Black Lady of Bradley Woods

The Black Lady of Bradley Woods is a ghost said to haunt the wooded area near the village of Bradley in Lincolnshire, England.

Eyewitnesses have described her as a young and sorrowful woman, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, wearing a long black cloak and a hood that hides her hair but reveals a pale, tear-streaked face. Though unsettling to encounter, she is not known to have ever harmed anyone. Her presence is generally viewed as mournful rather than malevolent.

The tale of the Black Lady has been passed down through generations and was once used by parents to frighten children into good behavior. It was common for adults in the area to warn that if children were not in bed by a certain time, “the Black Lady will get you.”

One theory suggests that the Black Lady is the ghost of a nun. Nearby Nunsthorpe, now a suburb of Grimsby, once housed a convent before the Reformation. However, this theory provides no explanation for why her spirit would have moved to Bradley Woods, about two miles away. Additionally, descriptions of the Black Lady rarely match what one would expect of a nun’s appearance.

Another explanation proposes that she was a solitary woman, perhaps a spinster, who once lived alone in a cottage deep within the woods. If local children stumbled upon her and were met with anger for intruding on her solitude, the experience could have inspired exaggerated stories that grew into the legend.

However, neither theory fully aligns with the folklore most often told.

According to the more tragic version of the legend, during the Wars of the Roses—or possibly during the Barons’ Wars—a young woodsman lived with his wife and infant son in a cottage in Bradley Woods. The woodsman eventually left to fight in the war, and his wife was left to raise the child alone. Months passed with no word from him. Each day, she would cradle her child and walk to the edge of the woods, hoping to see her husband returning home.

One day, as she left her cottage, three soldiers attacked her. They brutally assaulted her, then snatched her baby and rode off into the forest, laughing. Shattered by grief and shame, she spent the rest of her days wandering the woods, searching endlessly for her lost husband and child. After her death, sightings of a sorrowful woman roaming the forest began to be reported—always searching, never finding.