It was in 1978, when holidaying in the Lake District that I heard a story about some hill walkers who’d spent a night at the Wythburn Inn, and who were later told they couldn’t possibly have slept there because the Inn was submerged by the creation of the Thirlmere Reservoir in 1894. There was a similar story about some British travellers in France who stayed a night at a quaintly old-fashioned hotel, and attempted to find it again on their return journey, only to discover it did not exist. Then there’s the incident recounted by tourists on a bus who were looking for somewhere to stay and noticed an attractive hotel. They got off the bus at the next stop, which was only a short distance away, then walked back to where they thought the hotel had been, but the area looked different,… and there was no hotel*. Then there were the two young women who set out one evening to walk a few miles to a dance at a local village, only to find themselves struggling to cross an eerie and unfamiliar landscape,…
These curious anecdotes are examples of a type of psychical phenomenon known as a time-slip. They seem to fall into two categories: one where the protagonists apparently blunder into a place that only existed in the past, or two, it’s a place that is contemporary and known to them, only things are altered in some way, so that they struggle to find their way around.
It’s difficult to come up with a rational explanation for this sort of thing, and if the protagonists are clearly shaken or puzzled by their experience, as it seems they are, then it’s churlish to dismiss them as liars. Also, where the experience is shared with others, blaming it on an hallucination seems also unrealistically simplistic.
Like many of the so-called psychical phenomena, it’s safer to err on the side of a rational explanation, if only for the sake of your own sanity, and I’d be following my own advice on this one if it weren’t for the fact that I once experienced a similar thing myself. I dismissed the incident at the time as a mental aberration, but the more I’ve thought about it, the less sure I am that the rational explanation I’ve clung to isn’t the greater delusion.
It was in the Lake District again, this time in 1981. I’d set out to drive from the town of Windermere, to Coniston. The obvious route is to take the Windermere Ferry, then drive to Hawkshead. Just after Hawkshead, the road continues northwards to Ambleside and to get to Coniston, you have to turn left at a fairly obvious junction, where you pick up a road that takes you over the fells and drops you down into Coniston. On this occasion, however, the junction wasn’t there.
I wasn’t that familiar with the layout of the Lakes in those days, having only been driving for a few years and had just begun to explore my local geography. I knew there was supposed to be a junction because the road-map told me so, and I guessed I’d merely driven past it by mistake. Maybe it was a small turning and easily missed? I turned around and came back at it from the opposite direction, being extra vigilant this time. There was still no junction, no signposts for Coniston,… nothing, just an unbroken line of hedgerows with meadows beyond. I turned around and tried again: still nothing!
I lost count of the number of times I drove to and from Hawkshead looking for that road. I remember eventually pulling over into a lay by and trying to shake my head clear of the mixture of frustration and confusion, telling myself to take a deep breath and pull myself together because the road was definitely there – I was just blind to it somehow. But it was no good. That day, the junction did not exist for me.
I did eventually get to Coniston, but only by taking a twenty mile detour.
I’ve since driven the road over to Coniston dozens of times, and whenever I see the junction near Hawkshead I’m convinced I could not have simply overlooked it because it’s such an obvious thing, well flagged by signposts in both directions – and you’d have to be really blind to miss it. What do you do after an incident like that? Well, you blame yourself for being stupid, because what other explanation could there be?
It’s perhaps not surprising that I’ve always been interested in this kind of tale. Judging by the anecdotes, such experiences can be relatively short-lived, lasting no more than a few minutes, or they can be full-blown interactions with an alternate reality lasting several hours, or even overnight in the case of travellers who have apparently found hospitality in mysterious, non-existent hotels.
If true, I don’t know what these incidents tell us about the nature of reality, but what they do suggest to me, as a writer of fiction, is that one need not be overly dramatic in portraying the way characters can slip between worlds in our fantasy stories. I tend to avoid fantastic machines or wormholes or pixie spells, because there’s a greater probability that it happens seamlessly and spontaneously. You just get in your car and drive along the familiar old route, except suddenly your turning isn’t there any more. You’ve crossed a divide into another universe. You’ve no idea how you did it, nor how you’re going to get back.
Eeek!
The fascination of these experiences for me lies in their psychological plausibility. The geography, the environment and the people you might meet all appear quite normal to our senses. The experience might leave us shaken, but there is never any doubt that the alternate reality exists in a very “real” sense to us; it’s tangible, we can interact with it, people speak to us, they serve us drinks, they do not look at us as if we’re strange,…
The most remarkable thing is that there’s a strongly held belief among physicists that there may indeed be alternate versions of the reality we know, an infinite number of them actually. Every time probability comes into play, reality splits. Toss a coin and you create two separate realities, one where the coin falls down heads, and another where it falls down tails. This is the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. However, although many physicists accept it at least as a theoretical possibility, they also tell us the theory rules out any chances of our being aware of those alternate realities, that the apparent line of our own conscious experience through time always plots a coherent course. We do not for example buy ourselves a red car one day, then wake up the following morning to find it is blue. There may indeed be a universe where the car is blue, but we can have no knowledge of it because it would be inconsistent with the version of reality we have already chosen.
Stories of time-slips would seem to challenge this view. They suggest that sometimes conscious awareness can indeed blunder into alternate realities, and then for a short time at least the logical consistency of our personal experience breaks down.
Or they could all just be tall tales.
* for a fuller account of this strange tale see the case of the vanished hotel recounted in: “The Personality of Man” by G.N.M. Tyrell 1947 (free download from the internet archive and a first class book on psychical research)
I have read about someone who was driving a blue car and had an encounter with a strange spacecraft. The UFO had pointed a beam of encredibly bright colored light at the car and they claim that the next day when they examined the vehicle, it was red. This really has not much to do with the fascinating material I just read, but I was just reminded of how maybe red cars don’t normally turn blue the next day, but maybe blue cars might sometimes turn red- when spaceships nuke them with their laser beams. I wonder if it was a nice shade of red. Hopefully the owner liked it.
I have had more than one such happening. I wanted to see Bob Dean and hear his UFO talk at MUFON Pa last October 16, 2012.
When we got on I276 from I76 it lead us to US1, which we stayed on for several miles until we got to Four Points Sheraton. We knew where we had to be to see Bob Dean at 3PM on Oct. 16, 2011. We got us something to eat then asked a guy on street for directions to go downtown Philly. He told us 3 or 4 miles to I95 and go north, which we did, found visitor parking, parked, saw Liberty Bell, then took one hour bus tour of Philly, all the important sites. We started back I95 going south and had couple of hours to spare to get back to Four Points Sheraton.
I will stop there and point out that one of the main features of US1 was four lanes going one direction and four lanes going other direction, outside lane of two lanes being for through traffic, so if wanted to go other way had to use a cross over to inside lanes, make left, and then go other way on other four lanes.
Now continuing on I95 we got to US1 exit coming back, and things were awful different, and no eight lanes anywhere. We turned around and went other way on US1 into NJ. The NJ scene was like from the 1950′s or 1960′s. We stopped on side of road for directions. A man specifically told us what to do to get back on I95.
We got back on and tried again, exited on US 1, still no eight lanes, and scene had changed again. We turned around, went other way on US1 and scene really changed a lot in NJ. The 1950′s or 1960′s scene was completely gone and instead a split highway where the man who had stood in front of his house giving us directions for a street left to downtown and a bridge right which we took being a bridge, one of those kinds that makes your tires squeel. We got across, Lois very upset, being on I295. Lois made me take a right turn and we were on a NJ 130 road. She made me stop for directions. A woman explained that I295 in NJ ran parallel to I95 in PA with Delaware River in between them. She specifically gave me certain directions how to get back using 130, interrupting me two times, this is how you do it to get back, do not get back on I295, stay on 130, go through a light, then another light, then past Rite Aid stay right and take immediate right to NJ Turnpike, pay $2.00 onto Pennsylvania Turnpike, which we did. I saw the I276 exit for US1. Lois so wanted me to try, had only few minutes left before the 3:00 hour but not about to take US1 again. We came on home.
Lois will verify the first NJ scene as from the mid-last century and fact that there was no Sheraton and no eight lanes setup on PA side in all this when we tried get back to see Bob Dean.
That man and that woman I will have to describe as “monitors” from peculiar way they acted. I am getting good at this “time travelling”. Although there is only one US1 up there there are several of them really–in different times. I made no wrong turns.
If you liked this happening, I can tell more. Let me know.
I have had more than one such happening.
On March 15, 2011 at 3:15 in afternoon I got into my car back of my new law office and started car to go pick up grandchild at 3:25 for her piano practice. I then turned off car and got out to go into my old law office where I and my late father, mother, brother, and others had our law practice {which building dates to pre-civil war era} next door to check for damage, having read in the local paper about Mercer County, KY residents upset with local factory doing some blasting late fall of 2010 causing damage.
I went in back door and up side stairs straight to my mother’s room, checking waiting area on way, no damage, then my old room, no new damage {some wall damage from two yeas ago} then to brother’s old room, no damage, finally the library and much new damage, ceiling having given way in one big place, wood exposed, but no sign of water. I then went downstairs, checked kitchen, another secretary’s {she late too} room, ok, then my father’s room {he practiced law 50 years}, ok, back to main secretary station, ok, and then entered the waiting room.
When I went into the waiting room, there was much wall damage to wall next to father’s room, plaster down on floor and under heating unit, wood exposed, very heavy wall damage, but no sign of water. I double-checked room above, the library, and room below, the waiting room.
I picked up my granddaughter and took her home, then went home and called a neighbor who does house repairs. He came to my home and we went back to town. We went in the old law office, repeated survey of rooms, same order, and when got to that last room, the waiting room there was no damage at all. I was dismayed.
Before my neighbor left when we got back to my home I told him I must have walked into the past, seeing wall damage as it existed circa 1969 when we had to clean it all up and redo all the walls, remembering what I saw half century later was as it was half century earlier, same old vetch wallpapered walls that came down exposing the wood behind, cracked plaster down on floor everywhere. For the life of me I do not remember seeing any old furniture {because we moved it all out when I moved over here to new office next door}.
I may have experienced a “vestibule”. The old building has that back door I entered from the outside, and up back door stairway, but also a small hallway from the front outside door to a small closet at the end on the left and one step beyond hallway on the right is the inside door to the waiting room {originally a living room} which hallway I used five times: coming down main front door stairway to front door where for first time went down the small hall with closet passing the waiting room and on to the secretary area, then to kitchen, then to other room;, then back to the secretary area and passing the waiting room for second time down that small hall with closet to the front door, then to my father’s room ; then back down that small hall with closet for third time to the secretary area and entering the waiting room; then fourth time down that small hall with closet to go back to front door and back up main stairway to double-check library ceiling damage; then back down main stairway to front door and down that small hall with closet for fifth time to double-check the waiting room wall damage.
“(A vestibule was a unique building design to the eastern United States. It is a small hallway, usually with a small closet, between the front door and the rest of the home. In this case, there was an outside door, the vestibule hallway and closet, and an inside door before entering the living room. )” Quote from Living With Spirits (True Ghost Story) By Christine B. http://christine-b.hubpages.com/hub/Living-With-Spirits
Or, maybe it was “residual energy”. I don’t know what it was, only know I checked and double-checked, saw that waiting room wall two times and it was damaged.“Residual energy hauntings provide a window to the past. When you’re psychically ‘seeing’ something that seems like a movie, that’s often the imprint of the event on the environment.
Or, it may actually be a window through time. Nobody’s sure, and it may relate to a parallel universe or a ripple in time.” http://hollowhill.com/residual-energy-imprint-hauntings
The factory blasting had nothing to do with my damage, only normal wear and tear, and paranormal glitches.
If you liked this happening, I can tell more. Let me know.
My thanks to Stacy and LeeDean here. By all means post your own time slip experiences for us to share. Fascinating stuff.
2012 Happenings
The Dummy Latch
I am a ventriloquist. On the head of my ventriloquist dummy, at the bottom of its control post, is a latch to connect the head to the body. Last evening January 2, 2012 called New Year’s Day on a Monday at 5:00 p.m. I started to install the head onto the body. Several times I tried to connect the spring latch to a steel rod that runs laterally so that the dummy can move its head and at same time move around its body, arms and feet motion. I could not connect the hook to the rod. I peered into the coat slit at back of the dummy and something was not right. It looked like the hook was in a reverse position which I do not like because easier to install with hook end facing forward. I took the head back off, turned it upside down, and sure enough the spring hook was in wrong position.
There was no way that the other end spring loop had turned because attached to a small steeple into bottom of control post. I had started to disconnect the top spring end and reinsert opposite way, but had difficulty, gave up, and looked again. To my surprise the hook problem solved itself, back in the correct position. Again I say I did not disconnect and reinsert, or did I in a moment of time I did not notice or remember. The hand is quicker than the eye, so I can’t believe my own eyes. This is my third extraordinary happening since 2011 began. We are supposed to be in 2012 now. I am not so sure.
The Radio
On Saturday night January 28, 2012, lying in bed telling a ghost story to Aliona, a granddaughter, we tried to get a plug-in radio in my room to turn on to play soft music. The clock on the radio was working but the radio was not. We tried every button and dial, hit it with our fists even banged it on the floor. It came on for a second with static, then we pulled the plug on it and clock went off too. I continued the ghost story when the radio came on all by itself with static then quit again. Ali said that Hadden, who got killed in Viet Nam was playing a trick on us. She said that she knew him, and that he liked to play tricks, and said she saw him in the chair looking toward the closet. She said he had red hair, was fair skinned and did not have many freckles. I said she was right.
I put some stories on the disappearing road… first on March 7, 2012 and last on March 8, 2012. I had no problem with the first but did with the last. These stories were written within 24-48 hours of their occurrence, but I added a beginning and ending paragraph to the first one on the missed ufo conference and an ending paragraph to the second one on the disappearing wall damage, plus couple of links. When I added the beginning paragraph to the first piece I had referred to a happening on October 16, 2011, and when I added the links to the second piece I brought up a new window, downloaded the document I wanted to link from, copied the link and pasted it into the piece. I then downloaded the other document and copied it, but when I tried to paste it I noticed that my first link had disappeared. This repeated about three times, finally stuck, and I posted the comment, but that is when I noticed that the date in the first piece had somehow changed from October 16, 2011 to October 16, 2012, how I do not know.
{correction}
I put some stories on the disappearing road… first on March 7, 2012 and last on March 8, 2012. I had no problem with the last but did with the first. These stories were written within 24-48 hours of their occurrence, but I added a beginning and ending paragraph to the first one on the missed ufo conference and an ending paragraph to the second one on the disappearing wall damage, plus couple of links. When I added the beginning paragraph to the first piece I had referred to a happening on October 16, 2011, and when I added the links to the second piece I brought up a new window, downloaded the document I wanted to link from, copied the link and pasted it into the piece. I then downloaded the other document and copied it, but when I tried to paste it I noticed that my first link had disappeared. This repeated about three times, finally stuck, and I posted the comment, but that is when I noticed that the date in the first piece had somehow changed from October 16, 2011 to October 16, 2012, how I do not know.