Train Ride to a Parallel Dimension
Station Road, Newtonmore, Scotland
On May 30th of this year I received a comment on my post titled Missing Time Experience? about the time slip and memory loss incident that I experienced in my early teens. The comment came from a woman named Linda Smith who, as I later learned, was an American and a frequent visitor to the British Isles.
Linda related to me two very fascinating unexplained events that she endured while traveling to the England and Scotland. Last week I wrote of the first experience in Missing Time Inside a Stone Circle.
Linda’s second episode of high strangeness, however, was even more bizarre. This incident took place a decade or so after the Stone Circle incident, in 2004.
A visit to Scotland, a journey to the past
Once again, with Linda’s consent, I’ll recount her story verbatim as she emailed it to me:
“In 2004 I had grown absurdly fond of a PBS series, ‘Monarch of the Glen’, which was set in the highlands of Scotland. When I discovered that most of it was filmed in and around the village of Newtonmore and that Newtonmore was a regular stop on the main rail line to the North and Inverness, I simply had to go myself.
After a totally sleepless red-eye flight to London and another one to Glasgow, I finally got on the afternoon train for Inverness. Happily chatting with a group of friendly Scots, I nearly missed the stop. But I did swing off, the only passenger alighting. John, in spite of advancing age, I’m quite travel-oriented and love to travel solo where I can do and see entirely what I like. I have traveled extensively in England and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. But I have always encountered a rail station where I could ask directions if necessary.
So, suitcase and carry-on in hand, I disembarked from the train at the Newtonmore station in Scotland. I swung onto the platform to meet absolutely nothing except a giant transformer in the center, surrounded by chain link fence with the polite British notice saying, ‘Do not touch equipment. Danger of Death.’ I sidled carefully around that and found myself looking out on open countryside. With the exception of a two-story Victorian style house that I took to the the stationmaster’s — rather like a lighthouse keeper — there was simply nothing except open moorland. As I stood there in shock, a young man rode up on a bicycle.
Of course, I asked, ‘Sir, can you tell me which way the town is?’ He stared silently at me for so long I had just concluded he was either a deaf mute or what the country people call ‘a simple’ and prepared to walk to the stationmaster’s house. Just then he said vaguely, having looked around in every direction, ‘…it’s not THAT way,’ and pointed south in the exact direction I had come from. Rather than pointing this out, though, I asked, ‘Could you tell me where the Glen Hotel is?’ I had booked a room over the Internet, as it was seemingly the town’s most popular. More confidently, he replied, ‘No…no, there’s no place like that around here’ and promptly and swiftly rode away.
Frustrated, I dragged my luggage down the road to the ‘station’. I was thrilled to see that the front door was open. As I approached the front yard, that door was suddenly and violently slammed shut from behind! I didn’t know what to do — there was no other sign of civilization, but on the other hand I was so isolated I had no idea what I might encounter if I tried to pursue my information quest. I decided safety dictated that I should head up the only road there was, in the direction the man on the bike had gone. There were trees on the horizon, so there must be someone. And I couldn’t see any other choice.
Accordingly, I set off. The train had arrived in typical British punctuality, at 6:32 p.m. Everything was unbelievably quiet, but I thought to myself, ‘Lovely peaceful Scotland with its wonderfully kind people!’ (all the more strange about the slamming door — not at all like the Scots I remember). Just then, at the first road to the right, a lorry came to the main road and turned right. I stopped and put on my best forlorn lost-tourist expression. To my shock, he looked right through me with no sign of recognition, let alone the expected query as to whether he could help me find directions!
I was astounded and started to hail him back, but just then I spied a young-looking woman about a block ahead of me. Thinking she would be more approachable, I hurried toward her. She was pushing what looked like an old-fashioned baby carriage (‘pram’ to the Brits) and, even with my wheeled suitcase, I hoped I could overtake her. I was horrified to see her look back, see me, and start hurrying away. I increased my pace the best I could, but the faster I walked the faster she did, and she got away from me, I suppose. I say ‘I suppose’ because that’s the last thing I remember — after wondering why she acted scared of a little old lady dragging two suitcases! — until I found myself at the dead end of Station Road on the Main Street of Newtonmore.
I remember well thinking that the lights of the petrol station just ahead of me and the shops and buildings on down the road were the most welcome sight I had ever laid eyes on! So I followed the hotel’s website direction and directly found myself in the hotel lobby. I had to knock loudly on the kitchen door before locating someone to check me in. Inquiring about dinner in the hotel restaurant, I was told the dining room was closed for the night but that I could probably pick up something at the local grocery just down the street. I did just that, purchasing a packet of lovely farmhouse veg soup, pate, crackers, fruit, and a badly needed wee dram of local Scotch! I say all those details in the hope of convincing you that I do not customarily suffer from memory lapses…
Anyway, after a couple of days in the tiny village I decided to take an unexpected detour to Inverness for a couple of days; a local bus could take me from Main Street in front of the hotel straight into central Inverness. So I did not have to go back to that rail ‘station’.
Now for the Twilight Zone part. I was in France (Rennes le Chateau area!) last year and had decided I didn’t want to return to the US immediately), so I took the overnight sleeper to Scotland for a few days. After a lovely night in my tiny compartment, I woke early for our expected 8:30 Inverness arrival.
With a jolt I suddenly realized we would be going past Newtonmore; it’s not only the main line to the North but the only one. I was thrilled to think of the Danger of Death transformer and the stationmaster’s house again! We pulled to the station. It was in the middle of a bunch of buildings — residential-looking, for the most part. The station was a long, low building that obviously resembled what it was, an old Victorian rail station. Since no one boarded the train, we set off almost immediately while I sat frozen with shock. No transformer, no stationmaster’s dwelling, and plenty of buildings where I would have certainly stopped for help had they been there!
I was weekending on the coast at Plockton, an atmospheric fishing village, and I wanted desperately to ask someone — anyone, about Newtonmore. Of course, they would have thought I was senile or worse, I assumed. Also, I rationalized that the station I saw was one further along and that we just didn’t stop at Newtonmore since it might be only a Requet stop. But after I got home, I carefully counted the stops betwen Dalwhinnie and Inverness; there’s less than half a dozen. So we had made the Newtonmore stop.
Then I went to Google Earth and looked on all those buildings along Station Road. I then checked the time of sunset in northern Scotland. I was stunned to find that it’s around nine p.m. at the time of year, early May, that I was there. I had gotten off the train at 6:32. The trusty Internet tells me that village shops and pubs are a five- to ten-minute walk away. I found this from the Old Station’s website, among others. That long, one story railway station had been closed awhile back and has been turned into a bed and breakfast, replacing a Victorian structure that burned down when a passing steam engine’s spark sent it up in flames!
Somewhere, over three hours had vanished from my life. But that pales beside the contrast in the behavior of those four people as opposed to the normally hospitable, courteous behavior of the Scots! My next day in the village, in contrast, was absolutely filled with beautifully friendly and charming people. I simply can’t help wondering: Could they have thought I was a ghost? I really think the truck driver, from his behavior, just didn’t see me.”
A simple mistake, or a train stop to a different time?
As I mentioned Missing Time Inside a Stone Circle, there’s much more to this experience than Linda’s missing time episode at Stanton Moor in Derbyshire, although that doesn’t necessarily make it any more or less significant.
I understand that those skeptics who read this are likely to dismiss this as a matter of simply getting off at the wrong station, but if you carefully at the facts, there seems to be a number of aspects to this story that are hard to explain away. For example:
- Linda is a very experienced traveler, and particularly knowledgeable and experienced in traveling to England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland; this makes it less likely that she simply became confused and went to the wrong station.
- As she stated, there is less than a dozen stops between Dalwhinnie and Inverness, including Newtonmore where her experience took place;
- After Linda’s memory lapse and three hours of missing time, she did find herself again in Newtonmore, or Newtonmore as it exists today;
Could it be that Linda Smith indeed disembarked from the train at the Newtonmore station, but in an earlier period of its history? The lack of buildings, the Victorian “stationmaster’s” house that reportedly burned down years before, the odd behavior of normally friendly Scots — could it mean that Linda was experiencing an echo of the past? Or as the intruder into this lost era, was she looked upon by its residents as ghost or spectral entity?
Time slips: not an uncommon phenomena
Like most people fascinated with the paranormal and esoteric, I’ve heard of these time slip incidents. Upon researching it, I’ve found a number of references to the phenomena, one of the better ones coming from Emmy-Award winning television producer and videographer Tim Swartz’s, He covers the the topic in depth on the Conspiracy Journal website.
Mr. Swartz is the author of several books, including Time Travel: A How-To Insiders Guide. He defines the phenomenon known as time slips as “…an event where it appears that some other era has briefly intruded on the present. A time slip seems to be spontaneous in nature and localization, but there are places on the planet that seem to be more prone than others to time slip events. As well, some people may be more inclined to experience time slips than others.” He goes on to give quite a few examples of peoples accounts of time slips.
Does time exist? The Universe as an endless field of potential
Through research into quantum physics by such scientific luminaries as Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Robert Jahn and Dean Radin (among others) we move ever further away from the Newtonian model of our universe, and even from Einstein’s view of relative space-time. As we begin to learn of and embrace the Quantum Model of the Universe, these “missing time” and “time slip” phenomena begin to make some sense.
In Lynne McTaggart’s excellent book The Field, she distills these complex ideas down to the point in which the non-scientific public can begin to grasp them (still a lot to get one’s head around, I’ll admit — but fascinating stuff). Based on McTaggart’s research and interviews she’s conducted with the aforementioned scientists and many others, she describes the Universe as an endless field of potential, where there is no set or fixed outcome or points in time.
Because subatomic particles are capable of moving between and interacting across all points of space and time, all possible outcomes in what we think of as the past, present and future may exist in a vast, omnipresent field. It is through this field in which we may occasionally, accidentally, traverse.
The manner and means in which we stumble into other periods of time or parallel dimensions is unknown, of course. Perhaps some people are more prone to this phenomena for some reason, as Mr. Swartz suggests. It has also been proposed that there are regions of the world where the veil between space and time and parallel dimensions is thinner and we may inadvertently pass between or into them every so often.
If this view of the Universe is correct, it may be at the core of many — if not all — supernatural and paranormal phenomena, including missing time and time slips.
John Carlson has had a long-standing interests in all things strange and spiritual and has interviewed many noted writers and lecturers of the paranormal and in the field of cryptozoology. John also runs a professional web site design and consulting company, Carlson Web Design, LLC, and resides with his wife and two sons in the great state of New Jersey. When not working on web sites or being being a dad and husband, he tries to write as often as he can on this blog.
John Carlson is a husband, father, and business owner. He’s worked as a self–employed Web developer for over ten years. John was raised in New Jersey USA where he currently resides with his wife and two sons.
My partner and I went through something of this sort when driving on Anglesey some years ago. We stopped in a little town called Amlwch, hoping to find a hotel to stay for the night.
The streets were completely empty, the only sound that of seagulls on chimney pots above us, not a soul anywhere. We walked and walked and came to a large hotel and entered. It was as though every living soul have been abducted, and our cheeriness began to pall because there was absolutely no one, anywhere. We rang bells, called out, even walked into their kitchens, but absolutely no one was to be found. Spooked, we drove on and found another hotel, and were so alarmed to find the same thing. Absolutely not a soul walked the streets. And we jumped into our rented car and sped far away as fast as possible. The scariness of this eperience has never left us. We know just how you felt.
Eerie silence and an usual absence of people in a normally busy time and place are aspects of this phenomenon that are often reported. It was like that in my own missing time episode. Everything was strangely quiet, kind of “muted”, for lack of a better description. It was strange, otherworldly feeling. It’s really amazing to me how many people report these experiences. Thanks, Chris.
HI
I read about this experience of Linda Smith, and it got me interested enough to do a little research. Newtonmore was a small community prior to the railway arriving in 1865, after that Newtonmore became a popular Victorian stop over, so it grew in size quite rapidly.
Electricity was first introduced to Kingussie in 1924, Newtonmore is only about 2 miles from Kingussie, so it could be assumed that both villages got their electric supply about the same time. Big electric transformers on a station platform would probably have come later.
The first stationmasters house in Newtonmore was made of Timber, it was burnt down in 1896 by a spark from a steam train. This event took place prior to the introduction of electricity into that region, and long after Newtonmore had become a thriving community. So it does not seem likely that what Linda Smith is describing is the Newtonmore of our past, as she would not have gotten off a train in that Village at any time after 1924 and only seen open moorland.
I am not trying to debunk anything that was written in the above post/s, all I am saying is that what Linda Smith describes is not the Newtonmore that we know from our historically recorded past.
If time shifts could be experienced by people, then it could also be possible for people to experience shifts into alternative realities
Alec — Thanks for that information. I really appreciate your taking the time to research that and let me know of your findings. I doubt this sort of phenomena is so straightforward as to be able to make any assumptions. If all possible outcomes branch of into parallel realities, as many scientists believe may be the case, then it could be that if one found themselves in a alternate reality there would be some slight or some very large differences. While it all sounds very strange in the extreme, the idea of alternative realities might the most logical explanation. As far out as it sounds, it’s the explanation that I lean toward, even though I couldn’t tell you how things like this come about.
Thanks again,
John
“The train had arrived in typical British punctuality”
As a regular user of public transport in Scotland, I find that sentence is more unbelievable than any number of timeslips, ghosts or alternate dimensions
Scotland’s public transportation sounds a lot like New York City’s.
In light of what Alec said, I’m wondering if Linda didn’t just fall asleep and have a vivid dream. She said she didn’t sleep on the flight, so she may have been exausted. She also says that following the young-looking woman was the last thing she remember before finding herself at the dead end of Station Road on the Main Street of Newtonmore. Maybe she just woke up from a dream? It might have even been a slightly psychic dream, since she saw the Victorian house.
Jeff — I always like to keep my mind open to the simplest explanation rather than jump straight to the assumption that these incidents are always of a paranormal in nature, so I suppose it could have been just a very vivid dream. Based on the vividness and detail, I’d say it would have been closer to a hallucination than a mere dream. However, I’m sure Linda would disagree with that assessment. She sounded very convinced of the reality of the whole experience, and having gone through an episode of missing time myself, I tend to be sympathetic and believing when someone tells me of a personal experience like this. I know that nobody can convince me that what I went through was just a waking dream or daydream, or that I just “spaced out”, and I think it would be unfair of me to push that idea on someone else who has been through something similar. It’s very disorienting and disturbing.
Jeff, I really appreciate your thoughts and, believe me, I had considered the same explanation. The problem lies in the fact that on the train, I was so engrossed in chatting with my new Scots friends, I can’t believe I would have fallen asleep in mid-sentence. They knew where I was going but would not have awoken me to let me know I had arrived? Still, suppose I had fallen asleep and gone accidentally to Inverness, where the train stops at the end of the line approximately a half-hour later? Someone would have had to get me off the train, complete with luggage, and put me onto a return late train to Newtonmore — for which I would have had to purchase a ticket — all the while with my not knowing a thing, seen to it that I got off at Newtonmore and steered me up Station Road to the village. Alternative: Suppose I actually did get off the train but fell asleep on the side of the road with my suitcases for three hours. It is the only road from the station to the main street of the small village, and I find it quite incomprehensible to imagine that someone would not have been passing by and attempted to rouse me (in a metropolis, yes; in a fantastically helpful and friendly countryside, no). Beyond that, with over twenty red-eye flights abroad (nine continuing to Scotland), both by myself and in the company of my eyewitness husband, absolutely nothing like this ever happened to me/us. If it was a dream/hallucination, that alternative is more scary than any other explanation! I have had lucid dreams, but with those you wake up to your familiar environment where you fell asleep and, while it seemed very real, you know you couldn’t have physically moved to the location.
But thanks for your hypothesis — I’m still struggling to explain it all just to myself…!
This is a very interesting story John. In the cases that I have studied, though this is not set in stone, if someone sees a time-slip experiencer, they often react as if they have seen a ghost. I have often wondered if cases of someone having a ghostly encounter outside of a “normal” haunted house situation are actually seeing someone caught up in a time-slip.
As well, many time-slip cases seem to take the experiencer to a past time, but there are some odd differences like buildings or even whole towns that were never at the location anytime in the past.
This of course is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if some people having time-slips are not actually experiencing an alternative reality whose “current” time would correspond to sometime in our past. This might also explain the experiences where it seems like everyone in a building or town has disappeared. Perhaps those having the experience are just a little behind or even ahead of the “flow” of that timeline.
Tim (and Linda!) — Thanks so much for your input. Tim, I’ve really enjoyed your thoughts on these type of phenomena, and I’m looking forward to reading your books and discussing them on this blog. I agree with what you’re saying; if we’re dealing with an alternate reality then I would expect that there would be some differences in what the person experiences. I’m reminded of a Coast-to-Coast AM interview with Whitley Strieber in which he talked about driving with his son and son’s friend on Route 17 in Paramus, NJ (which is less than five minutes from where I live) and temporarily passing through some futuristic landscape. I’ll have to try to find that and link to it if possible.
I’ve also considered the idea that someone from another timeline or alternate reality might appear to be a “ghostlike” entity. Linda’s supposition might have been correct, based on the odd reaction (or lack of reaction) from the local Scots.
Strange silences and an absence of people is also something of which I hear frequently reported, as if the person is somehow out of sync with normal reality — which is how I felt during my experience. The concept of being slightly ahead or behind the flow of time makes sense in this context.
Thanks again for the comment, Tim. Hope to hear from you again!
not a uncommon phenomena , i have experienced them in the past ,normally during paranormal investigations , maybe a glimpse at the past or another reality? who knows but makes for a interesting evening when it happens .
A very interesting evening I’m sure, David! I experienced a period of missing time myself, which I recount on this blog, but I have no recollection of what happened. I just found myself in another part of town, a good ways from where I’d started out. I wish I did remember what happened, but on some level I’ve always felt that I would at some point in my life.
Hello-
My sister and her best friend had an interesting “time slip” last year; they were staying overnight at an old inn north of Austin, Texas. ( the tiny town where their lodging was located was once a stagecoach stop-over) . My sister’s friend went out to the open porch that connected to their room to smoke a cigarette, when suddenly the porch “morphed” into a room, something like a kitchen, with a dutch door. The top half of the door was open, and she saw 2 young children in old-fashioned clothing playing in the yard. She felt that someone was staring at her, so she turned around to see a woman in a long, old-fashioned dress with a broom in her hand. The woman stared at her with a worried look on her face, and walked briskly to the door, calling her children to come inside quickly. The children turned, saw “Sally” ( my sister’s friend) and with frightened looks ran around her and into the house. “Sally” turned to look at the 3 “ghosts” and all had disappeared, and the house was a porch once again……
Wow, Mel — that’s one of the more interesting stories I’ve received. Thanks for sharing it.
Hi
I haven’t experienced any-thing myself but whilst talking to someone at work they mentioned a friend of there’s whose wife had an odd experience at an ancient site.
From what I can gather after her husband had gone to work she decided to photograph a nearby prehistoric monument. She got there about 10ish in the morning and then everything went weird. The landscape changed and she lost all track of time. Her husband came home about 5 in the evening and found her sitting on the stairs with no idea how she got there. She described the scenery she had seen which turned out to be from hundreds of years ago. There was also something odd in the photos she had taken.
This incident took place in Herefordshire in the UK. I don’t know the site although a cromlech was mentioned.
Amanda – Fascinating that I keep hearing variations on these missing time and time slip stories from so many people. I wish I knew what to make of it, but my gut instinct tells me that time is somehow collapsing in on itself. There may be some type of a quickening happening, where past, present and future converge. Or, perhaps the veil parallel realities are becoming thinner. I don’t know for sure, but I feel that it’s significant and may coincide with the increased UFO activity that we’re seeing. Thank you so much for sharing this account.
Just a quickie to report a very recent incident: I entered our ‘den’ where my wife was reading a book and half-watching the TV. Looking at the screen I saw an obnoxious insurance commercial featuring an opera singer, the sort which seems to be on at every break. To my surprise (after probably no longer than a couple of seconds) the picture changed to a scene from ‘Pride & Prejudice’, one of my wife’s ‘always watch when it’s on’ films. I asked her if she’d seen the commercial and she hadn’t so I ran back the PVR ‘loop’ to show her but it wasn’t there! Twenty minutes later that very advert appeared. Seeing the past, future or parallel universe? I don’t know.
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I hear so many of these stories, Simon. So, so strange and difficult to explain. And they seem to be so much more complex than I ever imagined. Thanks for sharing that one.
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hi it richard i love time slip story i think it is something
strange like to chat with you soon
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Sure thing, Richard. Anytime. It’s definitely a very odd story, but having gone through something a bit similar, I have trouble dismissing such accounts.
Shoot me an email anytime.
- John
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Anyone who is interested in timeslips who hasnt done so already should take a look at all slips taking place in Liverpool,there is tons of them! just type liverpool timeslips into the browser or go to
http://www.slemen.com/forum/
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Cool! Thanks, Steven. I’ll check that out.
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