Snowdrop: The Ghost of the First Snowfall

When the last of autumn’s leaves had been swept into gutters and the hills turned the colour of pewter, the Dales fell quiet. It was the kind of quiet that settled deep, muffling even the church bells of Matlock and softening the sound of boots on cobblestones. People said that if you listened carefully, you could hear the world holding its breath, waiting for winter to arrive.

And it always began the same way, one single snowflake, drifting down through the darkness before all the others dared to follow.

That first flake was never random. It was hers.

They called her Snowdrop, the Ghost of the First Snowfall. Pale mint and silver under moonlight, wrapped in a knitted red hat and scarf that never grew wet, she drifted across the landscape carrying a bundle of perfect snowballs in her arms. Wherever she passed, the air turned crystalline and still, as though the night itself bowed in reverence. The first snow of the season always followed behind her, quiet, gentle, inevitable.

Nobody remembered when she had first appeared. The oldest families in Derbyshire swore their grandparents had spoken of her, and their grandparents before them. To some, she was a winter spirit older than Christmas itself; to others, she was the restless soul of a girl who had once waited for someone who never came home.

Long ago, before the mills filled the valleys with smoke, there lived a miner named Thomas Wainwright and his young daughter Elsbeth. Their cottage stood on the edge of the High Tor, where the wind howled like a living thing. The girl loved snow more than anything else in the world. Each year she would wait at the window for the first flake to fall, her breath fogging the glass, her mittened hands clutching a bucket so she could gather the purest handful to make the season’s first snowball.

Her father worked deep in the mines below Masson Hill, gone before dawn and home long after dark. Every evening he would ruffle her hair and say, “You save me the first snow, little drop, and I’ll save you the first spring bloom.” She had taken the nickname to heart, Snowdrop, he called her, because she was the first sign of winter’s beauty and spring’s hope all in one.

But one bitter year, the frost came early and hard. The mine tunnels collapsed without warning. Rescue teams worked by lantern-light for days, but the blizzards came faster than the digging. The snow buried the roads, the ropes froze, and the men below never surfaced. When the town’s bell tolled the miners’ loss, Elsbeth stood outside in the swirling white, clutching her first snowball of the season.

She refused to go inside. When the snow stopped, they found her asleep beneath the yew tree, the snowball still cupped in her hands, untouched, unmelted. Her mother buried her beside the frozen stream, and the grave marker read simply:

Here lies our Snowdrop, first of winter, last of joy.

That night, and every year since, the first flake of snow has fallen precisely on her resting place.

Centuries blurred around the legend. The mines closed, the mills opened, wars came and went. Yet every winter the same thing happened: one still night, a flake fell on the High Tor, and then another, and another, until the hills wore their white shrouds again. Locals began leaving a candle in their windows on that night, “to light the way for the little ghost with the red scarf,” as the saying went.

Those who claimed to have seen her described the same thing: a tiny figure gliding across the frost, her hat bright against the night sky, her arms filled with spheres of light that looked like snowballs but glowed faintly from within. She would stop at crossroads, lift one to the heavens, and let it drift upward. When it burst, it scattered into countless flakes that began the snowfall everywhere she had passed.

Children adored the story. They would leave bowls of water outside, hoping one of her snowballs would fall in and freeze into perfect crystal overnight. Lovers walked the lanes together on the first snow, believing that those who saw her silhouette hand-in-hand would never be parted. And for those grieving or alone, she was something more, an unspoken promise that even loss could become beautiful if you waited long enough.

One December many years later, Professor Barnabas Ravenwood, collector of hauntings and chronicler of the peculiar, travelled to the Dales to see if the phenomenon was true. He arrived on the last clear night before Christmas, carrying a journal, a barometer, and his unshakable skepticism. The townsfolk told him to stay awake until the world went quiet.

So he sat by the window of his inn, pen ready, the candle guttering beside him. Midnight came and went. Then, without warning, the wind stopped. The silence was so complete he could hear the crackle of frost forming on the glass. A single flake landed there, six-pointed and perfect. Behind it, something moved.

She floated past the window, mint-green and luminescent, a child-sized ghost wrapped in red wool. Her scarf fluttered though no breeze stirred. Her arms were full of tiny spheres that shimmered like moonlit pearls. As she passed, the professor’s candle went out. In its place, the room filled with a pale glow like reflected starlight.

Ravenwood followed her into the street, snow crunching underfoot though she left no prints. She drifted toward the churchyard, stopping before an ancient yew. There, she lifted one snowball and let it rise. It dissolved into light, and within seconds, snow began to fall from a cloudless sky.

When she turned, her hollow eyes met his. They were not empty but full of stars, tiny, endless reflections. For a heartbeat, the old scholar felt every sorrow he’d ever carried melt away. Then she was gone, fading into the white as though she’d been part of it all along.

In his journal, he wrote only:

“She does not bring the snow. She is the snow.”

Over the years, more stories joined hers. A shepherd near Cromford claimed she led his lost flock home during a blizzard, her red scarf a beacon through the dark. A widower in Wirksworth swore she brushed snow from his doorstep every winter since his wife’s passing. One postman told of following her glow to deliver letters to remote cottages he’d never found before, only to see them vanish by morning.

Yet Snowdrop never stayed long. She appeared only on the night of the first fall, scattering her snowball seeds before slipping away with the dawn. Her passing left behind the hush of new snow, the sound of everything made pure and quiet for just a moment.

People who have suffered a loss often step outside that night and listen. If they hear nothing but stillness, they whisper, “She’s come for us this year.” And sometimes, just for an instant, the air warms enough for a tear to melt before it freezes.

In modern times, few remember the Wainwright name, but Snowdrop endures. Schoolchildren still compete to catch the first flake of winter on their gloves. Tradition says the one who keeps it intact until it melts will be free from grief for a year. Some tuck the melted droplet into small glass vials, believing it to be Snowdrop’s blessing.

There is even a legend among miners’ descendants that Snowdrop guards the old tunnels, keeping them from collapse. When engineers once reopened an abandoned shaft, they found the walls glazed with a frost so fine it glittered like diamonds. “Snowdrop’s Veil,” the workers called it, and refused to drill through.

No one knows where she goes when spring comes. Perhaps she rests beneath the thawing streams, waiting for the world to grow cold again. Some say she travels north with the migrating geese, scattering her last snowball as a farewell. Others insist she lingers in the corners of attics, curled up in forgotten scarves, dreaming of next December.

But sometimes, on rare years when grief has weighed heavy across many hearts, she stays longer. The snows last well into March, and though people complain of endless shoveling, no one truly wishes her gone. It feels, they say, as though the world itself refuses to move on until everyone has healed a little.

During one of those long winters, a farmer’s wife in Bonsall claimed she heard a child’s voice while shoveling snow at dusk. “Don’t rush me,” it said gently. “I’m still covering the hurt.” When she looked around, there was only a swirl of flakes and the faint scent of pine and wool.

If you ever wander the Dales on the first snow night, listen carefully. When the world pauses between autumn’s end and winter’s beginning, you may see her. She’ll be standing at the edge of a field, scarf fluttering, snowballs cradled like fragile hearts. She’ll lift one into the sky, and as it bursts, the snow will begin to fall, softly, endlessly, a promise renewed.

And if you feel an inexplicable calm wash over you, or remember someone you miss with warmth instead of pain, that is her gift. Snowdrop’s snow is not about cold; it’s about stillness, the kind that lets you remember gently.

Professor Ravenwood later wrote in an addendum to his journal:

“Most hauntings speak of unfinished business. Snowdrop speaks of finished love, love so complete it needed no words, only weather.”

The people of Matlock still light candles on the eve of the first snow. They place them on windowsills beside bowls of water, hoping to catch a reflection of a small mint-green ghost in red wool. Some claim that if the flame flickers sideways instead of upward, she has passed their house and left them her blessing.

And in the quiet hours before dawn, when the world glows blue beneath the snow’s reflection, you might hear the faintest sound, like hands patting a snowball into shape, or a child laughing softly far away. Look to the horizon then. If the wind rises and carries with it the scent of pine and candle smoke, you’ll know she’s near.

She will glance back only once, her black eyes filled with stars, before drifting onward to paint another valley white. And behind her, the snow will fall, soft as forgiveness, bright as memory, endless as love.