After some initial annoyance, my brain settled on two explanations.
1: It's not what the woman says. It's the realisation that she's the same woman who you can see 73 yards away. The sheer wrongness of this breaks people's brains in a Lovecraft Eldritch Cosmic Horror sort of way.
2. It's a ghost story in the tradition of Dickens' The Signalman or James' Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You. Once I accepted that, I was quite happy not to have an explanation. Different type of story telling, ergo different rules apply.
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1: It's not what the woman says. It's the realisation that she's the same woman who you can see 73 yards away. The sheer wrongness of this breaks people's brains in a Lovecraft Eldritch Cosmic Horror sort of way.
2. It's a ghost story in the tradition of Dickens' The Signalman or James' Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You. Once I accepted that, I was quite happy not to have an explanation. Different type of story telling, ergo different rules apply.