Time slip

This article is about the paranormal phenomenon. For other uses, see timeslip (disambiguation).

A time slip (also called a timeslip) is an alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of people, travel through time via unknown means. As with all paranormal phenomena, the objective reality of such experiences is disputed.

Cases

Ghosts of Versailles

Main article: Moberly-Jourdain incident

One of the best-known, and earliest, examples of a time slip was reported by two English women, Charlotte Anne Moberly (16 September 1846 - 7 May 1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924), the principal and vice-principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, who claimed they slipped back in time in the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles from the summer of 1901 to the period of the French Revolution.

The Vanishing Hotel

A widely-publicised case from October 1979, described in the ITV television series Strange But True?[1], concerned the Simpsons and the Gisbys, two English married couples driving through France en route to a holiday in Spain. They claimed to have stayed overnight at a curiously old-fashioned hotel and decided to break their return journey at the same hotel but were unable to find it. Photographs taken during their stay, which were in the middle of a roll of film, were missing, even from the negative strips, when the pictures were developed.

Other cases

More recent reports include a series of accounts of apparent time slips in the area of Bold Street, Liverpool from the 1990s to the present day.[2] Andrew MacKenzie, of the Society for Psychical Research, investigated several British cases, including an experience in which three naval cadets appeared to travel back in time to Kersey in Suffolk at a time when it was a medieval plague village, and one in which a Scottish woman experienced the aftermath of the Dark Age Battle of Nechtanesmere in 685AD.

Characteristics

Feeling of unreality

Many time slip witnesses report that, at the start of their experience of the phenomena, their immediate surroundings take on an oddly flat, underlit and lifeless appearance, and normal sounds seem muffled. This is sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression and unease. In some respects, this facet of the phenomenon is similar to the Oz Factor identified by British UFO researcher Jenny Randles in some reports of encounters with supposed extraterrestrial craft.

Moberly's account of her experience at Versailles records:

We walked briskly forward, talking as before, but from the moment we left the lane an extraordinary depression had come over me, which, in spite of every effort to shake off, steadily deepened. There seemed to be absolutely no reason for it; I was not at all tired, and was becoming more interested in my surroundings. I was anxious that my companion should not discover the sudden gloom upon my spirits, which became quite overpowering on reaching the point where the path ended, being crossed by another, right and left…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.

Jourdain's report of the same event states that:

there was a feeling of depression and loneliness about the place. I began to feel as if I were walking in my sleep; the heavy dreaminess was oppressive.

Ability to interact

Reports vary as to whether those experiencing time slips can take an active part in the event, interacting with the time being "visited". In the Versailles case, the two ladies were apparently seen, and spoken to, by people they saw. The British holidaymakers in 1979 went further, staying in a hotel and eating dinner and breakfast in the course of their experience. Both these cases are also unusually prolonged experiences, taking place over at least several hours.

In other cases, the subject is a passive observer of the "past" scene, and it seems that the "typical" time slip lasts only a matter of a few minutes.

Time slips in popular culture

• The idea of the time slip has been exploited by a number of science fiction and fantasy writers. Notable stories using the theme include John Wyndham's short stories Odd and Stitch in Time in Consider Her Ways (1961). Chronoclasm and Pawley's Peepholes, included in the collection The Seeds of Time (1956), explore the subject from the point of view of those being visited.

• 1990s sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart saw its main character Garry Sparrow walk down a passage in 1993 only to find himself in 1940. He was able to go back and forth at will, with the time in the past running concurrently with the present day. The series finished in 1999 with the 'past' year being 1945.

• The 1990 novella The Langoliers by Stephen King involved a jet airliner which had passed through a timeslip into yesterday, and the crew and passengers' desperate attempts to return to today before being consumed by the eponymous Langoliers.

• The 1970 children's TV series Timeslip explores the notion of two children who are able to slip through time. In the series the children are able to travel backwards to visit their parents as young people and forwards to meet themselves as adults.

• Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse-Five, experiences a series of time slips throughout his life after becoming "unstuck in time".

• Martian Time-Slip is a 1964 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It advances the idea that the flow of time can change or even be reversed from place-to-place. Time on Mars is much more malleable than time on Earth or at least there are more portals and loop holes on Mars.

• The Moberly and Jourdain story was filmed with Wendy Hiller and Hannah Gordon as Miss Morison's Ghosts in 1981.

• In The Sandlot: Heading Home, Tommy "Santa" Santorelli gets hit by a baseball during a mis-firing of fireworks and ends up in 1976 on the Sandlot when he was almost 13. At the end, he gets hit by a ball again landing him back in his 40's where the future's changed. (e.g. Benny's his manager, he stayed on the Dodgers, etc.)

• Picnic at Hanging Rock hints at the theme of a time slip, though it is more of a film about unexplained disappearances. The ones depicted in the film are entirely fictional.

• The Long Love Letter is a Japanese drama that focuses on students who have been sent years in the future along with their entire school building. Not knowing a time slip has occurred, they must traverse to survive in such a dismal situation.

• In Operation Love, another Japanese drama, Ken Iwase (Tomohisa Yamashita) attends the wedding of a childhood friend while filled with regret for never having confessed his feelings. While at the reception, Ken is given the opportunity to slip back in time to make her his girlfriend.

• After Benjamin Linus moves the island at the conclusion of Lost's fourth season, the island's inhabitants begin slipping through various times in the island's history while remaining in the same physical location. However, it is unclear whether they are the ones moving in time, or if the island itself is sliding in time "under" them.

• The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time video game series by Ubisoft and the 2010 movie of the same title use time slip and more broadly the time travel element as their major plot device and gameplay mechanism.

• In Jessamy (1967), a novel by Barbara Sleigh, a little girl staying in an old house falls asleep in a cupboard and wakes up in 1914.

• 2011 Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris hints towards a recurring time slip from its main protagonist.

• 2011 11/22/63, a novel by Stephen King, Jake Epping walks through a time slip to enter into 1958 to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

• 2011 Time Slip: Terror in the Texas Wetlands, a YA (young adult) novel by Stephen Lew, Four Texas teens stumble upon a living nightmare when an electrical storm creates a time portal. The group unintentionally journeys 158 years back in time where they are held captive by a band of Karankawa Indians. On the desolate Texas wetlands, the mismatched teens must confront their inner-demons, survive the hostile environment, and find a way to work together to get back home.

See also

• Déjà vu
• Time loop
• Time travel
• Time warp (science fiction)
• Unexplained disappearances

Sources

• Forman, Joan (1978). Mask of Time: The Mystery Factor in Timeslips, Precognition and Hindsight. UK: MacDonald. ISBN 978-0354042710. 
• Mackenzie, Andrew (1997). Adventures in Time:Encounters with the Past. UK: Athlone. ISBN 978-0485820010. 

External links

Moberly and Jourdain experience

• Moberly and Jourdain papers at Oxford University
• www.museumofhoaxes.com/versailles.html
• www.trivia-library.com/time-traveling-adventures/index.htm
• An extensive account including excerpts from original papers
• The full text of "An Adventure" in PDF Format

Liverpool, Bold Street incidents

• Parascience