Over the years I have read many stories about the mysterious blue lights

That can be seen near railway lines or at railway stations

Most of these stories come from the USA and are usually slightly exaggerated

But I have recently have come across the tale of a mysterious blue light

On the Great Western Railway somewhere between Didcot and Bath

The thing that really interests me is that the blue light appears in many places sometimes many miles apart

It is supposed to the haunting of Nelly True who was murdered on a Bath bound train in April 1896

Nelly was found by the side of the track badly mutilated but this was not the cause of death as she had been shot at close range

And that is where the mystery deepens as Nelly was not the innocent servant girl that people knew her to be but a Swedish Princess who had disappeared without trace two years before she was murdered

She was known as the Blue Princess as she always dressed in blue and favoured blue jewels

Although her death caused great interest in both England and Sweden nobody was ever charged with her murder

There were thoughts that this was a political assassination as she was known to have been friendly with members of the Russian Royal Family

But nothing was proved and over the years the investigation went cold

That was until a dark rainy night in the November of 1963

A nine year old boy was travelling back to his home city of Bath and was idly looking out of the carriage window

That child was me and I was travelling with my parents having visited relatives in London

I was not actually idly looking out of the window as I was fascinated by the steam from powerful locomotive hanging and being illuminated by the lights from the passing carriages

It was then that I saw a woman walking by the tracks wearing a deep silk blue hooded cape that almost covered her person

In her right hand she was carrying a lantern whose glow was as blue as her outer garments

The figure startled me and I stood away from the window which introduced an enquiry from my parents

I explained what what I had seen and was assured that I had been dreaming and that the figure was likely to have been due to my overactive imagination

As I grew older I never totally forgot about the woman I saw from the train as I could not rationally explain what I had seen

That was until about a month ago when I was travelling on a train to Bath

The woman opposite me was chatting quietly on her phone a common enough recreation when travelling

But it was her conversation that interested me as she was describing what her mother had seen when working as a Land Girl in the very fields that we were passing

Her mother had seen a figure identical to the one I had seen on that damp winters night

A woman in a hooded blue cloak carrying a lantern as blue as she was

I waited until the woman had finished her call and politely asked about her mother and what she had witnessed

Sadly her mother was three years dead but she and a few other Land Girls had seen this mysterious figure

It was reported as it was wartime but was taken no further

These sighting took place near Christian Malford in Wiltshire and it is likely that I was passing through this area when I saw the figure

Yesterday I travelled to Christian Malford just to look around and satisfy my curiosity

It was a benign enjoyable visit and because of the heat of the day I decided to visit the Rising Sun

Whilst there I picked up The Wiltshire Times which carried the story of a barmaid who had disappeared from the village a couple of months previously

She had worked at the Rising Sun

I asked the landlord about this disappearance and he assured me that there was nothing sinister about it as the girl had done it before

A hippy type intelligent rather dreamy but she seemed vulnerable so when she occasionally vanished she was accepted back

My wife especially liked her as she was so like Alice our second daughter

The strange thing was that she was always dressed in blue

I asked about the legend of the woman in blue carrying the blue lantern

The landlord laughed at very the mention of the blue woman

I have been here for twenty-three years and often walk the dogs in the fields near the railway

I have never seen nothing

Nothing at all

Our conversation faded a little as other customers were coming into the bar

But the landlord did mention something rather strange

Her name was Kitty Wakes and although she had a local accent there was something foreign about her

She seemed not to understand some of the local sayings and the common colloquialisms used

I gave this little thought as when she was here she was a hard worker and was popular with the locals

But there was one thing that June found when tidying up her room last week

What was that

Kitty Wakes was not her real name

Far from it

Her real name was Nelly True