Category Archives: Blessington

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.

And still the leaves kept coming.

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 entirely 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.