Buzz
One afternoon, while enduring the soul-crushing monotony of a university Board Meeting, I found myself completely captivated as I secretly leafed through a batch of papers on Time Slips, which had been sent to me by an experienced researcher, Carl Grove. At that time, I had never even heard of Time Slips. Since then, I've read numerous detailed case studies, and even heard a firsthand account from a family member. Remarkably, many people have unexpectedly found themselves transported from the present to the past, for minutes or even hours at a time. They are still in the same city, town, or countryside, but in a completely different time period. Frequently, they interact with people from that past. Many Time Slip experiencers report similar physical sensations: they feel unusually flat or depressed, and the surrounding environment seems unnaturally still and silent. Occasionally, they feel as though they are being jostled by invisible crowds. While most Time Slips involve the past, I have come across instances of involuntary travel into the future.
10. Kersey in Suffolk: A Medieval Encounter in 1957
On a crisp and bright Sunday morning in autumn 1957, three trainee soldiers walked into the village of Kersey and found themselves unexpectedly transported to medieval England. As Andrew MacKenzie describes, one of them, William Laing, a keen observer of nature, noticed that the trees and grass seemed to change to spring-like colors during the Time Slip. As they approached Kersey from the countryside, they could see the church with its tower on the hill, and hear the bells ringing. But about 100 yards from the church, the bells suddenly stopped, and an eerie silence fell. There were no bird calls or breezes, and the houses appeared incredibly ancient, with no signs of modernity like TV antennas, telephone lines, or streetlamps. By the stream, white ducks were present, but Laing noted they looked so still and lifeless that they resembled decoys.
Through the small windows of the cottages, the soldiers saw no signs of life, except for what seemed to be a butcher's shop. Inside, they spotted three skinned ox carcasses, green with age and surrounded by cobwebs. As they sat by a bridge over the stream, the soldiers’ sense of unease shifted to a feeling of pure malevolence, as if they were being watched by unseen, hostile forces. After about 25 minutes in this ghostly village, they quickly left, and immediately heard the church bells ringing again, and noticed smoke rising from chimneys that hadn't been there before. Modern photographs of the church show that it would have been impossible for it to have disappeared from view. This suggests that the soldiers may have slipped back in time to a period before the twelfth century, when the church was originally constructed.
9. A Police Officer in Liverpool
For some unknown reason, both Suffolk and Liverpool have reported a surprisingly high number of time slip occurrences. According to Carl Grove, on Saturday, July 7th, 1996, an off-duty police officer named Frank was heading to Dillon’s bookshop (which had not yet become Waterstone’s) to meet his wife. On his way, he narrowly avoided being hit by a small van from the 1950s, with the words 'Caplan’s' painted on its side. The driver even honked the horn at him. Frank realized that he was on a road that, in 1996, should have been pedestrianized. Across the street, Dillon’s had somehow transformed into 'Cripps,' and the people around him were dressed in 1940s or 1950s-style clothes. Frank followed a woman, who appeared to be in modern attire, into the shop, noticing the contemporary brand name on her handbag. Suddenly, the store shifted back into Dillon’s, and the woman, equally perplexed, complained to Frank.
This case stands out for a number of reasons. First, police officers are trained to be highly observant and not prone to flights of fancy. Second, the female witness saw exactly what Frank saw. Third, there was an undeniable interaction between Frank and the van driver, who seemed to belong to the 1940s or 1950s. And finally, after the story was broadcast live on a radio show by Tom Slemen, listeners called in to confirm that Dillon’s had indeed been known as Cripps in the 1950s and that a local Caplan’s firm existed at that time. This led to a wave of similar reports from others who had experienced strange events around Bold Street.
8. Watching Baseball from the Past
In the early 1920s, as Janet Bord recounts, a boy and girl from Flackton, Arkansas, were strolling through their quiet town on a Sunday afternoon when the entire town was at the baseball game. They decided to take a shortcut through a pine wood to get to the field. Robbie and Ann soon came across a stream they had never seen before, and after crossing it, they found themselves in an entirely unfamiliar landscape. Gone were the usual scrubby underbrush, the gnarled pine trees, the foul-smelling dog fennel, and the jimpson weed. The familiar sounds of sparrows and bluejays were replaced by an eerie silence. Much like the soldiers in 1957, the pair felt a strange, dream-like heaviness as they walked on, hand in hand.
All the plant life appeared altered, with ferns growing 'dozens of times larger' than the ones typically found in bogs. Upon reaching a small rise, they spotted, 'in the distance, the ball diamond and our friends.' They could hear the sounds of the game, but the voices seemed faint and detached. Ann and Robbie watched the game until it concluded, and then retraced their steps, crossing the unfamiliar stream once more. When they looked back, 'the dream world had vanished.' Notice that, in this case, those experiencing what seems to be a time slip are also looking forward(?) into the familiar scenery of their own time.
7. Five Lost Hours
In her book *Time Storms*, Jenny Randle recounts an account from 1973 involving Paul, who was 21 at the time. Around 2am, he was driving home from a dance through the English Midlands village of Little Houghton. Having drunk very little, he was aware of the long drive ahead. Shortly after passing the church clock, Paul lost all sense of time and found himself, inexplicably, on foot in Bromham, many miles away. His car was nowhere to be seen; he was soaking wet despite no rain, and the clock now read 7am. A friend helped him locate his car, which was now stuck in a muddy field near Turvey, about a 15-minute drive from Little Houghton. The field gate was locked, and there were no tire tracks in the mud.
If one were to argue that Paul simply experienced a black-out or was in a 'fugue state,' the car's location and the absence of any sign of an accident would still remain a baffling mystery. Countless similar experiences have been reported, including one from 1988 by a man named Paul Rainbow in Little Houghton. His experience involved a sudden motorcycle breakdown, an odd egg-shaped white glow in the neighboring field, and the chilling onset of complete silence. He seemed to lose an hour and a half in the blink of an eye. This is clearly a very peculiar situation, as in both cases, the witnesses appear to have traveled forward in time.
6. Wuthering Heights
In the summer of 1959, as Richard Davis writes, British actor Alan Helm was working in a theater in Bradford, not far from the famed Brontë village of Haworth. Before his performances, Helm enjoyed walking the moors that had inspired Emily Brontë’s *Wuthering Heights*. He had made this walk many times over the past four years. On one fine day, he set off, reaching the ruin known as Top Withins around lunchtime. Here, he spotted a man in a deerstalker hat holding a shotgun. When the man disappeared, Helm approached the ruin to search for him. As he did, he suddenly found himself looking down at a large Georgian farmhouse.
He hurried down to the house, knocked on the door, and peered inside, noticing a table set for lunch. The smell of pigs filled the air, and he could hear cattle nearby. But when he entered the barn, it was empty. Looking back up toward Top Withins, he realized it had vanished. He briefly saw the man in the deerstalker hat again and, feeling increasingly unsettled, rushed back to Haworth. During this strange experience, Helm checked his watch, finding it had stopped at 1:45pm. Just before the performance began, he checked it again, as was his habit, and saw that it was showing the correct time (5:45pm), even though he hadn’t wound it. If you’ve never visited Top Withins, take a look at maps and images—the ruin is the only structure visible in this remarkably isolated location.
5. Fast Forward: Chile, 1977
Jenny Randles recounts a vastly different military training experience from Kersey, this one taking place in Chile on April 24th, 1977. A small group of soldiers were on a training exercise and set up camp on a plateau at Pampa Lluscuma, situated 12,000 feet above sea level. Their commanding officer was Corporal Armando Valdes. Just before 4am, a soldier named Rosales noticed something strange and alerted Valdes. Coming toward them from the mountains were two violet lights, with the ground beneath glowing in an unusual way. Initially, they thought these could be flares or part of a mock attack. Valdes woke the others, and at 4:15am, he went to investigate what had now become a single large glow on the hillside, a few hundred yards away. The soldiers hid behind a wall to cover him, but Valdes disappeared.
Moments later, the violet glow vanished as well. The soldiers waited in silence, and at 4:30am, Valdes reappeared—this time from behind them. He seemed disoriented, almost as if sleepwalking, and collapsed onto the ground. At dawn, the situation grew even stranger. The soldiers, who had seen Valdes shave the previous evening, discovered he now had several days’ worth of beard growth. They also found that his watch had stopped at 4:30am and that the date function on the watch displayed April 30th. Valdes suffered from severe memory loss and poor coordination, a symptom commonly reported by those who have experienced similar phenomena. They sometimes struggle even with simple tasks, such as opening a door, and this condition can persist for days. Randles notes that the CIA agents who interviewed Valdes found him convincing and consistent. Some interpretations of this case suggest that Valdes encountered a UFO, which could be as plausible an explanation as any given the circumstances.
4. The Phantom Houses of Rougham in Suffolk
In Suffolk, Andrew MacKenzie recounts the story of Miss Ruth Wynne, a teacher who, in October 1926, took a walk toward the neighboring village of Bradfield St George with one of her female students. As they neared Bradfield’s church, they stumbled upon the high walls and wrought iron gates of a grand Georgian house. The majority of the building was obscured by towering trees within the walls. They did not walk this way again until the following spring, and when they did, the impressive house had completely vanished. Both the teacher and her pupil confirmed the sighting in reports to Labour MP, Sir Ernest Bennett.
In 1912, on a warm June day, a young boy named James Cobbold was helping the Rougham butcher, George Waylett, with deliveries using a pony and trap. As they traveled down Kingshall Street, the air suddenly grew cold, and there was a loud ‘whoosh!’ that caused the pony to rear in panic, throwing Waylett from the cart. For a brief moment, a three-story Georgian house appeared, complete with a garden and intricate flowerbeds. But before they could react, a mist enveloped the house, and it disappeared without a trace. Waylett scrambled to his feet, shouting, ‘That damn house! That’s the third time I’ve seen it!’
3. A Fairy Fair in Seventeenth-Century England
Some readers may have noticed that a few of these cases resemble ghost sightings. To make matters even more complex, witnesses from the seventeenth century often believed that time slips involved fairies. In around 1635, a man riding home past a hill called Black Down, near Taunton in Somerset, suddenly noticed a large gathering of people on the side of the hill, seemingly assembled for a country fair. There were pewterers, shoemakers, pedlars, and stalls with all sorts of trinkets, fruits, and drinking booths. Realizing it was the wrong time of year for a fair, he decided to ride into the gathering to investigate further.
Having them clearly in view, when the rider entered the assembly, 'he could discern nothing at all, only seemed to be crowded, and thrust, as when one passes through a throng of people: all the rest became invisible to him, until he came at a little distance, and then it appeared to him again as at first. He found himself in pain, and so hasted home; where, upon arrival, a lameness seized him all on one side, which continued on him for the remainder of his life, many years. This lameness seems strangely similar to a partial stroke. Even more striking is the exact parallel to the invisible ‘crowding’ and jostling of unseen people which Jourdain reported at Versailles. These unusual physical effects, along with sensations of flatness, unreality, depression, or sudden cold, are some of the most striking features of time slips, consistently reported across centuries, distances, and varied witnesses.
2. The Armies of the Dead
On the evening of 28 June 1812, between 7 and 8pm, 45-year-old Anthony Jackson and 15-year-old Martin Turner were in the fields at Haverah Park near Ripley in Yorkshire. Suddenly, Turner exclaimed, 'What a quantity of beast!' Following his gaze, Jackson responded, 'Lord bless us! They are not beast, they are men!' On the hilltop, a group of soldiers in white uniforms had appeared, led by a figure in scarlet. They marched in various formations, passing Jackson and Turner about 100 yards away.
A second army, dressed in dark uniforms, appeared behind the first, soon forming an L shape with the white-clad troops. The two groups, numbering in the hundreds, showed no signs of hostility. After both armies had crossed to the far side of the hill, a burst of something like smoke appeared, thick enough to conceal nearby cattle for about two minutes. Turner later distinctly recalled seeing the first army's arms glinting in the setting sun. Could the ‘smoke’ be similar to the mist that enveloped the phantom house in Rougham?
1. Versailles
On 10 August 1901, two Oxford academics, Eleanor Jourdain and Charlotte Anne Moberly, visited Versailles. Moberly later recalled how, as they neared a wood on the grounds, everything 'suddenly looked unnatural… the trees flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry.' They passed a man dressed in the manner of an 18th or 19th century gentleman, who greeted them courteously and attempted to explain that they were not allowed to pass through that area. He pronounced 'faut' as 'fout.' The man seemed to appear out of nowhere. Both women soon concluded that they had encountered some kind of haunting. They later discovered that 10 August 1792 was the very day Versailles was sacked during the revolution.
Jourdain returned on 2 January 1902. After crossing a bridge, she was once again overtaken by that same sense of oppressive unreality. She saw people dressed in old-fashioned clothing and heard the sound of silk dresses rustling behind her. Turning around, she found no one there. A few moments later, though still completely alone, she felt people brushing past her in a crowd and heard the words 'Monsieur et Madame' whispered near her ear. She also heard faint music, as if from a band playing. Upon making inquiries later, she discovered that the band had performed on New Year's Day, but not on the 2nd. Like so many well-documented paranormal events, the Wikipedia entry on this incident offers a biased perspective from anonymous skeptics. For a more thorough account, try reading the original book, which sold over 10,000 copies upon its first release.
