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
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?, 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 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. 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 685 AD. Sir Victor Goddard claimed to have seen, in 1935, the Drem, Scotland airfield as it would be in 1939.
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.