Scenes from the Past: Carl Jung’s Incredible Time Slip

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. An early supporter of the founding father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, Jung shared Freud’s interest in the unconscious, and would go on to revolutionise the psychiatric perspective of man’s placement within time and the world.1

One of his most famous theories is the theory of synchronicity. This concept argues for the existence of “meaningful coincidences” – that events are somehow “meaningful” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be related. It is said that it was because of Jung’s “lifelong engagement with the paranormal” that he was able to make this observation. 2

Jung visits Ravenna’s Baptistery of Neon

In the early 1930s, Jung and a female “acquaintance” visited the ancient town of Ravenna in Italy, once the capital of the Western Roman Empire before it collapsed in 476. In his posthumously published semi-autobiographical book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung describes having fallen “into a strange mood in the tomb of Galla Placidia”. Born in the 4th century AD, Placidia was the daughter of a Roman emperor and a major force in Roman politics for most of her life. This was not Jung’s first connection with the Roman princess: two decades earlier, in 1913, he had first visited her tomb, and had first felt the “same feeling”.

Writing about his second visit, Jung recalls that he and the lady he was with went “directly from the tomb”, where he had felt the strange sensation, to the Baptistery of Neon, a religious building which is the most ancient monument remaining in the city of Ravenna. It was upon entering the building that Jung described being “struck” by a “mild blue light that filled the room”. Yet, what “amazed” him the most about the building were “four great mosaic frescoes of incredible beauty”. According to Jung, the mosaics stood in place of the windows which he recalled having seen on his first visit to Ravenna in 1913.

Beautiful mosaics

In his autobiography, Jung describes the mosaics in great detail.

“The mosaic on the south side represented the baptism in the Jordan. The second picture, on the north, was of the passage of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea. The third, on the east, soon faded from my memory. […] The fourth mosaic, on the west side of the baptistery, was the most impressive of all. We looked at this one last. It represented Christ holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking beneath the waves. We stopped in front of this mosaic for at least 20 minutes and discussed the original ritual of baptism, especially the curious archaic conception of it as an initiation connected with real peril of death. […] I retained the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter sinking, and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the blue of the sea, the individual chips of the mosaic, the inscribed scrolls proceeding from the mouths of Peter and Christ, which I attempted to decipher.”

The “impressive” religious artwork left such an impression that, even many years later, he could “see every detail before my [his] eyes”. So captivated by their beauty, he decided he would like to purchase photographs of the four mosaics. After a quick search, he could not find any. As he was pressed for time, he decided that he would postpone the purchase until later, and “order the pictures from Zurich”. When back home, Jung asked an acquaintance – who was due to visit Ravenna – to obtain some photos for him. However, when he returned, his acquaintance explained that he had been unable to do so, for not only were the pictures nonexistent, but the very mosaics Jung had described seeing did not exist either.

Jung was shocked. He remembered seeing the mosaics, with the memory of the artwork still “vivid” in his mind at the time of writing. Jung described his experience in Ravenna as being “among the most curious events” in his life.

Did Jung have an unconscious connection with Galla Placidia?

In his book, Jung went on to explain the possible cause of his vision. As he had felt a strong connection to Galla Placidia’s tomb since his first visit, he suggested that his unconscious mind integrated with Placidia’s, and that in doing so his conscious mind became completely immersed in her history. He proposed that, in that moment of immersion, the “actual walls of the baptistery […] were covered over by a vision of some altogether different sight”.

Curiously, the lady whom Jung was with during the visit to Ravenna also remembered seeing the mosaics. Thus, far from simply being a projection of personal unconsciousness, as Jung suggested, the experience was a shared one. Jung described how his female companion “long refused to believe that what she had ‘seen with her own eyes’ had not existed”.3

What was the blue light that the pair experienced upon entering the baptistery? Did Jung’s professed connection to Galla Placidia allow him and his companion to step back in time, so as to be momentarily immersed in the Roman princess’ world?

Source: https://www.paranormalscholar.com/scenes-from-the-past-carl-jungs-incredible-time-slip/

As I have mentioned before, the “time-slip”--suddenly finding yourself in a much earlier era--is my favorite category of Fortean phenomena. Unfortunately, the ephemeral nature of these alleged experiences usually makes it virtually impossible to confirm or refute the validity of these claims. Did someone really--through a way we can’t come close to understanding--“visit” a much different time and place? Or is it that our collective legs are being pulled? That is usually up to the reader to decide. This uncertainty is particularly frustrating with the following tale, which, if true, would amount to one of the most astonishing adventures on record.

In October 1979, two couples, Len and Cynthia Gisby and Geoff and Pauline Simpson, left their homes in Dover, England for an end-of-summer road trip. They would ferry across the Channel and spend two weeks driving through the countryside of France and northern Spain.

The excursion progressed in a pleasantly uneventful fashion. On the night of October 3, the travelers were on the freeway north of Montelimar, France, looking for a place to spend the night. Before long, they came across a motel that looked promising. Unfortunately, when the foursome went inside, the staffer they encountered in the lobby--a man in an unusual plum-colored uniform--informed them that there were no vacancies. However, he said that if they took a certain road off the freeway, they would find a small hotel. He was sure that this establishment would have rooms.

The party had no trouble finding the road. They were interested to see that it was lined with old buildings, plastered with posters advertising a curiously vintage-looking circus. The road itself also seemed from another era; cobbled and narrow, clearly not built for the automobile. After a short time, they came across the only building they had seen on this road which showed signs of life. It was brightly lit, with some men standing outside. However, after inquiring inside, they learned this was not a hotel, but an inn. So on they went. They eventually found two other buildings; one a police station and the other sporting a large sign reading “Hotel.” It was, for our modern era, an unusual-looking hotel; only two stories, and with a decidedly old-fashioned look. But the place looked decent, and the two couples were too tired to be fussy. They were relieved when, as the motel employee had promised, they were able to get rooms.

As none of the four travelers spoke French, and the manager spoke no English, communication was necessarily limited, but the foursome made themselves understood enough to be shown to their lodgings. They noticed that the inside of the hotel was even more anachronistic than the outside. Everything was made of old-looking, heavy wood. The dining room tables had no tablecloths. They did not see any telephones, elevators, or anything else to remind them that this was the year 1979.

Their rooms were in keeping with the rest of the hotel. Large heavy beds with bolsters instead of pillows. The doors had only wooden catches for locks. There were just wooden shutters over the windows, not glass. The bathroom shared by the foursome had vintage plumbing. Still, the rooms seemed clean and comfortable, and the outdated feel of the place gave it a quaint charm.

It was certainly a novel experience.

After unpacking, they went to the dining room, where they were served a simple but satisfying meal of eggs, steak and potatoes, washed down with lager. After such a meal, the four had no problem settling down in their rooms for a long, untroubled sleep.

The next morning, the travelers returned to the dining room, where they had a breakfast of bread, jam, and thick, strong coffee that they found virtually undrinkable. As they ate, they noticed that the other guests looked as oddly retro as the hotel itself. Opposite them was a woman wearing a silk evening gown and carrying a small dog under her arm. Two gendarmes came in wearing curious uniforms unlike any other they had seen in France.

The travelers, enchanted by the strangeness of it all, decided they needed a memento of their visit. Geoff photographed Pauline standing by the windows, while Len took a picture of Cynthia inside the hotel. He took an additional photo of the hotel itself.

After their picture-taking, Len and Geoff tried to ask the two gendarmes how to take the freeway to the Spanish border, but the policemen--clearly puzzled by the Englishmen’s terminology--just gave classic Gallic shrugs. Finally, the Frenchmen comprehended that the visitors wished to go to Spain, and told them to use the old Avignon road. Len and Geoff knew enough of the local area to think this was an unnecessarily roundabout way of getting to their destination. They decided to retrace the way they had come to the hotel in order to return to the Montelimar freeway.

When the two couples were ready to leave, Len went to the manager to pay their bill. He was flabbergasted to see that he was being charged only 19 francs (about $3 in 1979 dollars.) Certain that the manager did not understand, Len endeavored to communicate to him that he was asking for the bill for all four of them. Four people who had eaten meals there. In response, the manager just continued to nod. Len showed the bill to the two gendarmes, seeking confirmation. They just smiled. Yes, yes, that was the correct amount.

The cobbled little road was just as deserted of other traffic as it had been the previous night. They had no trouble finding their freeway, and went on to spend a very pleasant two weeks roaming around Spain.

On their way back across France, our tourists decided to make another stop at the same hotel. You certainly couldn’t beat the prices. They found the turnoff, and drove down the cobbled road with the buildings promoting the same circus. It was definitely the right road.

Except...the hotel was gone. Puzzled, the travelers went to the motel by the freeway to ask for directions. The employee they questioned had never heard of any such hotel. And they had never had anyone working there who wore a plum-colored uniform.

This was all getting way too weird. The two couples drove along the cobbled road several times, desperately trying to find the hotel. But it was as if it had evaporated, leaving no trace behind. One of the four suggested that it had been demolished. Certainly, at the rates they charged, the establishment couldn’t stay in business for long. But Geoff pointed out that it was impossible for the building to vanish completely in a mere two weeks.

The shaken and confused couples finally gave up, and found lodging at a hotel in Lyon. Which cost them a very modern 247 francs.

The four travelers were puzzled by what had happened, but they assumed there was a rational explanation. At least, that was what they assumed until the photographs they had taken on their vacation were developed. The three snapshots of the hotel were in the middle of the rolls of film used by Geoff and Len. But none of those images came back from the developers, even though each roll of film had its proper amount of photographs. The negatives of those hotel shots had not been defective. They had just disappeared as thoroughly as the hotel itself.

Now more confused than ever, the Gisbys and the Simpsons resolved to tell no one of their adventure outside of family and close friends. A friend of Len’s who was an amateur fashion historian, pointed out to him that the odd uniforms the gendarmes had worn matched the description of those used by the French police--in the very early 1900s. Another confidante suggested that they had experienced a “time-slip,” and, without knowing it, spent the night at a hotel that had not existed for decades. While the Gisbys thought there might be something to that theory, the Simpsons opted to just put the whole strange affair behind them.

Geoff and Pauline did not get their wish. Word of their story reached a reporter at their local newspaper. In 1982, she published a story about their alleged brush with The Weird, and before the two couples knew it, they were famous. From that day to this, paranormal researchers have scrutinized the case--it is now among the most well-known “time-slip” stories--but it is, of course, impossible to come to any definitive conclusions. In 1985, Geoff Simpson told paranormal investigator Jenny Randles (who subsequently wrote an article about the mystery for “Fate” magazine,) “You tell us what the answer is. We only know what happened.”

So. Either the Simpsons and the Gisbys had the vacation that could truly be called “out of this world,” or these two middle-aged, seemingly sane couples pulled off an epic hoax. It’s impossible to say for sure which was the case.

Either way, it’s a heck of a good story.

Source: https://strangeco.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-phantom-hotel-extraordinary-time.html

Moberly and Jourdain

The account of the incident, first published in 1911 as An Adventure, carried the names Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont.1 These were later revealed to be pseudonyms for, respectively, Charlotte Anne Elizabeth Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Frances Jourdain (1863–1924). Both were respected and accomplished English academics. Moberly’s father had been headmaster of Winchester College and Bishop of Salisbury; in 1886, she became the first principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, whose students were young women. Jourdain’s father was the vicar of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, in England; hired as Moberly’s deputy, she eventually succeeded her as Principal in 1915 and held the position until her death in 1924.

Both women were held by associates to have special powers of perception.2 They reported other anomalous experiences, claiming to have together seen a ghostly French army after battle near the French fort of Malmaison in 1912;3 in 1913, Moberly claimed to have seen an apparition of the Roman emperor Constantine in the Louvre.4

The Experiences

The pair spent visited Paris as tourists in the summer of 1901, as a means to become better acquainted and to help Moberly decide whether to hire Jourdain as her deputy. According to their account, on 10 August 1901 they visited the Palace of Versailles. Being somewhat disappointed with the building, they decided to walk in the grounds to the Petite Trianon, a chateau in the style of a small country house that had been built by Louis XV for the Marquise de Pompadour and was occupied by Queen Marie Antoinette after the accession of her husband Louis XVI.

Some three months after the experience the women wrote independent accounts.5 Both stated that they passed the Grand Trianon, a larger chateau, at which point their accounts diverge in some details. According to Moberly, they passed to the left of the Grand Trianon. Instead of following a broad green drive that she later learned would have led them straight to the Petit Trianon, they passed by it and went up a lane. Moberly then saw a woman shaking a white cloth out of the window of a building, and recalled being surprised that her companion (whose French was better than hers) did not take the opportunity to ask directions.

However, Jourdain reportedly did not see this woman. For her part, she described passing some farm buildings where agricultural implements were lying about, including an old-fashioned plough. After passing to the right of some other buildings the pair were faced with a choice of three paths, and it was now that Jourdain first felt they had lost their way. They chose the central path where both women saw two men – whom they took to be gardeners despite their dignified attire (‘long greyish-green coats with small three-cornered hats’), as they also saw a wheelbarrow and a spade – and asked for directions to the Petite Trianon. The men told them to continue straight on. Jourdain felt their tone to be oddly ‘casual and mechanical’.

Jourdain then noticed a woman and a girl of thirteen or fourteen standing by the doorway of a solidly-built cottage. They were unusually dressed, with kerchiefs tucked under their bodices. The woman seemed to be about to pass a jug to the girl.

The visitors then entered a wood, where both saw a circular garden kiosk with a man sitting near it. Jourdain now spoke of ‘a feeling of depression and loneliness’ as if she were walking in her sleep. Moberly too said she was struck by an ‘extraordinary depression’.

The place was so shut in that we could not see beyond it. Everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees behind the building seemed to have become flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees. It was all intensely still.

The cloaked man looked at Moberly, who found his dark and rough-skinned face to be ‘most repulsive – its expression odious’. Jourdain described his skin as marked by small-pox and his expression ‘very evil’.

A handsome young man suddenly appeared, running toward the ladies; he was wearing a cloak, a Spanish-style large-brimmed hat, and buckled shoes. ‘Mesdames, il ne faut pas passer par là!’ (or ‘par ici’ as Jourdain recalled it) he said animatedly, among many other words they could not understand because of his unfamiliar accent. Both were struck by the oddness of his smile, but they followed his direction.

Walking further through the woods they came to the Petit Trianon. A lady sat on its terrace holding a paper at arm’s length as if she were sketching, then looked at the visitors. Moberly described her as pretty but not young, fair-haired, and wearing a white hat, a summer dress with a handkerchief-like arrangement on her shoulders overtop of her bodice, a pale green fichu and a full short skirt, ‘old-fashioned and rather unusual’.

Jourdain did not see this lady at all, though she wrote, ‘As we approached the terrace, I remember drawing my skirt away with a feeling as though someone were near and I had to make room, and then wondering why I did’.

Heading toward the house they were accosted by a young man (according to Moberly) or boy (according to Jourdain) coming out of what seemed to be an adjoining house. He offered to show them the way into the house, and this brought them back almost to where they had started. In the front entrance hall, things returned to normal as they were kept waiting so as not to interrupt the arrival of a wedding party, and they entered a carriage to leave.

The two women did not at first talk to each other about what had happened. Then a week later, Moberly asked Jourdain whether she felt the Petit Trianon was haunted, and was answered with an immediate ‘Yes’. They did not converse more until three months later when Moberly mentioned the sketching lady; both were struck by the fact that one of them had seen her clearly and the other not at all.

Jourdain realized that 10 August was the anniversary of the last day of the royal family’s freedom.6 A French friend said that she had heard that annually, on a certain day in August, Marie Antoinette was still seen sitting outside the Petit Trianon, and the people around her would also be seen engaged in their usual activities.

Moberly wrote:

We wondered whether we had inadvertently entered within an act of the Queen’s memory when alive, and whether this explained our curious sensation of being shut in and oppressed. What more likely, we thought, than that during those hours in the Hall of the Assembly, or in the Conciergerie, she had gone back in such vivid memory to other Augusts spent at Trianon that some impress of it was imparted to the place?

Further Experiences

Jourdain made a second visit to the Petit Trianon on 2 January 1902. All seemed normal until she crossed a bridge heading to a building called the Hameau de la Reine. ‘It was as if I had crossed a line and was suddenly in a circle of influence’, she wrote. A cart was being filled with sticks by two labourers in tunics and capes with hoods of bright terracotta red and deep blue respectively. They vanished when she looked away for an instant, and she could find no trace of their work. She saw a ghostly man, then felt – without seeing anyone – as if she were in a crowd of people passing her, saying words she could faintly hear.

She then heard music as if from a distant band. ‘Both music and voices were diminished, as in a phonograph, unnaturally. The pitch of the band was lower than usual’, she wrote. A very tall and muscular gardener answered her request for direction, warning that it was impossible to find one’s own way in the park of Versailles unless one was so used to it that ‘personne ne pourrait vous tromper’ (no one can fool you). Once she had returned to the Palace she checked whether a band had been scheduled to play that day, and was informed that none had. Jourdain afterwards wrote in musical notation about twelve bars of melody she remembered.

Both women, on returning for subsequent visits, found the grounds so much apparently changed from their first visit – forest areas opened up, the ‘kiosk’ and a bridge missing, distances apparently shorter, and changes to the house – that they could not find the paths they had taken.

In 1908, Jourdain made another of many visits to the Petit Trianon, of which all but the two in 1901 and in 1902 had been uneventful. While taking a shortcut past the guards’ lodgings, she noticed two women sitting, arguing loudly. Their voices suddenly faded and, she wrote:

Suddenly and utterly unexpectedly I knew that some indefinable change had taken place. I felt as though I were being taken up into another condition of things … I turned at once to look back, and saw the gates near which they were sitting melting away, and the background of trees again becoming visible through them, as on our original visit, but I noticed that the side pillars were standing steady (These pillars were old and probably had not been renewed since their original erection.) The whole scene – sky, trees and buildings – gave a little shiver, like the movement of a curtain or of scenery at a theatre. At the same time the old difficulty of walking on and of making any way reproduced itself, together with the feeling of depression described in 1901 and 1902.

She determinedly pressed ahead and things seemed to return to normal.

Percipients’ Research

From books on the Revolution and Versailles, Moberly and Jourdain identified the the ‘evil-looking’ man they had encountered as the Comte de Vaudriuel, an ambitious courtier whom Marie Antoinette despised, and who was a mixed-race Creole with smallpox-marked skin. A certain portrait of the queen struck Moberly as looking precisely like the sketching lady.7

Attending a play by the Comédie Française, which was descended from the royal private theatre and preserved its costume traditions, Jourdain noticed that the dress of some of the extras was almost identical to that worn by the garden officials she and Moberly had met on the first visit.

Between 1904 and 1910, Moberly and Jourdain gathered evidence they interpreted to mean that the following additional items, costumes and people they had seen dated from the time of the Revolution:

• the plough

• the gardeners’ attire

• the cottage where a woman seemed to be handing a jug to a girl, and their possible identities

• the kiosk

• the gentlemen’s dress of cloak and wide-brimmed hat

• the running man, his buckled shoes, and a possible identity

• a bridge the percipients crossed that no longer existed

• the attire of the sketching lady, whom they felt was Marie Antoinette

• an old-fashioned round-about device called the Jeu de Bague

• the second young man who directed them, coming through a door that currently was never opened, and a possible identity

• the two labourers gathering sticks using a cart, and their attire

• the thick wood in which Jourdain had felt as if she were in a crowd

• the style of the music Jourdain heard

• the dress of the tall, muscular gardener, and a possible identity

• several other items

Somewhat to their discredit, Moberly and Jourdain wrote up a proposed meditation sequence of Marie Antoinette in which the queen imagines seeing two female strangers near the Petit Trianon. In the words of one sceptic, this chapter moves their book ‘from the realm of reporting into that of fantasy fiction’.8

Moberly and Jourdain stated no firm conclusions about the nature or cause of their experiences, but clearly implied that they entered apparitional scenes dating back to the Revolution, possibly due to impression left on the terrain.

Commentary and Criticism

First published in 1911 as An Adventure, the account created a public sensation and went through five editions including two in French over the next four decades, to be followed by even newer ones more recently.9 It provoked a strong sceptical reaction that continues to this day.

Psychical Researchers

A review in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (unsigned but known to have been written by Eleanor Sidgwick),10 attributed the experience to memory error and insisted that ‘a good deal of evidence would be required before a phenomenon of this kind could be accepted as a fact.’11 Four decades later, William Salter, a senior member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was troubled that the pair had written no immediate account of the experiences and their two original accounts, written some months after the first event, were destroyed after having been copied for publication. He also noted that successive editions seemed to have beeen embellished and suspected that subsequent research had informed some of the putative memories. ‘The authors recorded, investigated, and published their experience in such a way as to leave the whole affair in an impenetrable fog of uncertainty’, he commented.12

A similar critique was made after a careful analysis in 1988 by Michael Coleman, again for the SPR.13 Later commentators thought that some supernormal event might have occurred, but not necessarily as interpreted by Moberly and Jourdain. In papers published between 1953 and 1962, psychical researcher GW Lambert argued that Moberly and Jourdain, both in trance, did perceive in a paranormal way scenes from the past – but misplaced them in time in their interpretation. He laid out a detailed argument for the scenes originating around 1774 rather than 1789, and for some of the scenery having existed only in the imagination of a gardener of the time, Antoine Richard.14 Psychical researcher GNM Tyrrell suggested that this might have been a case of telepathy rather than of retrocognition, the possible agent being one or more of people with knowledge of the events of 1789.15

Other Critiques

Moberly and Jourdain were subjected to personal attacks, notably in a 1957 book by Lucille Iremonger, a Jamaican who knew of them by reputation, having attended St Hugh’s (the Oxford women’s college of which they both served as principal) as an undergraduate. Iremonger focused on a dispute that arose over Jourdain’s attempt to dismiss a colleague she viewed as insubordinate, which would have led to her forced resignation had she not first died of a heart attack. Iremonger also intimated that both women had pursued lesbian relationships with their students, and further suggested that the pair had themselves been romantically entangled, which she argued would have made them susceptible to a shared delusion.16

In his biography of the French poet Robert de Montesquiou, Philippe Jullian pointed out that he lived near Versailles and liked to throw parties in the grounds, for which his friends dressed in period costumes and created ‘tableaux vivants’, which could have been mistaken for apparitions.17 These and other critiques are routinely referenced in general critiques by sceptics of paranormal claims.18

In 2021, Mark Lamont published a comprehensively-researched and illustrated book-length investigation of the case.19 In it, he carefully compares the first and second versions of the two percipients’ separately-written accounts. He then examines each vista, object, building and apparent person they perceived, in the context of other people’s reported experiences at Versailles (pointing out that many people have reported similar sightings there) and elsewhere, invoking parapsychological studies of apparitions, hauntings, apports, crisis impressions and retrocognition.

Lamont has little confidence in Jullian’s theory regarding Montesquiou. He is inclined to agree with Lambert that the evidence seems to point to an earlier period, coinciding with King Louis XV’s reign of the Trianon, and also that Antoine Richard plays a significant role regarding the origin, but argues that more solid evidence would be needed to to reinforce the reliability of such a theory. Against Sidgwick, he argues that four points in the women’s very first accounts may point to some type of paranormal intervention, and that although the case remains an enigma, the paranormal claims associated with the 1901 incident cannot be completely discredited.20

Archival Collection

Moberly and Jourdain’s relevant papers were given to Oxford University by Moberly in 1928 and are held in the Bodleian Library. They include the pair’s accounts of their visits to Versailles, their collected maps, engravings and photos, the second and third editions of An Adventure, the original correspondence with the SPR for 1911–1913, their diaries for around 1901, and other items.21

Video

A television film based on the events was produced in 1981 by Anglia Television, starring Dame Wendy Hiller and Hannah Gordon, written and produced by Ian Curteis and directed by John Bruce. It can be seen on Vimeo here.22

KM Wehrstein

Literature

Archives Hub (n.d.). Papers of C. Anne E. Moberly and Eleanor F. Jourdain. [Web page.]

Coleman, M. (1988). The Ghosts of the Trianon: The Complete ‘An Adventure’. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press.

Dunning, Brian (7 February 2012). Skeptoid #296: The Versailles Time Slip. [Weblog.]

Goodman, D. & Kaiser, T.E. (2003). Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. London: Routledge.

IMDb (n.d.). Miss Morison’s Ghosts. [Web page.]

Iremonger, Lucille (1975). The Ghosts of Versailles: Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain and their Adventure. London: White Lion.

Jullian, Philippe (1967). Robert de Montesquiou, a Fin-de-Siecle Prince. London: Seker & Warburg.

Lambert, G.W. (1953). Antoine Richard’s garden: A postscript to An Adventure. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 37, 117-54.

Lambert, G.W. (1955–1956). Antoine Richard’s garden: A postscript to An Adventure. Supplemental Note. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 38, 12-18.

Lambert, G.W. (1962). Richard’s garden revisited. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 41/712, 279-92.

Lamont, M. (2021). The Mysterious Paths of Versailles: An Investigation of a Psychical Journey Back in Time. Kindle Edition.

Moberly, C.A.E. & Jourdain, E. An Adventure. Kindle Edition. [First published under the names Elizabeth Morison & Frances Lamont in 1911, London: MacMillan. First Edition archived on Digital Repository of Hong Kong University. Second edition archived on the Internet Archive.]

Salter, W.H. (1949-1950). ‘An Adventure’: A note on the evidence. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 35, 178-87.

Society for Psychical Research (1911). An Adventure (Macmillan & Co., St. Martin’s Street, London, 1911). [Review.] Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 25 Supplemental, 353-60.

Tyrrell, G.N.M. (1943). Apparitions. Myers Memorial Lecture, SPR Edition.

Zusne, L., & Warren, H. (2014). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Abingdon, UK: Psychology Press.

Source: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/versailles-%E2%80%98time-slip%E2%80%99

Did Three British Cadets Travel Back in Time in 1957?

In the autumn of 1957, three young  British Royal Navy cadets – William Laing, Michael Crowley and Ray Baker – were performing a routine map-reading exercise. The idea of the exercise was simple: they were supposed to walk across a few miles of countryside and then report what they had seen to their superiors.

As they traversed across rural Suffolk in England, they saw the picturesque village of Kersey in the distance, its church’s bells ringing out for a religious service. Yet, as the three descend into the village, a miasma of stillness and quiet engulfed them. There were no church bells ringing. In fact, there were hardly any signs of life at all. The cadets reported that there were no people, only some ducks splashing noiselessly in a nearby stream. Not only that, they claimed that trees in the village were all a verdant green, as though it were spring or summer, despite it being autumn. They afterwards described the village as being “almost medieval in appearance”. There were no wires overhanging the streets, and not a car in sight. As this was 1957, there should have been some. They claimed that the houses all looked to be handbuilt timber-framed, with the most modern thing about them being their glass windows.

Strangest of all, however, was that the cadets could no longer see the church’s tower – which they had definitely seen from a distance and is a hallmark of the village of Kersey to this day. Whilst wandering the eerily quiet streets of Kersey, the cadets supposedly peered in through the windows of what they assumed to be a butcher’s shop. They could see two to three skinned oxen carcasses hanging inside. They were green and rotting. This led the cadets to assume that the proprietors must have vacated the building some time before. The cadets felt uneasy – the unnatural stillness of the village was smothering, and so they hurried to leave. 

Once they were outside the village it was as though everything returned to normal. William Laing later explained how, “suddenly we could hear the bells once more and saw the smoke rising from chimneys, none of the chimneys was smoking when we were in the village.”

Gripped by what he described as a “weird feeling”, the three of them “ran for a few hundred yards” in an attempt to shake it off. 1

Research reveals similarities between the cadets’ visions and historical record

This experience in Kersey left such a profound effect that, decades later, in 1990, Laing flew to England from his home in Australia, to meet with Andrew Mackenzie, a psychical researcher, so as to investigate the matter further. Mackenzie was extremely interested in Laing’s testimony, and together they returned to the village of Kersey to retrace the events.

Mackenzie’s research revealed that the building that the three cadets had seen as a butcher’s shop had not been involved in that trade in 1957. However, records exist to show that the building was registered as a butcher’s shop from 1790 until 1905, at which point it became a general store. And, whilst the documentation is lacking, Mackenzie has stated that there is evidence to suggest that the building was associated with the butcher’s trade for a much longer time, perhaps even to the time of its initial construction in 1350.

How could the cadets have possibly known this information? It could be argued that this revelation helps support the possibility that Laing, Crowley and Baker experienced a time slip and stepped back in time that day in Kersey.

In the years since the peculiar incident, many have criticised the three for having had an overactive imagination. Others have scoffed that the boys simply misinterpreted the genuinely old appearance of the village for something otherworldly. After all, as it was a Sunday morning when they came across the village, local residents may have still been at home or at church, rather than outside on the street. Yet, how they saw a butcher’s shop in a building that had not been a butcher’s in over 50 years remains a mystery.

The enigma of the missing church tower

Another puzzle, unable to be resolved by simple dismissal of the case, is why the cadets could not see the tower of the church from within the village. The oldest parts of St. Mary’s church in Kersey date to the twelfth century,  with the tower having been finished in 1481. 2Now a protected historical building, the church would have most certainly been visible – from both outside and inside the village – in 1957.

Mackenzie believes that the enigma of the church’s tower is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the cadets having either visited or had an intense vision of a past time.

As the construction of the tower of the church was halted around the middle of the fourteenth century, after half the population was obliterated by the Black Death, Mackenzie has stated that this provides a clue as to when in time the young men may have visited. Furthermore, he has speculated that the glass windows they reported seeing in the houses would have been indicative of a degree of opulence in the town. He has claimed that it was around the 1420s that Kersey had become wealthy from the wool trade, and – since the church’s tower was not complete then – has assigned this decade as one of the most likely time periods that the cadets visited.For all of this, many have criticised both the original event and Mackenzie’s explanations.

Sceptics have argued that it would be improbable for a village of Kersey’s size to have had a butcher’s shop in the 15th century, as meat was a luxury product that was primarily dealt with in towns, or at visiting weekly markets. This rebuke, however, can be said to be just as speculative as Mackenzie’s original remarks, and does nothing to address the cadets’ reported sense of unease at being in a place which seemed far removed from expected reality. Ultimately, the Kersey case is a mystery which endures, with no explanation yet able to answer definitively what happened that day in 1957. 3

Source: http://www.paranormalscholar.com/the-kersey-time-slip-did-three-british-cadets-travel-back-in-time-in-1957/

On this particular afternoon, they decided to walk to the nearby church of Bradfield St George. Here is their account as told by Ruth Wynne:

​

One dull, damp afternoon, I think in October ’26, we walked off through the fields to look at the church of the neighbouring village, Bradfield St. George. In order to reach the church, which we could see plainly ahead of us to the right, we had to pass through a farm-yard, whence we came out on to a road. We had never previously taken this particular walk, nor did we know anything about the topography of the hamlet of Bradfield St. George.

​Exactly opposite us on the further side of the road and flanking it, we saw a high wall of greenish-yellow bricks. The road ran past us for a few yards, then curved away from us to the left. We walked along the road, following the brick wall round the bend, where we came upon tall, wrought iron gates set in the wall. I think the gates were shut, or one side may have been open. The wall continued on from the gates and disappeared around the curve of the road.

Behind the wall and towering above it was a cluster of tall trees. From the gates, a drive led away among these trees to what was evidently a large house. We could just see a corner of the roof above a stucco front in which I remember noticing some windows of Georgian design. The rest of the house was hidden by trees.

We stood by the gates for a moment, speculating as to who lived in this large house, and I was rather surprised that I had not already heard of the owner amongst the many people who called on my mother since our arrival in the district. This house was one of the nearest large residences to our own, and it seemed odd that the occupants had not called. However, we then turned off the road along a footpath leading away to the right to the church which was perhaps under a hundred yards off. On leaving the church, we cut down through the churchyard into the fields and home, without returning to the road or the farmyard. It was then drizzling rain. On arriving home we discussed the big house and its possible occupants with my parents, and then thought no more of it. From this description it's not clear as to which direction they have taken and Carl speculates  whether it is in the location of Colesville Grove or the vicinity of Bradfield St. George.  Ruth Wynne goes on to say:

My pupil and I did not take the same walk again until the following spring. It was, as far as I can remember, a dull afternoon with good visibility in February or March. We walked up through the farm-yard as before, and out on to the road, where, suddenly, we both stopped dead of one accord and gasped. ‘Where’s the wall?’ We queried simultaneously. It was not there. The road was flanked by nothing but a ditch, and beyond the ditch lay a wilderness of tumbled earth, weeds, mounds all overgrown with the trees we had seen on our first visit.

We followed the road round the bend, but there were no gates, no drive, no corner of a house to be seen. We were both very puzzled. At first, we thought our house and wall had been pulled down since our last visit. But closer inspection showed a pond and other small pools amongst the mounds where the house had been visible. It was obvious that they had been there a long time.

You may think that they had just got lost and had the wrong location, but these women were only walking a distance of about a mile and a half as the crow flies and were doing it on a regular basis. It is unlikely that they were not familiar with their neighbourhood.

The pub was called The Vulcan or The Falcon. "I don't remember which, because it did not seem significant at the time," said Laurie. "I picked up my friend at Newtown and we set out to have a drink. As we were driving towards Shalfleet, I noticed a lane on our left and asked my companion if he had ever been down it.

"I thought later it was odd that my friend did not recognise the turning, because he had lived in the area for many years. Some way down the lane we saw a pub on the right and pulled onto the gravelled area at the front. The pub signboard was swinging and creaking in the wind, way up high over the door. We went in through a small porch and tried the lounge bar first. This was full of heavy, brown leather furniture and was deserted. There was an unpleasant, chilly feeling, so we made for the public bar instead."

Laurie recalls that this bar had a flagstone floor, a large, empty and cold fireplace, wooden tables and chairs. The whole atmosphere was cheerless and unfriendly. A drably-dressed woman was serving behind the bar, and there were about fifteen other people in the room, all middle-aged or older and wearing rather shabby, old-fashioned clothes.

Everybody Stopped Talking...

"Everybody stopped talking and stared as we came in. It was rather unnerving. They continued to watch as we got our drinks. I asked for a gin and ginger-beer - somebody had suggested I should try it. The barmaid said, 'We don't have that.' So I said I would have gin and ginger ale instead. It was actually quite horrible. We sat down at one of the tables. The people around us had resumed their conversations, but they kept glancing at us. We felt like intruders. We were not at all welcome."

He recalls paying for the drinks with a pound note and being given change in florin and shilling coins, which did not strike him as unusual, since they doubled as 10p and 5p pices in decimal coinage.

With no fire in the large fireplace, the bar felt cold. Laurie and his friend sipped their drinks, feeling more and more uncomfortable. "We certainly didn't want another so we left. I could hardly wait to get out of the place and I was aware that every pair of eyes in the room followed our departure."

They hurried out into the night with a feeling of relief, and driving out of the deserted car park Laurie could see the pub sign still swinging and creaking in the wind.

"We drove a short way down the road and were amazed to find ourselves at the Sun Inn, Calbourne. It just wasn't possible. We had not crossed the main Newport-Yarmouth road at any point. I thought at the time it was strange that the two pubs should have been so close together."

The two men had one drink there and then Laurie dropped his friend back at Newtown and drove home to Ryde, still puzzling about that unfriendly pub. The whole episode had so disturbed him that a few days later he decided to go back in daylight and try to discover why it felt so unwelcoming.

"I never found that pub again. I drove all over the place trying to retrace our steps. That lane just did not exist. Eventually I went to the little village shop in Calbourne and asked if there was another pub nearby. The answer was 'No'."

Next, Laurie enquired at the County Records Office about old pubs in the area but drew yet another blank. After hearing his story, the archivist told Laurie he must have had a few too many that night, because there was no such place. So the mystery remains. Both Laurie and his friend were at the pub that night. They felt at the time that something was very wrong. Now they know why. The Vulcan or Falcon just doesn't exist. Not in this world or dimension, anyway...

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/timeslip/comments/yvtasf/vanishing_pubs_on_the_isle_of_wight_part_1/

Angela reported a strange experience as she walked on a steep path between pine trees up to the top of Beacon Hill that overlooks Penrith. At the time, she was a teenager. Angela would often climb the Beacon when she wasn’t at school, and it’s still a popular local walk. One hot day in August in the mid-1970s, Angela and a friend set out onto the footpath from Beacon Edge. The walk takes about fifteen minutes, and the path has many abrupt angles as it zig-zags through the trees. The trees crowd thickly round the track as it climbs over craggy sandstone outcrops. Soon you feel quite apart from the everyday world. It’s an odd feeling, and you can have the impression that someone is watching you from the woods on either side. You go up and up, changing direction and losing sight of the path below and behind you.

As Angela and her friend climbed that day they chatted away, but Angela reports how the atmosphere grew increasingly heavy — as if there was thunder in the air. They’d walked up many times and weren’t taking much notice of their surroundings until they turned a corner and stopped. They both saw it: an old fashioned cottage, roughly made of stone. Angela says that it was like ‘a dwelling from the Middle Ages’. The trouble was there had never been a cottage there before. Smoke was coming from the chimney, so someone was at home. Angela says that there was a very uncanny feeling about the place. She looked at her friend and, as the door began to open, they both fled.

When she worked up the courage to climb the hill some months later, the cottage wasn’t there. Her friend would never talk about the experience.

As you would imagine, in the years since, I’ve taken one or two walks up that path, in the snow and the sun, but I’ve never had the slightest inkling of a time anomaly.

Joan of Navarre was Henry V’s stepmother who was imprisoned, after being accused of plotting against the king. She was found innocent and released ultimately.

This story comes from Alice Pollock’s (officially Alice Wykeham-Martin Pollock) autobiography Portrait of My Victorian Youth: Natural and Supernatural, published in 1971.

The two women met three months after they visited Versailles and talked it over again. It was at this time that they discovered that Jourdain had not seen the lady and that Miss Moberly had not seen the plough, cottage, woman, or girl. Because of this they went apart and wrote separate accounts without conferring. This fact strongly suggests to me that they were not making up their experience. Miss Lamont, in her story, used the words “uncanny” and “eerie” to describe her feelings, but at the time she denied any thought that any of the people or places encountered were unreal or ghostly.

One of the most famous recent time slips is that of Bold Street, Liverpool. On a sunny day in July 1996, an off-duty policeman called Frank went shopping with his wife Carol in Liverpool city centre. Carol went to buy a copy of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting at Dillon’s Bookshop on Bold Street while Frank went to purchase a CD at HMV on Ranelagh Street. He bumped into a friend, had a chat, and then, about twenty minutes later, he strolled to Bold Street to meet his wife. Upon strolling up the incline from the Central Station he noticed an unusual quietness.

Frank noticed the street was cobbled where it never had been before, and instead of modern clothes, people wore clothes from the 1950s. Frank was startled by a loud horn, and a box van with the name Caplins on its side sped past, just missing him. Crossing the road, Frank saw in place of Dillon’s Bookshop was a large store with the name Cripps over its two entrances with a window display containing women’s handbags and shoes.

Frank saw a young woman dressed in the clothes of the mid-90s — hipster jeans and a sleeveless top. She also carried a bag branded with Miss Selfridge, a store that was not in Liverpool in the 1950s. This modern girl entered Cripps looking baffled, and suddenly the whole street scene reverted to 1996. Frank asked the young woman if she saw the same things he’d had seen. She said she had, and seemed frightened. Later, it transpired that a women’s outfitters called Cripps had indeed stood on the site of Dillons in the 1950s.

This account is remarkable because of the detail. We know the month and year, the first names of the two people, the names on the signs, and exactly what book Carol was going to buy. It’s a pity we don’t know their surnames. A thorough trawl of the Internet reveals many versions of this story, but all clearly derivative from Tom Slemen’s original version. It does not appear that either Frank or Carol ever spoke to anyone else about this incident.

This is all very remarkable. But should we believe these people? It seems to me that there are three possibilities:

• Firstly, the people who report these accounts of time slip phenomena are giving a reliable account on an objective happening (i.e. “the truth”);

• Or, they are offering an unreliable account of what they thought was happening (i.e. “mistaken”);

• Or, they are deliberately attempting to mislead us (i.e. “lying.”).

I don’t think there is a fourth possibility, but if anyone can think of one, let me know. Let us consider whether it makes sense that they might all be lying. Like on TV cop shows, it will be helpful to remember that when we’re trying to understand why people do what they do, we should follow the money. I don’t think there is any money. None of these people seems to have made any money out of reporting these incidents, or at least not a substantial amount, a few book sales notwithstanding.

Furthermore, any money they did make would be outweighed by the scorn that would be heaped on them. People are speedy to mock people who report any kind of unusual occurrence. So, it would actually make sense to keep quiet. The only reason someone might speak up, despite the mockery, is that the experience is so far outside your experience that you have to talk about it. It is this fact that persuades me that the people at least really believed they experienced what they reported.

So, for the record, I don’t think they are lying.Further than that, I can’t let go. The detail seems too much, and the experience too prolonged to be an illusion. But that’s me. For me, I own up to the fact that I believe time slips happen. Usually, after admitting they believe in timeslips, the author of an article or a book spends many pages setting out half-baked personal theories about how this could happen. This mostly involves citing some half-comprehended stuff about quantum physics. I don’t know much about quantum physics, so I won’t.I believe timeslips happen, but I don’t know how. It’s pretty much my attitude to bumblebees too. I believe they happen, but I have no clue how they work.

Meteorites don’t strike the earth every day, but they do every now and again. Just because something has never been my personal experience is no reason to believe it can’t happen at all. For example, I’ve never seen the Northern Lights, but I don’t accuse people of being liars when they say they have nor do I insist that all photographs of the Northern Lights are fake. So, why don’t I disbelieve the Northern Lights? Because there are so many photographs of the Northern Lights.

This implies that “truth” is a numbers game. Are we really saying it’s just numbers, or “social proof”, that makes something right? I hope not, but more and more often I fear the truth is down to what social media influencers say it is. That gives me vertigo. As you reflect on these accounts, it might be that if these time slips really happened, then that is a challenge to your world-view. Thomas Kuhn is often cited in this regard. He wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but his theory can apply to any world-view.

Kuhn describes how there is an accepted theory of how the world is, one that is widely held, and people accept it without thinking. For example, at one time, most people believed that the world was flat, or that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Now we believe something else, mostly. But then in any world-view anomalies crop up, and, Kuhn says, at first people shout them down, but then there are so many anomalies that the original theory gets undermined and collapses. 

A theory remains true for most people until the influencers abandon it. After that, we all get a new world-view. For awhile. So, if time slips really happen, as these witnesses seem to believe, and if you refuse to accept it, that either means they are wrong or your world-view is about to collapse. You’d better check on Instagram.

Source: https://medium.com/inside-the-simulation/five-chilling-instances-of-time-slips-d3a7248c9e09

Ever since Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in 1889, popular culture has revelled in the idea of time slips, from Alison Uttley’s novel A Traveller in Time to Marty McFly’s temporal troubles in Back to the Future and the recent time-mangling Netflix series Dark. And while intentional time travel is seemingly impossible, there are countless reports of ordinary people who have suddenly experienced a ‘slip’.

In the 1980s, Caroline Anders, now 57, moved to Devon to work for the NHS. One weekend, a colleague drove her to Plymouth for a party. As they skirted a roundabout on the approach to the city, she remembers seeing a beautiful church. ‘The windows were full of colour from the light streaming through the stained glass and, as we passed the front doors, I saw a large congregation,’ she says. While Caroline can clearly recall the sight, no one else in the car saw it. The real shock was to come a few weeks later, when her boyfriend Phil suggested a Saturday out on the Plymouth Hoe. ‘As we drove past the roundabout, I literally cried out because the church was in ruins,’ says Caroline. ‘I said, “Oh my God, what’s happened? Did you know it had been damaged?’

It was then that Phil told her that the church – Charles Church, one of the oldest in the area – had been bombed in the Second World War. What Caroline had seen was impossible; the church had been left in ruins as a memorial for the dead. Yet she remains convinced of what she saw. ‘My friends believe me, because I’m not given to flights of fancy.’

Like Andy and Caroline, Matt Davies, 50, from Stourbridge in the West Midlands, was baffled by a strange occurrence last November. ‘Nothing like it has happened to me before,’ he insists. ‘I was cycling down a canal, about 9.30am, when I saw a young guy sitting on the lock gate in what looked like Victorian working-class clothes. He was smoking a pipe and staring into the water – he didn’t look up as I went past.’

Somewhat confused, Matt began his research, pinpointing the exact spot via his cycling data and Google Earth. He eventually discovered that the canal cottages opposite were the scene of an unsolved murder in the early 20th century. ‘It could just be a fella who does historical re-creations,’ says Matt. ‘But he looked a bit young for it, and there was nowhere open then in lockdown.’

Some paranormal investigators speculate that time slips tend to happen in more ancient areas where intense events have occurred. In 2011, relationships counsellor Rhian Kivits, 46 (rhiankivits.com), visited the Temple of Karnak in Luxor. ‘Because of social unrest in Egypt, the temples were totally empty,’ she remembers. She made her way to the goddess statue she wanted to see when suddenly she felt disorientated. ‘Somehow, the statue looked shiny and new and I heard noise, like a crowd shouting outside,’ she adds. ‘I recall my partner speaking to me but his voice was muffled.’

In the UK, many anecdotes of time slips emerge from the historic counties of Devon, Cornwall and Kent, something that Rhian can also attest to. At Compton Castle in Devon, she remembers seeing a knight in armour walk past her. ‘It was as clear and real as everyday life.’ While at Leeds Castle in Kent, Alice Pollock reported a room suddenly changed in appearance and she saw a tall woman in white, pacing. She later discovered that Queen Joan of Navarre had been accused of witchcraft and imprisoned there in the 15th century.

But the most famous British time slip spot isn’t a site of battles or trauma – more like shopping and coffee. Liverpool’s Bold Street is so well known for time slips that there’s a Reddit forum dedicated to discussing it, along with YouTube documentaries and Facebook pages. One of the popular tales on these platforms tells of Frank, a policeman not given to wild imaginings, who in 1996 was heading to a bookstore. He recalled ‘an unusual quietness’ and looked up to see the street cobbled and passers-by dressed in clothes from the 1950s. The bookshop was now named Cripps and selling women’s clothes. He later discovered that Cripps had indeed been on the site. In 2005, music student John Moonan reported seeing horses and carts carrying passengers in Victorian dress past old-fashioned stores. He assumed a production was filming, but when he looked back, they’d disappeared and the shops appeared modern again.

Paranormal investigators have speculated that the slips may be due to the subway. They say that it runs in concentric circles beneath Bold Street and can – apparently – create a portal through time. But Rodney Davies, a paranormal researcher and author of Time-Slips: Journeys into the Past and Future, has spent years gathering material on the phenomenon and admits he still struggles to explain it. When a time slip occurs, he suggests, it may simply be that our ‘limited’ mind is briefly able to perceive the simultaneous past or future in that spot. ‘One theory states that past, present and future are all one,’ he says. ‘But our limited consciousness can only experience time by being in what we know as “the present”.’

While most experiences of time slips appear to be a glimpse of a scene, Davies has also gathered stories of others who have spoken to people from the past, bought goods in shops and stayed for lengthy periods. Astonishingly, he adds, ‘It’s possible some people have slipped to the past and ended up stuck – thousands of people go missing every year.’ Surely, though, if that were the case, we’d find modern clothes preserved in peat bogs, or mobile phones fossilised in rock? ‘Well, there have been some very odd discoveries,’ he insists. ‘I researched stories of strange machinery found by 18th-century labourers and jewellery discovered in seams of coal.’

Although his book came out in 2019, many of the time slips Davies recounts happened pre-1990s, which suggests the modern world doesn’t lend itself to mystical experiences. ‘I think our lives are too busy with TV and social media, Zoom and smartphones – we don’t have sufficient time to be still.’ But as much as we all might long to whirl through a wormhole and visit the days of Downton, surely such occurrences would all be dismissed as nonsense?

‘If we accept that this happens to people,’ says Rob Hickling, a doctor of astrophysics and former particle physicist, ‘there are two explanations. One lies within the physical properties of the universe and space-time continuum – the ability to time travel – but despite many experiments, there hasn’t been any recorded instances of any object or person travelling back in time. Einstein’s general theory of relativity suggests that if you travel faster than the speed of light, you will travel back in time, but this would require an infinite amount of energy, which is physically impossible.’

The other explanation ‘lies with the human brain’s ability to interpret signals’ – that our human memory is very fallible. ‘We tend to fill in gaps to complete a narrative’, he explains, which is the reason people hallucinate when taking drugs. ‘The drugs cause strange signals to be sent to the brain, then the brain interprets them, fills in the gaps and produces full images for the person to see.’ Basically, ‘humans are proven to be unreliable, whereas scientific measuring equipment has a much higher degree of accuracy’.

So clearly, if time slips do exist, it’s surely only a matter of, er, time, before someone is discovered holding an iPhone in a photograph from Victorian times. ‘Of course, that is possible,’ says Rodney Davies. ‘But if they were stuck in Victorian times, it’s unlikely they’d be carrying it around with them. It wouldn’t work, for one thing.’

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-9565865/Have-experienced-time-slip.html