Lucy was a little girl of around 8 years old when she passed. She came from a very poor family and was often to be found in the local taverns plying her trade.  You see, Lucy was a thief and a pickpocket, and damn good at it she was as well. In fact so good that Lucy supported her entire family from her ill gotten gains.

Sadly her budding career was cut rather short when she was caught in a fire in one of Stratford's taverns. The fire was severe with two people injured. A gentleman was caught under some beams when they fell and a little girl had her hands and her feet burnt as she crawled to safety.  The little girl's name was Lucy.

Nowadays burnt hands and feet are not a life threatening condition but in the 17th century it was a different situation. Lucy hobbled away in agony from the fire and collapsed in the bed of rags in which she slept whilst at home.  her mother was distraught as Lucy passed in and out of conciuosness, her fever raging. But gradually she began to get better.

All teh while that Lucy was ill, her mother fretted - not just about her little girl, but also about how teh family were going to survive.  While Lucy wasn't working there was no money coming in - and no money meant no food.

It got to the point where Lucy had to go to back to work - or the family would not have survived.  Sadly, the wounds were not completely healed and soon they began to weep. Dirt and vacteria spread through the wounds along with infection and pretty soon, they turned gangrenous.  Lucy just got worse and worse until one day she just didn't wake up.

He mother wept uncontrollably - it was all her fault! How was she going to cope, how was she going to manage without her daughter?  But more importantly, how were they going to eat?

Lucy's mother took a very difficult decision - but her family had to survive - so she allowed Lucy to feed them one last time. Not by eating her, but bu selling her body to a "doctor".

The "doctor" couldn't believe his luck, an 8 year old child so freshly dead that she was still warm - even after three days.  He took the still warm, limp body away, laid it on his surgical table and cut across the stomach in an attempt to find out how the internal organs worked.

He wondered why blood started to pump from the wound.  Lucy's eyes flickered open and that was when Lucy died.  She had only been in what today we would know as a coma.

Lucy's story has been passed down through Stratford's mythology and there is no actual trace of her although many people have encountered her spirit either at the Falcon, the Shakespeare, the Garrick or the former White Lion Inn.  If she manifests - which she frequently does - she has been known to turn rings on fingers, pull earings or even remove jewellery as she tries to steal from the living. 

But the most unusual example of her haunting took place with a news reporter from the radio who was broadcasting live during a ghost hunt. Live on air he said that he could feel little Lucy trying to pull coins from his pockets and then quite unnervingly, she unzipped his trousers.  The poor man was terrified and fled the building.