to the hall because he thought that somebody came through the door it was so loud and there the picture was that I didn't like it was sitting in the middle of the hall.

My dad puts it back up on the wall again and we go back and we finish eating our dinner. That night I'm lying in bed and my mum and dad go to bed and just a few hours in we could hear this bang again. I could hear my dad getting up in the room next door and I could hear him walking down the front staircase and a few minutes later he comes back and he gets into bed. So the next morning

I'm saying to my mum, you know, I heard a bang last night, mum. What was that that happened? And she tells me that the picture that fell the day before fell again through the night. It continues to happen. My parents eventually take the picture off the wall because it falls in the most unusual way. It falls not straight down on the wall, it falls straight.

to the middle of the floor, and the nail still remains in the wall. It's like it's been thrown. Emma's parents ask their local priest to come over and bless each room of the house, but it doesn't really seem to do anything. This was going to take a lot more than just a priest coming and saying a few prayers and throwing holy water around each room. One of my mum's friends knew a lady called Kate Houston. Kate Houston is a psychic medium.

And she says that she would get in touch with Kate Houston to maybe come in and talk to my parents about, you know, their experiences. As soon as Kate walks in the front door, she says she can feel a presence. Per her request, Emma's parents haven't told her anything about the history of the house. She did say that there was a lady that was there that was with us at the time, and she was picking up the name Sarah.

So that's what made us think, okay, she knows what she's talking about. She seems genuine. At the end of her visit, Kate tells the family that she thinks they need to do a seance. So the night has come. They've prepared the kitchen all in candles. There's a lot of hustle bustle going around of just preparation. My grandmother and my mum's brother, my uncle Raymond, are joining us on the night. I'm still trying to understand what's going on, of why they need to do this.

I can't help but think, is this going to work? As they're sitting around the table, Kate's calling forth any spirits that's around the house if they want to make themselves known. And as they're sitting in quietness, my grandmother says, I can hear what sounds like a gunshot. Suddenly, Kate seems to be in pain. She's gripping her shoulder. My mum is overcome with emotion. She bursts into tears.

Kate, even though she was in pain, she was still telling them to continue on, to try and focus. Kate tells my dad, "You need to pray and you need to keep praying. Don't stop. No matter what else happens, you have to keep praying." He's praying. My mum and Kate, my grandmother and my uncle are still conducting the séance. I can see the door opening on one end of the kitchen and closing again.

And then a gush of wind goes through the room and the other door opens and closes again really slowly. Mrs Waller comes in, she like floats in. There's more detail than ever before. Her hair is in ringlets. The details in her dress are exquisite. There are little bows on the dress and fine stitching. She finally has a face.

She's a really young complexion. She's beautiful. And she stands in the middle of the table. We could see her form in a blue teardrop shape. And all of a sudden she was gone. Sometimes you have to break from tradition to make something better. Or in this case, a smoother spirit. Martel Blue Swift is made of French cognac. But because it's finished in bourbon barrels from America, they're not allowed to call it cognac.

The shockingly smooth taste is rich and aromatic with distinctive hints of toasted oak from the bourbon casks, making it perfect for cocktails. Martell Blue Swift. Defy expectations. Enjoy our quality responsibly. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season.

The feeling that comes with getting MGM rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team...

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

They finished up after the séance and they talk about what exactly had happened. The gunshot going off, to Kate feeling the pain, to mum feeling the emotion. It was like that was her final moments that Mrs Waller was trying to get across. After that night of the séance, I didn't hear the footsteps. I didn't see the lady come through the room at night. I thought, I wonder was this finished? Was it gone?

Time goes by and the family believes the seance has worked. Emma's parents continue to renovate Sharon Rectory. When they finish working on the main house, they start fixing up the Coachman's residence and a little cottage house on the property. As Emma gets older and becomes a teenager, she starts spending more and more time on her own. I would feel a real kind of negative feeling in the house. There was like weird smells that would have just came out of nowhere.

It's like rotten eggs, sulphur smell, that's what it smells like. I felt that maybe Mrs Waller was more of a protector and that she kept whatever this that I was feeling at bay and because she was no longer stuck here seemed to kind of become more active. One evening I get on my bike and I'm cycling down the back lane and there's a man that's walking up the lane. He's wearing a long black coat and a hat

And I stop my bike and I'm watching him come closer to me. His face is like, it's that pale, it's almost a greyish colour. He doesn't have a smile on his face, he doesn't look to be like a happy man. I shout over and I ask him, are you looking for my mum and dad? But he doesn't reply. He turns really slowly and walks back down the lane again. And he vanishes. It was crazy. It's just...

In a split second, he's gone. By the time Emma is getting ready to start college, she wants her own space. Her parents have finished fixing up the Coachman's residence, and Emma moves in. The Coachman's residence is just a flat that's on the other side of the house. My first night in the Coachman's, I just tossed and turned. I couldn't settle. The whole night I stay awake,

The next night I'm lying in bed and I feel like that it's just too dark so I get up and I turned on the bathroom light and the bathroom light shines through the bedroom so I feel a bit more comfortable. I'm drifting off to sleep and I hear a bang in the room. A bang that's very loud it makes me jump. I get up and I look around and I can't see anything that's out of place. I'm

Freaked out. But I think this is where I'm going to be staying for the future. So I need to stick it out. So I continue to keep the light on at night. I feel like that I need to see each corner of the room just in case there is something. I would rather see it. The next night, I'm lying there and drifting off to sleep. And something, it's like something just wakes me up. All of a sudden, I just wake up.

and I can see this tall, dark shadow at the bottom of my bed, standing, just looking at me. I couldn't move for fear. I just was froze to the bed. I didn't know what to do. The shadow disappears. I roll over in the bed and just pray to God that I can get some sleep. But I'm so scared. It was the worst fear.

It wasn't like when I seen the blue lady. This was scarier, it was darker. I felt like this intended harm, this intended to be scary. It wanted to scare me. This oppressive feeling just seems to come over me. Whenever I left the house, I felt completely fine. Whenever I was in the house, I felt really tired, drained, just physically. It's like everything is just pulled from my body.

One morning I'm getting dressed and I notice marks on my legs. I just kind of brush it off as maybe I scratched myself when I was sleeping. But it seemed to be the case where every morning I'm waking up, I am covered in marks, scratches on my legs and my back. I was getting ready for bed one night and I'm brushing my hair and brushing my teeth and

I look in the mirror and just directly behind me I see a face come through the wall. It was transparent but you could make out like the shape of eyes and a nose and a mouth and it was there for a split second and it vanished, like it went back into the wall again. I froze to the spot. I could feel my heart beating. I could really hear it in my head, the beating of my heart.

Emma runs and gets into bed, and she pulls the covers over her head, just like she used to when she was a kid. But she can't fall asleep.

I feel that there's eyes that's within the walls that's watching me. I feel really paranoid. It's starting to really get to me. Emma looks forward to the weekends when she can take a break from her college classes and spend time away from Sharon Rectory. So one night I go out and I meet a guy called Gabriel. We had an instant connection. We continued to see each other. It was love.

Emma and Gabriel have a son, Noah. After he's born, they decide it's time for them to get their own place. They move into a little house about 10 minutes away from Sharon Rectory.

So as we move into the new house, I start to feel a lot better. My mind feels clearer. I have more energy and I feel like there's some sort of normality coming into my life. Then one evening, Emma gets a phone call from her mom. She tells me that the house is on fire. So I drop the phone and get into the car and I drive straight down the road to the house.

Just as I'm pulling up to the front of the house, I see these large flames coming up just out of the roof of the main part of the house. The fire brigade are just approaching at this stage. My mum is in complete tears. She's just seeing her whole life, everything just going up in flames in this house. She is so upset. My dad, he can't sit back and watch. He actually pulls the...

hoses off the fireman and runs into the front door of the house and tries to put out as much as he can himself and he has no safety equipment, no nothing and the fireman eventually pull him back out again. Paramedics are saying to him that he needs to go to hospital so myself and my mum are left with the fireman trying to get this fire under control. The firefighters realise that they don't have enough water to put out the whole fire because they didn't realise how big the fire was in the house.

There's a well behind the house and the firefighters start scrambling to hook up their hoses. And the generator doesn't work. At this stage you can really see the flames starting inside the house. It was really upsetting because my whole childhood, all my memories, I felt like it was just being ripped away. Finally the firemen get the pump working.

Smoke is just starting to go down. Fire's starting to go down. Thankfully, it's only kind of stayed in one part of the house. The fire chief approaches myself and my mum and asks, were we in the main building at any time during the fire? And we both looked at each other and we said, no, no, I wasn't in the house. And mum says she wasn't in the house. And the fireman, he kind of was a wee bit shocked because

He said that he had seen a woman standing between the reception hallway and the main staircase. A couple of the men were shouting into the house, you know, to get out and get away from the fire, but she still stands there. It's like she doesn't hear them. A couple of them were going to try and attempt to go in to try and get this lady out, but it was like she just vanished. She was gone. And when we look at each other, we say, I wonder, was that her?

And he instantly just turns and says, I don't want to know. He says, I'm just freaked. This is completely the strangest thing that's ever happened. I think that Mrs. Waller's seen what was happening to her home. Maybe she was trying to stop it from going any further. After that night of the seance, I think that Mrs. Waller was at peace, but she never really, really left. Since the fire, Emma's parents have been working to repair the house.

Emma and Gabriel have had another son, Jonah, and eventually they move back to the Coachman's residence at Sharon Rectory. One big question everybody asks is, why would you stay in the house? And I say that it's because it's our home. I love this house. My kids love this house. I want to reside here happy with my family. My two kids, we've never told them the house is haunted. I'm trying to kind of protect them from it for as long as I can.

But Emma's not sure how much longer she'll be able to. One evening, we're driving down the back lane, and suddenly Noah starts shouting, and he says, Mom, you drove over a man. And I says, Noah, I didn't see a man. And he says he was standing in the middle of the laneway. And I says, well, what did the man look like? He said he's got a black coat and a black hat. ♪

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Emma, for sharing your story with the spooked. If you want to hear more about our family's haunted castle, she's written a book. It's called The Haunting of Sharon Rectory. You can find out more information on the Spooked Luminary page. The original score was by Renzo Gorio. The story was produced by Zoe Ferrigno. Oh, I know.

It's that time. I know, I understand, but it is never over. And if you have a story, not a ghost story, but a story about a monster or a creature, an alien, a gen, a changeling, maybe a story about someone who is exhibiting powers not of this world. If you have a story like that, we'd love to hear it. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. There is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener.

And if you like your storytelling in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snap Judgment podcast because it might just change your life. Spooks brought to you by the team that knows better than to go traipsing through some dark castle because they weren't born yesterday. Except for possibly Mr. Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hamburg, Amy Nguyen, Lauren Newsome.

Leon Morimoto, Renzo Gorio, Taylor Ducat, Marissa Dodge, Aaliyah Yates, Zoe Ferrigno, Greta Weber, Jacob Winnick, Sana Khan, Tiffany DeLisa, Ann Ford, Fernando Hernandez, and Flo Wiley. The Spook theme song is by Pat Messini-Miller. My name is Tom Washington. And in those dark, dank, drafty castles, you never know which way the chill will blow with dire consequence. So I advise you to carry not one candle, no, carry two candles.

All the better to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never turn out the lights. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets.

So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team, the BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.