Time slip

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 through supernatural (rather than technological) means. As with all paranormal phenomena, the objective reality of such experiences is disputed.

Contents

[edit] Cases

The 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 believed 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.

On August 10, 1901 Moberly and Jourdain were visiting the Palace of Versailles. They decided to go in search of the Petit Trianon. While walking through the grounds they both were impressed by a feeling of oppressive gloom. They claimed to have encountered, and interacted with, a number of people in old fashioned attire whom they later assumed to have been members of the court of Marie Antoinette and to have seen a figure that may have been Marie Antoinette herself on the day in 1792 when she learned that the mob had stormed the Tuileries Palace.

In subsequent research they found that the day they had visited Versailles was the anniversary of this event, and they believed that they had stumbled onto a memory that had "impressed itself" on the location. In fact, at the time of the storming of the Tuileries, Marie Antoinette was not at Versailles and it has been suggested that the two witnesses had confused this event with the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789.

Critics also claimed that they had later added details to the story from the one they had first claimed in 1901 to convince others—and perhaps themselves—of the "reality" of their experience.[1]

Both were highly respected educators, working for reputable scholastic institutions, and news of a "paranormal" experience would most likely not have been advantageous to either their career or personal reputation at the time. Furthermore, they did not broadcast their experience until many years after the event, when they published a book under assumed names. (Their real identity was revealed only after the death of Ms. Jourdain, in 1924). Both women declared to the end of their lives that what they had experienced was real. However, when they first began to discuss the events with each other, Annie Moberly claimed to have seen people and details in the scene that Eleanor Jourdain had not, although their stories were, in general, consistent. It still remains a mystery as to whether it happened at all, and if it did, what it means to paranormal research.

Their experiences were published in a book under the title An Adventure in 1911, under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont, with a foreword by J. W. Dunne. In 1981, the account of their experience was turned into a film, Miss Morison's Ghosts, directed by John Bruce and starring Wendy Hiller and Hannah Gordon.[2]

In a review of the history of the Moberly-Jourdain adventure and the extensive public reaction to it Terry Castle notes with skepticism the claims that a shared delusion may have arisen out of a lesbian Folie à deux between the two women[3].

A non-supernatural explanation of the events is given by Philippe Jullian in his biography of the aristocratic decadent French poet Robert de Montesquiou. At the time of Moberly and Jourdain's excursion to Versailles Montesquiou lived nearby and reportedly gave parties, sometimes for charity in the grounds where his friends dressed in period costume and performed tableaux vivants as part of the party entertainments. Moberly and Jourdain may have inadvertently stumbled into a rehearsal for one of these performances. The Marie-Antoinette figure may have been a society lady or a cross-dresser, the pockmarked man Montesquiou himself. It is likely, it was suggested, that a gathering of the French decadent avant-garde of the time may have made a sinister impression on the two Edwardian spinsters who would have been little used to such company.

The de Montesquiou explanation does not, however, account for the changes to the landscape around the Petit Trianon which Moberly and Jourdain reported.

The Vanishing Hotel

A widely-publicised case from October 1979, described in the ITV television series Strange But True?, 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.[4]

[edit] 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.

C A E Moberly's account[5] 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.

Eleanor Jourdain's report[6] 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.

These are surprisingly consistent with aspects of more recent time slip reports, including these examples reported by Tim Swartz[7]:

A case from Yorkshire in the 1980s:

What I remember is a brilliantly sunny day with lots of other people around, but as we made our way down, it just suddenly seemed as if no one else were there but my wife and me. An old woman appeared on the footway opposite us. It became cooler and duller.

Another from Australia:

I was driving toward the main intersection of the town, when suddenly I felt a change in the air. It wasn't the classic colder feeling, but a change, like a shift in atmosphere. The air felt denser somehow.

Some of the accounts from Liverpool mention similar effects[8]:

The street also seemed unusually quiet, there were sounds but they appeared quite muted.
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

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 French 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.

[edit] 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.

The 1970 children's TV series Timeslip [9] 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.

It has also been claimed[10] that J R R Tolkien was influenced by Moberly and Jourdain's Adventure.

The Moberly and Jourdain story was filmed with Wendy Hiller and Hannah Gordon as Miss Morison's Ghosts in 1981[11].

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. (eg. 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. (It should be noted that 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. Unbeknownst of the occurrence of a time slip, they must traverse to survive in such a dismal situation.

In Proposal Daisakusen, 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 time slip back in time to make her his girlfriend.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Ghosts of Versailles
  2. ^ Miss Morison's Ghosts (1981)
  3. ^ Contagious Folly: An Adventure and Its Skeptics", Critical Inquiry, volume 7, number 4, pages 741-772, 1991. ISSN 0093-1896
  4. ^ Para.Science - Time Slips
  5. ^ Moberley and Jourdain An Adventure London 1911 (reprinted 1931)
  6. ^ Moberley and Jourdain An Adventure London 1911 (reprinted 1931)
  7. ^ On The Edge of Time: The Mystery of Time Slips, By Tim Swartz
  8. ^ Para.Science - Time Slips
  9. ^ www.timeslip.org.uk - The Official Timeslip Website
  10. ^ Book Review: A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie
  11. ^ Miss Morison's Ghosts (1981)

[edit] External links

Moberly and Jourdain experience

French Holiday case

Liverpool, Bold Street incidents

Other reports

Languages