In the winter of 1912 a woman walking home at night along the road from Ramsey reached the corner by Milntown and found a little man in front of her. He was about two feet tall, in a red cap and a blue coat with shining buttons. His face was wrinkled, his hair white, his eyes blue and kind, and he held a small lantern that gave a brilliant light. They looked at each other for a moment and then he was gone. She told Gill, who had known her for thirty years, that her mother's sister had met the same figure at the same place long before.
In 1927 a woman met a big black shaggy dog at the corner, with eyes like burning coals. The two of them stood looking at each other until the dog stepped aside and let her pass. Her father died soon afterwards, which fits the old belief that a black dog is a death warning.
In 1931 the family doctor, driving past at about two in the morning, saw a black creature like a dog but nearly the size of a calf, with bright staring eyes. According to Gill it was still there hours later.
Gill gives no names, and each story reached him through at least one other person. They sit in the long Manx tradition of black dogs, of which the Moddey Dhoo of Peel Castle is the most famous, and they are about as close to first-hand as that tradition gets.
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