Hi everyone, welcome back, for our new listeners, it’s great to have you with us. Many decades ago I read of a now famous incident, that happened in the grounds of the palace of Versailles in France. This incident happened in 1901. It was one of many experiences that triggered my desire to understand more. Also, my life-long fascination with the unexplained, the unknown, the paranormal. And that still continues to fascinate me to this day, so many years later. The subject of this episode is one I had been meaning to do earlier this season, but I just had so many great guests pop up unexpectedly that they took priority. However now, we are nearing the end of season 5 – can you believe it? And I wanted to get this episode done before the season ended, and of course we have Halloween coming up in less than two weeks. And, I have a couple of very special episodes for you, for Halloween. So it was sort of now, or I would never get this subject in during this season.

Get your cup of tea, and a blanket if it’s cold where you are living. Make yourself comfortable and relax as we see how reality may not be as substantial as we believe it to be…. So the question is – will you take the red pill and join me? As we see how deep this rabbit hole goes, in this part of the shadowlands…. Then let’s begin!

I want you to know that I make no apology whatsoever for the Matrix quotes and references that I will use in this episode, mostly because they are so appropriate, and I love them.

Time Slips

Time Slips, have you ever heard of that term? A time slip is when a person or in some cases people, step from their time into another time, either in the past or in some cases, the future. The Time Slip Theory works from the premise that time is fluid rather than fixed. Time is not linear as we experience it, but co-exists within a context of a single point of space.

This episode goes over details of “Time Slips.” Also, I will tell various stories of people who have said They’ve experienced such things. Some very recently. But, before we start with people’s experience, I feel like I should go over a few things that I have covered in other episodes. Most notably my episode in the very first season of our podcast, an episode that is still in my top 3 most listened to episodes. A Glitch in the Matrix – A Holographic Reality, that may perhaps present an explanation of why these so called time slips may occur.

As Morpheus says to Neo in a memorable scene from the Matrix movie:

“What is “real”? How do you define “real”? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, taste and see then “real” is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

It is correct, that what we perceive as reality, is ONLY electrical signals interpreted by our brains.  There is an excellent video, created in 2007, called “Perception – The reality beyond matter” Which can be watched on YouTube, and which I have linked on this episode’s page of the podcast website www.walkingtheshadowlands.com

The quality of the video is not the best being older, but the information on there is as pertinent today as it was when it was created. Also, a more recent TED talk by neuroscientist, and Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, at the University of Sussex,  Anil Seth – ‘Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality’  Both, are excellent videos to watch if you are interested in how we perceive our reality.

In the matrix movie, there is a scene when Neo is introduced to everyone in the team. He sees a black cat walk past, and a couple of seconds later, he sees it walk past again – and says something like oh Déjà vu!  Immediately the team springs into action, because it is a glitch in the matrix – in the computer coding of the program that they are currently inside of. Like a hiccup in the programming…. Here in the real world, many people have experiences that can only be described as glitches in the matrix, or the programming of what we currently perceive as our collective reality. I want to talk very briefly about Déjà vu, what it is, and is it actually a glitch in the matrix? Our brain playing tricks on us? Or is it a paranormal event?

The How Stuff Works – website gives this definition of Déjà vu

“The term déjà vu is French and means, literally, “already seen.” Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn’t be familiar at all. Say, for example, you are traveling to England for the first time. You are touring a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing some current political topic, and you have the feeling that you’ve already experienced this very thing — same friends, same dinner, same topic.”

So, like Neo seeing the black cat walk in front of him twice, and the team immediately recognizing it as a glitch, could episodes of Déjà vu be explained away by the Holographic Reality hypothesis as I discussed in season 1, episode 15, A Glitch in the Matrix – A Holographic Reality? Is this world merely electrical signals interpreted by our brain as the physicists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists mentioned in that episode, have suggested? A mass, collective hallucination, created by mere electrical impulses that are fed into our brains?

The fact that this could very well be a holographic reality could explain a large number of paranormal abilities that some people seem to have. It could explain, remote viewing, and spiritual gifts such as clairvoyance – where people can see into the future before events happen. Are they merely tapping into the computer mainframe and getting glimpses of programs yet to be run? Certainly, this would explain many currently, unexplainable gifts that some seem to have. Also, it can explain so call parallel realities, and time slips which is the subject of this episode.

If you haven’t heard the episode A Glitch in the Matrix – A Holographic Reality? Then I suggest, that you might like to give it a listen as it will provide a grounding for this episode.

A person who experiences a time slip usually has awareness of their current time, and then they slip to a different time. Very often when they become aware of time again, more time has passed than would seem possible, or in some cases, less time. The person can also experience a disquieting, unsettling, or depressive feeling. Some people have even described a sort of fog surrounding them as they emerge into another time. In short, time slips are spontaneous instances of time travel.

Tim Swartz, author of ‘Time Travel: Fact not Fiction’ says this about time slips:

“A time slip is an event where it appears that some other era has briefly intruded on the present.  Time slips are a subset of time travel in which the instance is spontaneous and brief.”

The Versailles Incident.

In 1901 two friends, Anne Moberly who was 55 years old at the time and Eleanor Lourdain who was 38 years old were on holiday in France. They were both teachers at St. Hugh’s College in Oxford. Moberly was actually the Principal of the school at the time. They wanted to visit the Petit Trianon, a small chateau on the grounds of the Versailles Palace, given by Louis XVI to his 19-year-old wife, Marie Antoinette, as a private retreat for her personal use. But, they got a bit lost in the grounds whilst searching for the chateau.

It was during this time when they were lost on the grounds that they had an encounter that made history and was the story that caught my attention so many decades ago. Whilst they were wandering around trying to find the chateau they came across several people in 1789 period clothing and carrying out period activities. They also encountered several structures that had not existed on the grounds since 1789. Their slip in time culminated with a supposed encounter with Marie-Antoinette herself, sitting sketching on the grounds of the palace.

It wasn’t until they were ‘snatched out of the reverie’ by a modern tour guide, that they suddenly found themselves back in 1901. within months after this incident. they’d published their account in a book called An Adventure, and as they were both respected academics who did not desire bizarre publicity, they published it under pseudonyms. Their experience became variously known as the Versailles Time Slip, the Ghosts of Trianon, or the Moberly-Lourdain Incident; and it has intrigued researchers, historians, and myself ever since I first heard about it.

Many people have put forward explanations of what the women experienced from shared hallucinations, to making the whole episode up for the attention it may have brought them. But, subsequent authors who have written about this story seem to agree that there was probably no conscious effort at deception by these ladies, only a firm belief in the reality of their perception and a desire to present their story in as convincing a way as possible.

Since this experience was published so many people have come forward to share experiences – which could be described as ‘Glitches in the Matrix’. Time slips, also known as time travel, they’re mentioned frequently in literature, most famously in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and more recently in Madeleine L’engle’s An Acceptable Time.

The subject has also been represented in numerous movies like, Back to the Future, Terminator, and at least 50 others, a list of which is linked from this episodes page on the podcast website at www.walkingtheshadowlands.com.  And more than 40 televisions shows like ‘Dr. Who’, which is a very popular British television show, that most of us Kiwi’s grew up watching, and has been running – literally for decades. Its entire plot is based around the subject, making for interesting and sometimes funny viewing.  So, this subject has been a source of interest and fascination for many of us, for a very long time now.

Are there any commonalities of what people experience with these time slips? Well, yes actually. But, having said that not all things in the list that I’m going to quote are experienced by witnesses. In the book Mysteries of Minds, Space & Time – Volume #24 it has this to say about time slips:

The mechanism of time slips eludes us still. We can only sift the evidence and search for some common denominators among the experiences, and possibly some relationship with known laws of physics. So far these common factors have been discovered.

1. A trigger factor that appears to set the occurrence in motion
2. Abrupt onset of the experience.
3. A sensation of living in two time zones at once, either past and present or future and present.
4. A feeling of being an integral part of the experience or a participant in the action.
5. A noticeable absence of sound from beginning to end of the time slip. (this depends on time slip)
6. A marked difference is frequently mentioned between normal light conditions and those experienced during the time slip. A ‘silvery light’ is often described.

And I also would add a number 7 – very often there is a fog that is mentioned, even on a previous clear, sunny day. And number 8. Quite often people who have these experiences feel quite depressed or saddened for no apparent reason. So, with all of that said, let’s listen to a number of people’s actual experiences. Keep the previous list in mind as you listen to these stories.

Kahren’s Mums Experience

My mother Doris was born in 1922.  Both my parents were skeptics, although my father Ron was always curious about unexplained things.  Mum on the other hand, preferred to ignore things she couldn’t explain.  I’m telling you this as a way to explain that neither of them were the types to imagine things.

My mother’s ‘displacement’ experience happened as she was traveling on the top deck of a double-decker bus in London in around the 1950s, which is where all the experiences happened.  (We are Swedish, but lived in London).  As she was sitting there, she became aware of suddenly being out in the open, and she looked around to see that she was on the top deck of an 1800s horse-drawn double-decker omnibus.  She said she froze in shock.

The streets and everything around her had changed to what looked like early pre-Victorian times, and everyone was dressed in long dresses and frock coats.  She panicked and tried to speak the the other women sitting up there with her, but she said they didn’t answer her and she wasn’t sure if they could see her.  It only lasted a few minutes, and then she was back where she belonged.  She had never heard of anything like that, and in fact none of us had, until I decided to do a search on it the other night.  Mum was wide awake and alert, and definitely not given to flights of fancy.  She only told a couple of people, naturally Dad was one, and then me.

This next experience, seems to be more of a parallel universe type experience, than a time slip. But, I tend to feel they come under the same umbrella, so I’ve included this also, in this episode.

Lagoon Mystery – Jacob Dedman

On a hiking trip when I was 16, I got separated from my group. I wandered around for hours looking for them. I came to the edge of a cliff overlooking a small lagoon. I attempted to yell for help when the edge I was standing on gave way. As I started to fall, the thought of my death began flowing through my mind. Before I reached the halfway point of my fall, I saw a strange shadow approach me from out of the corner of my eye. The form of a black-haired woman appeared from the shadow, dressed in what appeared to be animal hides. Her eyes were what I noticed most, though. One a silvery blue, the other a glowing green.

She grabbed hold of me in her small but strong arms and our fall began to seemingly slow. We landed softly, almost like a feather, next to the small lagoon. I asked her if she was an angel? She smiled at me and said no. All she told me was that this place belonged to her, then turned and walked into the shadows of the forest and disappeared.

I shortly met up with my group and told them what had happened. They laughed at me and said no place like the lagoon was around here. We went home. I returned the next weekend determined to find her. I retraced all of my steps. But the lagoon and the cliff were gone.

Hospital Space-Time Confusion 

from Mel H.

My husband and l live in the deep woods of east Texas, near a tiny place called Mt. Sylvan. I had been having some medical tests done at a hospital nearby.

I went for testing three days in a row, always with the same routine: I parked in the same small parking lot, walked through the double doors leading to the first floor cardio testing area, turned right at the gift shop and signed in at the desk. I always exchanged some casual conversation with the same young and very pleasant blond receptionist.

There was a small sitting area across from her desk, with a door leading to the phlebotomy (blood drawing) lab right behind her cubicle. The door to the lab was always open, though, and the sight of the patients sitting in the exact type of chairs — even the same color — that I saw my late mother sit in for her chemo treatments was just too gut wrenching. (She died a year ago.) I even heard a patient in the lab comment on the new chairs, and a nurse replied that the hospital’s oncology department had donated them. I decided to sit across the hall anyway.

Last Friday my husband went back to the hospital with me to hear the test results. He had never been there before. Usual routine: we parked, walked in, turned past the gift shop and…. there was no check-in area! I stood and stared in total shock: no desk, no chairs, no blonde receptionist, and the door to the lab was on another wall! The other sitting area was just as before.

I started to walk up and down the hall searching for “my” check-in area, but it was nowhere to be seen. A doctor walked by, noticed my confusion, and asked what I was looking for. When I told him that the place I had checked in for my tests was missing, he laughed and said that it had been moved to the second floor three years earlier because they needed more space!

And closer to home, across the ditch in Aussie, we have this experience from Suzan.

The House That Wasn’t There

I swear this is a true story. My husband was carting wheat in the summer of 1994. He was outside Molong in NSW, Australia, and drove past a “For Sale” sign on a farm gate, along with the agent’s details. Our 12-year-old son was with him. On the return journey, they stopped, and walked up the circle-shaped drive to have a closer look at the old house. He said he could see through the window and found the old house old and abandoned.

On his return home a few days later, we rang up the agent and asked for further details about the property, as we were interested in purchasing it. The agent had no idea what we were talking about and insisted that he had NO properties for sale on that road. A week later, my husband and I drove to Molong to have a look at the farm ourselves. We drove up and down the whole road until we were almost to the next town. All that he could recognize was a water tank on the hill, a creek and some trees where the house used to be. There was no gate, no drive, no real estate sign…. or house.

This next experience is one that would probably freak most parents out, and it comes from Sheree N.

Baby Monitor Time Warp

As usual, the long work day was coming to an end and I was dutifully putting the last load of laundered clothes away in our bedroom when I heard a ruckus on the baby monitor just a few feet away from me. I thought it strange when I knew my husband and toddler were both in the living room quietly watching TV as my two-year-old drifted silently off to sleep curled in my husband’s lap as he caught the evening news.

The bedroom door was straight in front of me and I could see all the way down the hall to my husband and son in the Lazy-boy chair, as this ruckus over the monitor continued. It didn’t take long for me to realize the sounds were very familiar. Earlier in the day, I was in my toddler’s bedroom putting a load of folded clothes into the drawers and picked up some stray toys and books that weren’t being played with at the time. As I was doing so, I was telling my son about the story of “Jack and The Beanstalk” for the first time.

Now I stood in disbelief as I heard the drawers being pulled open and shut and the rustling of the toys and books being put into their proper places. But, I nearly fainted when I heard my son’s voice over the monitor! I kept looking back and forth at my husband and now-sleeping son in the chair in the living room. And, the monitor sitting on my dresser that was literally replaying the specific events from earlier in the day!  The monitor is a standard baby monitor bought from Wal-mart and is NOT a recorder, but instead monitors the sounds coming from the room as they are happening at present time only.

I listened as my voice retold the story of “Jack and The Beanstalk” and listened with familiarity as my son responded in baby-talk to the tale he had never heard before. The incredible part was this all happened five hours earlier on the same day!  

I quickly called my husband into the room as he listened to the last part of the story, with my voice coming through the monitor and our sons coos and chuckles. He stood stunned and turned his head and looked at our sleeping son flopped peacefully over his shoulder. In disbelief, he asked, “How in the hell…?!” as his voice drifted off trying not to miss a thing. I just stared at him in the same disbelief and we both just shook our heads.

This has never happened before or since and became pretty clear from the beginning that we were listening to some kind of warp in time. I never imagined in a million years that I would be witness to it and must admit, if it should happen to you, it is indeed, one of the most incredible moments one can ever experience!

Can you imagine, going into a bar to have a social drink with a friend, when all of a sudden the bar disappears? And you are in some other place? This is what happened with this next experience from Anon.

Time slip in Bar                                                                                   

In 1981, I was visiting a friend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. We went to a bar, located in the basement of an old, historic hotel. (I was not drinking alcohol.) Suddenly, the bar was gone! I was in a quiet room. In the room were two tables that looked like hospital exam tables. There were white sheets on the tables, and the room felt very clinical and sterile. I don’t recall seeing anyone in there; just the room with two beds. And then…. the bar returned. I asked my friend, (I was pretty excited), what he knew about the history of the place. “Was it ever a hospital?” I said. But he knew nothing about it. This was in June. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I saw, so in late October of that year I wrote out something much like what I’ve just shared, and put it in an envelope addressed to “Local Historian, c/o Eureka Springs, AK”. I also enclosed a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All small towns had a “local historian” I figured. I mean what did I have to lose?

A couple of years passed. I moved to another apartment. Then, one day, my former land lady called me to tell me a letter had arrived at my old address. Which in itself was odd, because she had never contacted me before. I drove over to pick it up, and I was momentarily confused when I saw it, because it looked like my own handwriting! Of course, it was,  and I had entirely forgotten that I’d ever sent it. Inside was a letter from, indeed, the local historian. Somehow, it had made its way to her. She explained that she had wanted to reply months ago, but the letter had fallen behind a dresser. She had just found it, and wrote back immediately. In the letter she said that the basement had served as a makeshift morgue during the Civil War, and that the room I had been in had served as the embalming room. She was really excited, and asked me to come back sometime and tour the town. But I had learned what I wanted to, and just let it drop.

This next experience comes from the website Portals of London dot com. One of many, many websites on the net dedicated to anomalous happenings in terms of time slips and the like. I’m sharing the whole article here, simply because I feel it’s important to have the backstory. You can read the article at portalsoflondon.com.

The Woolwich Foot Tunnel

When the Woolwich foot tunnel closed for repairs in 2011, it should have been a routine job. The pathway had been providing pedestrians with a quick route beneath the Thames since 1912. A century on, a few minor improvements were necessary. Co-Contractors were hired to plug holes, improve access and bring communications capabilities into the 21st Century: swapping leaky tiles for a leaky feeder.

But Woolwich residents will recall that the refurb of this much loved and much used walkway did not go according to plan. When it finally re-opened it was 8 months behind schedule, having been closed for more than a year and a half. What the average Woolwich dweller doesn’t know, however, are the unusual circumstances behind this delay.

Mention the 18-month time frame to someone who worked on the Woolwich Tunnel job and you may be met with a mysterious smile. A year and a half may have seemed a long time to those who relied on the tunnel for their daily commute. But for those who were down there beneath the river, that time-frame has a different meaning. When one contractor tells me he aged 3 years on the Woolwich job, it is not a metaphor. For, deep down beneath river and clay, hidden from those above ground, something was occurring. That something was a time anomaly.

A time anomaly, from the perspective of someone who experiences it, involves a clearly defined part of landscape or architecture, in which time ‘stops’. Years of study into such phenomena has proved largely fruitless in terms of explanations. And even less so when it comes to predicting when and where they might arise. There is some anecdotal evidence that temporary spaces, or spaces temporarily under a different use, lend themselves to time anomalies, and the Woolwich event would appear to support this.

But they are notoriously hard to define – not having experienced one, PoL isn’t about to try. The best thing we can do is listen to those that have experienced them. The following testimony is from one of the contractors on the Woolwich foot tunnel job (he wishes to remain anonymous). His words are presented uninterrupted, with as little editing as possible.

“I was one of the first ones to experience it. We were working from both ends, as it were, and had tents on both sides of the river. It was pretty basic, if you wanted something from the other side, you just had to walk it through the tunnel. Anyway the foreman’s on the other side and he radios to ask me across. So I walk through the tunnel – the ‘long walk’, we called it, funnily enough – and it’s slightly spooky because no one else is down there, they’re all working on the lift shafts, and I get up the other side, find the foreman, and his eyes nearly pop out of his head. Says he only radioed like a minute ago and how did I get there so quick? Wouldn’t take my word for it I’d walked. Reckoned I had a buggy down there or something, that it was some kind of prank.

But I stand my ground and he starts to see I’m not lying. Anyway he forgets what he called me there for. He gives me this big red plastic box, tells me to walk back over and hold it up for him when I get to the other side. So I head back down, the lonely walk back, thinking shouldn’t we be getting on with some work. When I get to the top I wave the red box in the air and radio the foreman. ‘You just left me!’ he’s saying, ‘No more than a minute ago’. That’s when I start to feel a bit weird.

My initial feelings was, I was pretty freaked out by it all. But once everyone else had experienced it, it was amazing how quickly it seemed normal. It became like a joke. It was a laugh, you know, a source of giggles. Someone said we’d invented the teleporter and were all going to be rich. The foreman stopped trusting watches and phones when we were down there, and took to using egg-timers. A few of the young agency lads tried to claim extra on their time sheets. That was the thing, though: time froze when you were down there. If you were down there for the full working day, fixing the tiling, you’d basically finish work, come back up and it would still be morning. Which was great at first – I don’t live in London so I did a lot of sightseeing, Cutty Sark, The Royal Palaces – but then we all realized how knackered we were.

It never really occurred to any of us to tell anyone about it at the time. It was like, who would believe you? You didn’t even believe it yourself. Plus, it was such a wheeze. I think there was a feeling that as soon as head office was on to it the whole thing would be over. No more fun.

People started experimenting. Some of the guys camped out in there to see how long they could. 3 days and nights it was, and they still came back at the same moment they’d left. That freaked the site manager out though. He was having a nightmare with the timetables as it was. Biggest problem was making sure that if anyone from head office came down it wouldn’t look like he was sending people home ten minutes after they logged on – although that’s exactly what he was doing. Anyway he soon put a stop to all the mucking about. Not before I had my one very strange moment, though.

One thing we couldn’t get our head round was how the two, sort of, time-places a guy was in – seemed to be happening at the same time, as it were. Like I see you emerge across the river in no time at all, but there’s also a ‘you’ who reckons he’s spending four hours in the tunnel.

So Petar, this Bulgarian lad, thought of a little experiment. One morning before anyone else is down the tunnel, he ties a long rope round his waist, and hands the other end to some of the guys. Then he sets off down the tunnel, see. And I’m to follow him down as far as the bottom of the stairs, and then stop and watch him walk down the tunnel. ‘Don’t put your foot off the stairs, don’t step in the tunnel’, he told me. And I didn’t.

So I’m watching him, and he’s got something in his pocket, a secret signal for when he’s across the river, when he gets to the surface. When the others see he’s surfaced, they’re supposed to shout down at me and pull on the rope. Anyway, I’m kneeling down and craning my head down so I can watch Petar walk around the curve, [the tunnel bends in an inverted bow underground – PoL], and he laughs and waves at me for a minute, then gets bored, keeps walking. And he’s just about to round the curve, out of sight – it hasn’t been long, just a minute or so, around the same time it’d took us to walk down the steps – and I feel the rope around me tighten. Then I hear the lads up top. ‘He’s across. Waving a red flag’. The thing is, Petar hears it too.

And he stops. Turns round. And he’s looking at me. His hand slowly reaches into his big jacket pocket, and he pulls out the edge of this large red flag. For a moment I grin. I reckon they’re all having me on. But it’s the look on his face, that’s what still haunts me. Nobody’s that good an actor. His face – and he’s a big man, mind you, fearless. Our Petar was a big character, always at the centre of things, always with this big smile. Never saw him take anything too serious in all our days til then, but – I don’t know how to describe it, it was – fear. Just plain fear on his face. And he’s looking right at me and I know what he’s thinking. I know what he’s trying to figure out – do I keep going, or do I come back? He takes one step towards me, then stops. I don’t know how long we looked at each other like that, neither of us talking. Then in the end he turns round again, and carries on, out of sight.

Well, I’m up those stairs like a shot and when I get up top there he is, across the river, unmistakable even from that distance, red flag in one hand, another guy’s arm around his shoulders.

Anyway I didn’t like that. That freaked me out, that did. Petar didn’t talk about it much. Nobody spoke much about any of it after that. The jokes kind of came to an end and we just got on with the job. Tried to ignore it.”

Some areas seem to be time vortexes with many people, at different times, having experiences in the same street or area. There are many tales about a potential time slip in Liverpool’s Bold street, here are a few. These first two examples are from a website called Parascience, which is specifically studying this area of time anomalies in this region.

Bold Street #1

Mr X used to work in Bold Street in Liverpool. He was walking one day, about 10 years ago, down Renshaw Street, then turned by Rapid into the lane that takes you across the railway line, and emerges by the Buro Bar. Mr X had worked in Liverpool for a while, and knew the shops well, noticing the ones that closed down such as Collinsons, leaving empty shoe stands and hat stands still in the window.

Mr X carried on walking, he was going to meet his wife in town that Saturday afternoon, but as he walked onto Bold Street, he noticed that Collinsons appeared to have reopened as the window was full of shoes and hats as it had been a while previously. He also noted that Catchpoles appeared to be on the other side of the street, where it had been some years before prior to moving to a site across the street.

He turned to go down Bold Street, and noticed that all the cars appeared to be 10-15 years out of date, but all appeared new. He then noticed that all the shoppers seemed to be wearing unusual clothes, not dramatically old, but fashions from 10-15 years before. He assumed that there was some event on in the city that weekend. The street also seemed unusually quiet, there were sounds but they appeared quite muted.

Mr X carried on and met his wife outside the bank on Hanover Street. They went in and attended to their business, everything in the bank seemed normal, but when they emerged Mr X was surprised to notice that everything had returned to how he expected it to be – the empty shops were again empty, and Catchpoles was back to where it had been the previous week.

Mr X is unsure if the scene changed back to normal as he and his wife entered the bank, or as they emerged, but as the bank appeared normal we assume things changed back as he entered the bank. His wife, who had not been on Bold Street, had not noticed anything different that day.

Bold Street #2

Mr B had a lady friend who was very much a skeptic concerning matters of the paranormal. In the 80’s she worked in Liverpool city centre, and if the weather was pleasant, she would sit outside and eat her lunchtime sandwiches. On this particular day, being sunny and warm, she decided to sit on a bench which was situated diagonally opposite Waterstones book shop in Bold Street. As she sat down, she noticed that the sun did not seem as bright as it had been moments before, in fact looking back in later years she described the light as similar to when the area had a partial solar eclipse.

She also noticed that the street did not seem as busy as it had been, which struck her as unusual for the time of day, 12.30pm being the height of the lunch hour. She sat down next to a very smartly dressed man who was already sitting on the bench, and started to unwrap her sandwiches. The gentleman engaged her in conversation, and they chatted about inconsequential matters, as strangers do.

As they chatted, the thought crossed her mind that although smart and very amiable, the man next to her appeared to be dressed in an out of date fashion, reminiscent of the fashions popular in the 1950’s. As they were chatting, the man asked her a question. As she replied, she leaned forward to put her sandwich wrapper in the waste paper bin to the side of the bench. She took her eyes off the man for a split second as she dropped the wrapper in the bin, but carried on replying to his question. On sitting up again, she was astonished to realise that the man had completely vanished. She immediately scanned the area for him, but he was nowhere in sight, and could not have run off in the split second that she had taken her eyes off him. At the same instant, the sun returned to its ordinary brightness, and the area was crowded with people once more.

One last story from Bold Street.

In July 1996, an off duty Mersyside policeman by the name of Frank was out shopping with his wife in the city centre, one Saturday afternoon. Frank and his wife split up to buy from different shops, Carol his wife went to Dillon’s Bookshop, while Frank went to a local store to buy a CD. As he walked along near the Post Office, he suddenly felt as if he’d stepped into an ‘oasis of quietness’. He was then shocked to see a small box van reminiscent of the 1950s speed across his path, narrowly missing him and honking its horn.

Frank realized that he was now standing in the middle of the road and, looking at what should have been Dillons book store, the shop now had Cripps on its sign. Inside, he saw upmarket ladies’ handbags and shoes – no books!

Frank followed a young woman inside – and watched in disbelief as the interior snapped back to Dillons. The girl was still there and Frank grabbed her arm, asking her if she’d seen the same thing. She replied, ‘Yes! I thought it was a clothes shop. I was going to look around, but it’s a bookshop.’

This next incident, is one that is quite detailed and was witnessed by three people. And it was sent in by Anon.

Time traveler

I take pleasure in sharing with you the following occurrence because I personally interviewed one of the parties involved, and have repeatedly gone over the incident with him these past six years. L.C. (his real initials) has been my friend for fifteen years, but as we visited together one day about six years ago, he told me of this most amazing event in his life which haunts him to this day.
L.C. and a business associate, Charlie, (fictitious name), had just finished lunch in the small Southwest Louisiana town of Abbeville. Still discussing their work, they began their drive north along Highway 167 towards the Oil Center city of Lafayette about 15 miles away. The date was October 20, 1969, and the time was about 1:30 in the afternoon. It was one of those picture-perfect days in Fall–clear blue skies and a nippy 60 degrees, just right conditions for cruising along with the car windows rolled down.

The highway had been practically traffic-free until they spotted some distance ahead what appeared to be an old turtle-back-type auto traveling very slowly. As they closed the distance between their vehicle and this relic from the past, their discussion turned from their insurance work to the old car ahead of them. While the style of the auto indicated it to be decades old, it appeared to be in show room condition, which evoked words of admiration from both L.C. and Charlie. Because the car was traveling so slowly, the two men decided to pass it, but before doing so, slowed to better appreciate the beauty and mint condition of the vehicle. As they did so, L.C. noticed a very large bright orange license plate with the year nineteen-forty clearly printed on it. This was most unusual and probably illegal unless provisions had been made for the antique car to be used in ceremonial parades.

As they passed the car slowly to its left, L.C., who was in the passenger’s seat, noticed the driver of the car was a young woman dressed in what appeared to be nineteen-forty vintage clothing. This was nineteen-sixty-nine and a young woman wearing a hat complete with a long colored feather and a fur coat was, to say the least, a bit unusual. A small child stood on the seat next to her, possibly a little girl. The gender of the child was hard to determine as it too wore a heavy coat and cap. The windows of her car were rolled up, a fact which puzzled L.C. because, though the temperature was nippy, it was quite pleasant and a light sweater was sufficient to keep you comfortable. As they pulled up next to the car, their study turned to alarm as their attention was riveted to the animated expressions of fear and panic on the woman’s face. Driving alongside of her at a near crawl (no traffic in either direction allowed this maneuvering) they could see her frantically looking back and forth as if lost or in need of help. She appeared on the verge of tears.

Being on the passenger’s side, L.C. called out to her and asked if she needed help. To this she nodded “yes,” all the while looking down (old cars sat a little higher than the low profiles of today’s cars) with a very puzzled look at their vehicle. L.C. motioned to her to pull over and park on the side of the road. He had to repeat the request several times with hand signs and mouthing the words because her window was rolled up and it seemed she had difficulty hearing them. They saw her begin to pull over so they continued to pass her so as to safely pull over also in front of her. As they came to a halt on the shoulder of the road, L.C. and Charlie turned to look at the old car behind them. However, to their astonishment, there was no sign of the car. Remember, this was on an open highway with no side roads nearby, no place to hide a car. It and its occupants had simply vanished.

L.C. and Charlie looked back at the empty highway. As they sat in the car, spellbound and bewildered, it was obvious to them that a search would prove futile. Meanwhile, the driver of a vehicle that had been behind the old car pulled over behind them. He ran to L.C. and Charlie and frantically demanded an explanation as to what had become of the car ahead of him. His account was as follows. He was driving North on Highway 167 when he saw, some distance away, a new car passing up a very old car at a slow pace, so slow that they appeared to be nearly stopped. He saw the new car pull onto the shoulder and the old car started to do the same. Momentarily, it obstructed the new car and then suddenly disappeared. All that remained ahead of him was the new car on the shoulder of the highway. Desperate to associate logic to this incredible sight, he immediately assumed an accident had occurred. Indeed, an accident had not occurred, but something more haunting, perhaps as tragic, and certainly more mysterious had.

After discussing what each had seen from his perspective, the three men walked the area for an hour. The third man, who was from out of state, insisted on reporting the incident to the police. He felt that it was a “missing person” situation and that they had been witnesses. L.C. and Charlie refused to do so as they had no idea where the woman and child along with the car had gone. They were missing alright, but no police on this plane of existence had the power to find them. The third man finally decided that without their cooperation he could not report this on his own for fear his sanity would be questioned. He did exchange addresses and phone numbers with L.C. and Charlie. For years he kept in touch with them, calling just to talk about this incident and to confirm again that he had seen what he had.

With this incident, I have to wonder given that the woman appeared so fearful, if she was not also, experiencing a time slip from her end? Interesting isn’t it? It makes you think. Finally, I’m going to end with one more, recently published on Reddit by TempisVincitOmnia. He says:

I was driving home early one morning after spending the night at a friend’s house, and there was a particularly heavy fog. I’d been there a few times before, but it was out in a rural area down back roads, and on the way back I must have missed a turn in the fog, because I suddenly noticed I was in unfamiliar territory. I decided to take the next road in the direction I was supposed to turn to begin with, hoping I could get my bearings again.

So I took the next left, but country roads are notorious for curving around in different directions, and this one was no exception. At one point it went down a fairly steep hill with a sign that said “Narrow Bridge”, and indeed there was an old one-lane bridge over a creek at the bottom. On the other side of the bridge (and it was hard to see through the fog even to the other end of the bridge), the road went up again, but it was narrower than before, and it didn’t have any lane striping. There were woods on both sides, the fog was thicker than ever, and I was starting to wonder if I ought to turn around.

When the road leveled out again, the woods thinned out into pastures and farmland, as far as my limited vision could tell. Shortly afterwards I came to an intersection with a wider road that did have the usual striping. Across the intersection, the road turned to dirt and gravel. And this is the weirdest part, the part that makes me think I might have been in a time slip. The stop sign at the intersection wasn’t red with white letters, it was yellow with black letters. I was staring at this in curiosity when I saw headlights coming through the fog, and a car passed on the main road in front of me.

The car looked like a model from the late ’40s or early ’50s, big and rounded with whitewall tires. I only caught a glimpse of the driver, but it looked like he was wearing a hat like men used to wear in those days. He never looked in my direction, and the small taillights disappeared into the fog. I turned to follow him, but I never saw that car again. The sun came out, the fog lifted, and pretty soon I got to a place I recognized and navigated home without incident.

I wondered it about afterwards, though, and finally I decided to try to find that place again, on a sunny day without the fog. But I never did. Or at least, not exactly. I drove out to the area on a sunny afternoon a few years later and found the road I was pretty sure I’d taken before, when I’d gotten lost. It curved around for a bit, then went down a well-graded hill over a modern bridge and up a regular sized road onto a street lined with brick ranch-style house . Then I came to an intersection with a traffic light. Across the intersection, the road led into a housing development.

It was definitely different, but it was too close for me not to wonder. I turned in the same direction I had before… and I came out at the same familiar place. And I’ve been trying for years to explain this to myself in a way that makes sense. Maybe the road I went down wasn’t the same one as before? But it was nearby and followed the same terrain, so it looked similar, and it came out on the same road. Maybe that old stop sign I saw the first time was just a relic that had somehow been overlooked into the 21st century, somehow? But what about that guy with the hat in the old car? Was he maybe a hipster in a fedora going to a classic car show? Somehow, that seems both more and less probable than an actual time slip. I’m not someone who generally believes in the paranormal, but it’s still one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced.

There were just so many examples of time slip experiences that I was really unsure what to put in and what to leave out. But I trust that I have shared enough for you all to get a taste of what is out in the public domains about this subject and indeed it’s one that many, many people have experienced. I actually left more than seven really great stories out of this episode due to time constraints. However, if you are a patron of the show the stories that didn’t make it on this episode, will be available from the members only page of the podcast website at www.walkingtheshadowlands.com.

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I’ve used two lots of bumper music today. No fear by Caleb Etheridge and Into the Unknown by Hill.

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