The Dark Hedges

In the 18th century, James Stuart planted more than 150 beech trees on the road to impress visitors as they approached the entrance to his Georgian mansion, Gracehill House. Recently that road has become even more popular as it was featured in the fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones, representing the Kingsroad, the longest and grandest highway in Westeros continent. The filming location is called Bregagh Road, also known as the “Dark Hedges”, and is only a few hundred meters long in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Locals claim that there is a certain Grey Lady who is said to haunt the spooky road surrounded by the trees. Legend has it that she glides along the road and vanishes as she passes the last beech tree.

Some believe the ghost to be either the spirit of James Stuart’s daughter — named “Cross Peggy” — or one of the house’s maids who died mysteriously, or a spirit from an abandoned graveyard beneath the fields, who on Halloween is joined on her visitation by other spirits from the graveyard. Anyway, she has never been captured on camera. Before Gordon Watson.

The Dark Hedges is one of the most photographed natural phenomena in Northern Ireland. Gordon Watson, a photographer from Ballycastle, got quite a shock when he processed his film from the day’s shooting in 2015 and spotted the wispy shape at the center of the photo.

Kevin McAuley, another well-known local photographer examined the photo and insists that there’s no way it has been digitally enhanced. He told the Ballymoney Times, “It looks like a dress going towards the shape of a figure and it’s at this end of the trees where the Grey Lady has been seen by a variety of people over the years.