The Difficulty of Crossing a Field

The idea of the missing or the vanishing features highly in stories.

There are a number of boundary crossing tales. 

Hope Hodgson's "House on the Borderland," the Narnia books of course, 

And there's the apocryphal story of Crossing the Field, 

Which was probably created by Ambrose Bierce,  and then repeated with different names and in different places, as actually having happened, 

Because it's a good story, by others including Charles Fort,

But it is probably Bierce's alone, and if you have a copy of Bierce's collected tales

you'll see that Bierce wrote a number of them, including 

'The difficulty of crossing a field'

And ' Charles Ashmore's trail', and often you see versions with 

elements of  both stories melded together.

I think that a fair sign that others are running with someone else's story.

However, I have had experiences of seeing ordinary people "disappear" 

which I couldn't follow up, 

And leave me puzzled.  

Like one morning at Chichester, seated under the wall, facing across a road,

and next to a path, which led to both left and right, along the foot of that wall

I was reading, and across the road were a row of houses,

 and another area of green, and two young  women were heading towards the road 

Crossing that "field" if you will,

I looked down at my book, and when I looked up again, both had disappeared. 

I can't give a clear idea of how long I was looking down, 

But it was odd that they had gone. I would have seen if  a car pulled up, 

And would have seen if they had passed me below the wall. 

I got up, but there was no sign of either up or down the road. 

I don't think there was time for them to enter one of the houses.

I could have had a time lapse of course, but I never understood 

exactly what happened.

That is not the only " disappearance" I've encountered. 

Needless to say there was no way I could find out what 

I may or may not have witnessed.