Plot

Heiress Ann Henderson is terrorized by a middle-aged woman as her wedding day approaches with young stockbroker Robert Blake. Should she instead marry her former fiance David Mitchell, whom her parents despise?

While out horseback riding on June 13, 1939, 18 year-old Anne Henderson comes across another rider, a middle-aged woman dressed in black, who chases after her. She's terrified and races home. It's the day of her engagement party. She's supposed to marry Robert Blake but childhood friend David Mitchell wants her to break it off and marry him instead. As for the woman in black, she is someone who knows Anne quite well.—garykmcd

The eighteen-year-old Anne Henderson is riding a horse, when she sees a scary woman wearing black calling her and riding to her. She flees to her house, where her parents Mr. and Mrs. Henderson and her fiancé Robert Blake are waiting for her. Mr. Henderson calls the police, while her mother and Robert comfort her. Out of the blue, her former boyfriend David Mitchell invades her house and tells to Anne that he loves her. Twenty-five years later, Anne remember that day talking to her mother.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

18-year-old Anne Henderson (Diana Hyland) goes out for a horseback ride. As she reaches the base of a hill overlooking the meadow she's been riding through, she sees a woman in black, riding a black horse, appear at the top of the hill. The woman harshly screams Anne's name and begins to ride toward her. Anne wheels her horse and rides off in fear. The woman on the black horse gives chase, screaming to Anne to come back. Finally she stops her horse and glowers after the young woman with a seemingly malevolent look.

Anne races home, staggering through her door, panting desperately for breath, and bursts into tears as she is hugged and comforted by her parents (Philip Ober and Marsha Hunt) and her fiance, Bob (Robert Hogan). The three lead her into the living room and seat her on the sofa. Anne tells the three of them her story, and Anne's father calls the police and some other contacts in hopes of finding the woman, who Anne believes intended to kill her. Trying to cheer her up, Bob tells a joke that the woman in black was a haunting spirit trying to warn Anne not to attend her engagement party or marry the successful investment banker she's engaged to marry. Anne, however, is not amused.

The doorbell rings; it's Anne's ex, David Mitchell (Roger Davis), desperately trying to win her back. David forces his way past the elderly retainer and refuses to back down from Anne's father or Bob, even when threatened with arrest after Anne's father points a loaded gun at him. The only thing that will make him accept that his relationship with Anne is truly over, is for Anne to say it to him personally. Anne cannot say the words, but runs upstairs to her room, and finally David leaves. Bob jokes to Anne's father that he almost feels sorry for David-- but just "almost".

The scene shifts and we see the woman in black ride up to the house on her black horse. She walks in and the camera pans in on her. The woman in black is Anne Henderson herself -- older, haggard, an empty shell of her former self. She pours herself a stiff drink and slumps into a chair. Anne's mother comes downstairs and they have it out over the pending loss of the house and how they came into the situation. Anne is now 43 years old, married to David, with whom she eloped, and Anne's father is long passed away.

The dissolute David has caused the family estate to be seized for crushing debt, and he appears crazed and abusive. Anne could no longer even care less about the loss of the home; blaming her father for pampering her, spoiling her, sheltering her, and never teaching her how to actually take care of herself without a husband. Her mother is aghast at any poor words about her late husband, and slaps her daughter. Anne slaps her back, berating her mother's "cornball" rhetoric. An alcoholic, she drowns her sorrows in liquor. She tells her mother that she sees ghosts -- specifically, ghosts of herself riding through the meadow a quarter century earlier on the date of her engagement party but her mother, distraught over the imminent loss of the family home, is oblivious to this metaphysical marvel.

Anne hates herself more than anybody else -- she now realizes Bob's "joke" about the "warning not to go through with her wedding" was a macabre and very real harbinger of her current bleak and lonely fate, because she didn't heed the warning. It is also completely ironic, as the opposite of his joking warning was true -- the "phantom" did not want her younger self not to marry Bob, she wanted the wedding to go through! Bob was well on the path to success, but David's rebelliousness and sex appeal turned her naive head, and she failed to take the infinitely recurring warning.

David comes downstairs and orders Anne's mother to leave them. He appears barely sober himself as he condescendingly chastises Anne for being disrespectful to him as a man. He tries to engage in some physical contact. Repulsed, she glowers at him, contemptuously repeats the word "man", and throws her drink into his face. Storming out of the house, she mounts her black horse and rides out.

The scene shifts back to Anne's engagement party 25 years in the past. While standing outside the house with Bob, he offers to bring her a stole to cover her shoulders. David appears in the parking lot, beckoning Anne over. She rushes to his arms and he pleads for her to run away with him. Bob, carrying the stole, is seen walking through the lot in search of Anne.

The episode finishes with a replay of the first scene, as Anne again sees her younger, 18-year-old self at the base of the hill, and desperately rides after her, trying to warn her of her impending fate, her words clear now. She is trying to warn her and thus save both her younger self and present self from her cycle of torment... but again, as always, failing to catch her.