Darwen's old cemetery is the setting for a White Lady legend with an unusually active, dare-based folk tradition attached to it, quite distinct from the more passive sighting-based ghost stories collected elsewhere in this record. The figure is said to have died either in childbirth or, in the considerably darker version of the story, to have been murdered by men who then stole her baby from her, leaving her spirit to wander in a state of permanent grief, forever searching for the child she was never able to keep.
Local children's folklore around the site holds that speaking a specific phrase, 'white lady, white lady, I stole your black baby', will cause her to appear before whoever is brave enough to say it, a dare-summoning motif that generations of local children have evidently tested against one another at the cemetery gates.
This carries clear affinities to other British legend-tripping traditions such as Bloody Mary, transplanted here onto a genuine local cemetery rather than existing purely as an abstract piece of childhood folklore, giving Darwen's own version a specific physical location that many similar dare-based ghost stories elsewhere in the country lack.
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