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I arrived at Ealing Common Station from London one evening at about six o’clock. It was dark; the lamps were lit. As a change I decided to walk back to the hostel through Montpelier Avenue. I usually went by a slightly quicker road parallel to it. Some way along I passed a policeman standing on a corner, also a small brown dog. A few hundred yards further, on the right side of the road where I was walking, I came to a fairly large white house, lit up, with a large gate and a path through the garden to the front door. Just before I got to the gate a black coach came out with, I think, two dark brown horses, although there might have been four. They stopped just outside the gate and I noticed that you could see the horses’ breath, but there was not a [sound of their breathing] or anything else to be heard. Then I noticed a number, say four, of dark people-shapes come out of the house, who were pushing someone else into the back of the coach, who didn't seem to want to go. I thought this was all very odd, and went back to the policeman, who accompanied me back up the road, but I could not then find any trace of the white house, or garden or gate, or any sign of the coach! I understand that there used to be some large houses in this part of Ealing in Regency times.

Dr Harris [name changed] is a retired general medical practitioner who now lives in Devon. When he was twenty-two he was living at a students’ hostel in Perivale Avenue, Ealing, while studying at University College Hospital in London.