Stapleton Castle stands in Stapleton parish in Herefordshire, just across the border from Presteigne. The retelling on Eat Sleep Live Herefordshire says stories of Lady Bluefoot were so strong that people crossing the border by the castle were afraid to pass at night, and that even decades later, when the castle was a ruin, children frightened each other with her name.
In the tale she was Lady Stapleton, widowed when her husband was killed in a stag hunt, living at the castle with her young son Everard. A steward, Morgan Reece, wanted the castle and arranged for Everard to be sent away to school, after which the boy vanished. Lady Stapleton declined into despair. Then she suddenly recovered, refused to see Reece, and that night her maid heard a scream. In the morning her mistress was found dead with her throat cut and her husband's hunting knife nearby. Reece said she had accused him of abducting Everard. After her death people reported lights, visions and screams, and the servants left.
Everard returned, having been put on a ship that was wrecked and then rescued by a Puritan voyager bound for America. He found evidence of Reece's guilt in a locked cupboard, and Reece was killed in a struggle. Lady Stapleton's remains were moved to a vault under Presteigne church and her ghost was laid. The page says the tale is known from a notebook found in a Presteigne farmhouse. The source is a tourism website's weekly Folklore Friday series, which says its stories are curated from many sources and retold, and it does not cite originals, so the details below are one retelling. The claim that it comes from a found notebook cannot be checked. The entry is tagged dubious: the haunting is plausible local lore but the narrative has the shape of a Victorian romance. The pin is approximate.
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