ON A cold November night in 1888, Dr Richard Colan and his wife were walking along an underdeveloped road in Stretford, when they noticed a woman dressed all in black coming towards them.

Without any warning she just stepped aside and vanished.

"It was like walking into a ghostly atmosphere."

This was part of the couple's statement they gave to the police.

Eventually, the police informed Mr John Ventre, from Stretford, that witnesses had come forward and information they had received from them matched his wife's description, who a month earlier had walked out of the house and just disappeared.

In mid-December, the national newspaper ran the story - and dubbed it 'The mysterious Lady in Black'.

The case even attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who alerted the police force that she could have been murdered and buried in a graveyard in the Stretford area.

On his advice, they reopened freshly dug graves in case she'd been laid on top of a previous burial, but to no avail.

On June 8, 1889, Anne Ventre, or better known as the lady in black, was found handing from rafters of a derelict barn on Urmston Meadows.

On that eerie night in 1888, when she just vanished in front of Dr Colan and his wife, was she already in the spirit world?

Harry Wild, Davyhulme