The Blessington Lake Leaves

A Legend in Three Movements

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Act One – The Day the Sky Shed Its Skin

It began, as peculiar things often do, with something perfectly ordinary.

Old Mrs. Hanratty was sitting on the pier at Blessington Lake, feeding the ducks with the heels of a stale loaf, when the first leaf drifted down from above. She thought nothing of it—there are trees everywhere, after all, and it was autumn.

But then came another leaf. And another. And another.

By the time she’d run out of bread, the air above the lake was thick with them—oak, ash, beech, sycamore, elm—some so large they could have been used as parasols. They spiralled down in lazy loops, landing on the water with soft splashes or sticking to the pier’s damp planks.

What puzzled Mrs. Hanratty most was this: there was not a single tree anywhere near her. The leaves were falling from directly above—straight down from the empty blue sky.

Within an hour, word had spread. Children in wellies ran laughing along the shore, trying to catch the drifting leaves before they touched the water. Fishermen paused mid-cast to watch as maple leaves the size of dinner plates parachuted past their noses. Tourists stood gawping, phones held high.

By midday, they were falling faster. The surface of the lake was no longer water—it was a shifting carpet of golds, reds, and browns. The ducks paddled in confusion, occasionally disappearing under drifts of foliage before popping up again like feathery corks.

At two o’clock, the leaves began to arrive in patterns—swirling spirals, perfect rings, even shapes that some swore looked like letters. “It’s writing something!” shouted young Patrick Flynn. But before anyone could read it, the wind twisted the letters into nonsense.

Then, at exactly three o’clock, the lake itself seemed to sigh. A long, low sound, like the breath of something deep beneath. And with that, the falling stopped.

Everyone stood frozen, staring at the silent water, now buried under a thick, motionless blanket of leaves.

Mrs. Hanratty swore she saw the whole carpet shift slightly, as if something huge had just rolled over beneath it.

By the next morning, the leaves were gone—every last one. The lake was its usual calm self, with no sign of the strange downpour.

But those who had been there said that sometimes, if you stood on the pier at just the right time of day and looked down into the still water, you might see something looking back. Something that moved like the wind, but had no need for air.

And if you were very unlucky, you might see a single leaf float slowly upward from the depths.

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Act Two – The Night the Lake Breathed Back

Three nights after the leaf storm, the lake changed again.

It began just after midnight, when Padraig Ó Murchú, the night watchman at the marina, heard a sound like wet paper being torn—slowly. The noise came from the lake’s centre, where the moonlight turned the water silver.

Padraig, a man who feared nothing except his own mother’s temper, took his torch and went to the edge of the pier.

That’s when he saw it.

The surface of the lake was rising—not in waves, but in one smooth swell, as if the entire body of water were inhaling. Then, without warning, a single enormous leaf pushed up from beneath, glistening and trembling. It was dark green, slick, and far too perfect to be natural.

It floated there for a moment. Then another emerged beside it. And another.

Within minutes, the lake was covered in them—huge, alien leaves, each the size of a rowing boat. They gave off a faint phosphorescent glow, making the water look like a field of lanterns drifting in the dark.

Padraig swore later that he could see shapes moving underneath, using the leaves as shields. They moved slowly, deliberately, as if surveying the shore.

And then, just as quickly as it had risen, the water exhaled. The leaves sank, vanishing without a ripple, and the lake lay still.

By morning, there was no sign of what had happened.

But in the muddy shallows near the pier, someone found a single object lodged between two stones—a curled, dried fragment of one of the giant leaves. The texture was like snakeskin, and it smelled faintly of rain on hot stone.

Mrs. Hanratty keeps it in a jar on her mantelpiece now. She says if you listen closely enough at night, you can hear it whispering.

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Act Three – The Thing That Waited Between

It began subtly. Boats moored overnight would be found turned in circles, their ropes twisted into plaits. Fishers hauling nets would find them torn, as though scraped by something hard and sharp. Dogs refused to go near the shore, standing stiff-legged and whining if pulled close.

Then came the fog.

Thick, white, and oddly warm, it rolled in one morning and settled low over the lake, so dense you could hear droplets pattering into the water. The fog stayed all day, and in it, shapes could be glimpsed—tall, thin, and too still to be people.

That night, Mrs. Hanratty’s jarred leaf began whispering in earnest. Her neighbour swore he heard it through the walls: a soft, sibilant voice repeating something over and over.

On the fourth night of the fog, the villagers gathered in the pub, too uneasy to sleep. That’s when the sound came—low, deep, and resonant, like a drum played underwater. It pulsed through the walls and floorboards, rattling glasses. Each beat seemed to pull at the chest, as though the lake were calling for something inside them.

Several people reported seeing lights moving within the fog—pairs of pale green orbs gliding slowly above the water’s surface.

By dawn, the fog was gone.

So was Padraig Ó Murchú.

His boat was found drifting at the centre of the lake, perfectly dry inside. The oars were still lashed in place, and his torch sat on the bench, switched on and shining into nothing.

In the mud of the shore, someone found footprints. Not Padraig’s—these were long, narrow, and webbed, pointing from the lake toward the village, and then back again.

That night, Mrs. Hanratty’s leaf finally went silent.

Some say Padraig will return when the sky sheds its skin again. Others believe he never left—that if you stand on the pier on certain nights, you’ll hear the slow beat of that underwater drum, and see a man-shaped shadow standing perfectly still among the drifting leaves.