A hen party reportedly made a hasty exit after spotting something rather unsettling in one of their photos.

The group, who were celebrating a friend's impending nuptials at an isolated estate in Scotland, were left shaken after taking a series of pictures in quick succession in Argyll and Bute.

In one photo, where the friends are seen striking poses with arms aloft and some donning masks, a small boy appears to be crouching behind a wooden stump.

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The women allegedly fled after researching the property and uncovering a tale about a child who sleepwalked into a lake and drowned.

The story seems to align with that of The Blue Boy, a TV film aired on the BBC in 1994, which tells the story of a four-year-old who drowned in Loch Eck.

The film, featuring Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson, is believed to have been shot in the same location where the eerie photos were taken.

The narrative is a dramatisation of a legend associated with The Coylet Inn, a 17th-century inn overlooking the loch reputed to be haunted.

The images first surfaced last summer, igniting a heated online debate about the boy's presence, with some questioning its authenticity.

One Reddit user said: "Welp..not going to be sleeping tonight". In a 1994 interview with The Herald, The Blue Boy screenwriter Paul Murton revealed: "I was talking to the hotelier about it and he mentioned the Blue Boy.", reports the Mirror.

"This, he said, was a young child who had been on holiday with his parents in the hotel and he had been sleepwalking during the night. He had strayed outside, fallen into the loch, and drowned.

"When they found his body it was blue with the cold. Hotel staff had noticed that things like cutlery and plates were often out of place for no apparent reason - perhaps more sinister than that was the fact that they sometimes found wet footprints upstairs in the corridor."