In reply to Mr. Stead’s request to hear the anecdote the precentor says (I quote him ad verbum): 

“I was walking, about nine years ago, one night in August, about ten o’clock, and about half a mile from the house where we are now sitting.  I was going along the public road between the hamlets of Mill of Haldane and Ballock.  I had with me two young women, and we were leisurely walking along, when suddenly we were startled by seeing a woman, a child about seven years old, and a Newfoundland dog jump over the stone wall which was on one side of the road, and walk on rapidly in front of us.  I was not in the least frightened, but my two companions were very much startled.  What bothered me was that the woman, the child, and the dog, instead of coming over the wall naturally one after the other, as would have been necessary for them to do, had come over with a bound, simultaneously leaping the wall, lighting on the road, and then hurrying on without a word.  Leaving my two companions, who were too frightened to move, I walked rapidly after the trio.  They walked on so quickly that it was with difficulty that I got up to them.  I spoke to the woman, she never answered.  I walked beside her for some little distance, and then suddenly the woman, the child, and the Newfoundland dog disappeared.  I did not see them go anywhere, they simply were no longer there.  I examined the road minutely, at the spot where they had disappeared, to see if it was possible for them to have gone through a hole in the wall on either side; but it was quite impossible for a woman and a child to get over a high dyke on either side.  They had disappeared, and I only regret that I did not try to pass my stick right through their bodies, to see whether or not they had any resistance.  Finding they had gone, I returned to my lady friends, who were quite unnerved, and who, with difficulty, were induced to go on to the end of their journey.”

One of his companions, Mr. Stead goes on to explain, who heard him tell the story at the time, corroborated the fact that it had made a great impression on those who had seen it.  Nothing was ever ascertained as to any woman, child, or Newfoundland dog that had ever been in the district before.  When they got to Ballock they enquired of the keeper of the bridge whether a woman, a child, and a dog had passed that way, but he had seen nothing.  The apparition had disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.  Mr. Stead’s article ends here.  Of course, one can only surmise as to the nature of the phenomena.  No member of the Psychical Research Society could do more—­and in the absence of any authentic history of the spot where the manifestations occurred, such a surmise can be of little value.  Since the phenomena were seen by three people at the same time, it is quite safe to assume they were objective, but it is impossible to lay down the law as to whether they were actual phantasms of the dead—­of a woman, child, and Newfoundland dog who had all three