Train Ride to a Parallel Dimension

Station Road, Newtonmore, Scotland
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:

  1. 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.
  2. As she stated, there is less than a dozen stops between Dalwhinnie and Inverness, including Newtonmore where her experience took place;
  3. 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.

83 thoughts on “Train Ride to a Parallel Dimension”

  1. hi there something weird happend with an old friend of mine he was in a caravan with friends and they went out to buy gifts, they went down an old cobbled street in wales, my friend saw a trinket box with a picture of a globe on the lid. He went in and bought it he noticed the shop was old with the old window fronted counters he bought it and came back to the caravan and showed his friends it at the end of the week he thought he would go back and to his shock the shop was empty! And according to the people he spoke to it had been shut 20 yrs! He came back looked for his trinket box and it had gone his friends in the caravan said he had not showed them such a trinket box at all! But he insists it was not a dream it was to vivid the shop looked victorian with beems on the outside.

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  2. WELL I DONT KNOW EXACTLY IF THIS INCIDENT FITS YOUR VERY INTERESTING TOPICS
    BUT SEARCHING THRU THE INTERNET ALL THE TIME SLIPS INCIDENTS I RAN UPON THIS BLOG AND I WOULD BE GLADLY TO SHARE MY STORY. JUST SO YOU KNOW IM A HISPANIC LATINO PERSON AND MY ENGLISH ISNT QUITE PERFECT SO I APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE THIS MAY CAUSE. ALL I ASK IS TO PLEASE BEAR WITH ME . THIS IS MY STORY: BACK IN 1997 I USED TO TAKE CARE OF MY GRANDPA IN THE HOSPITAL OVER IN MEXICO. AND OVERTHERE THE HOSPITALS ARE MADE WITH PURE CLEAR GLASS ALL AROUND , I MEAN THE WALLS THE DOORS ETC. TO PUT IT THIS WAY ANYONE ROAMING THRU THE HOSPITAL HALLS COULD SEE INSIDE YOUR ROOM . SO BACK TO MY STORY EVERY SINGLE NIGHT I STAYED UP LATE AT NIGHT I WOULD ROAM AROUND THE HALLS FROM THE 3RD FLOOR JUST TO TAKE A LITTLE BREAK FROM BEING IN THE ROOM THE WHOLE DAY. I USUALLY WENT OUTSIDE DOWNSTAIRS TO GET SOME NIGHT FRESH JUNE SUMMER COOL AIR . BUT ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS I WILL NEVER FORGET AND TILL THIS DAY MAKES THE HAIR OF THE BACK OF MY NECK RISE . I WISH SOMEONE WOULD GIVE ME AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHAT HAPPENED . AS BEING LATE AT NIGHT HOSPITALS TEND TO GET ISOLATED ESPECIALLY ON UPPER FLOORS YOU’LL SEE EVERYOTHER PERSON WALK BY. SO ME WANTING TO GO OUT TO TAKE A BREAK I STARTED TO WALK TO THE STAIRWAY TO GO DOWNSTAIRS BUT ALL THE SUDDEN UP ON THE OTHER UPPER FLOOR TO BE EXACT IT WAS THE 4TH FLOOR I SAW I VERY BRIGHT LIGHT BUT IT WAS BEHIND THE DOOR THAT LEAD TO THE HOSPITAL ROOF . SO ME BEING VERY CURIOUS WENT TO CHECKED OUT WHERE THE LIGHT CAME FROM SO WHEN I OPENED THE DOOR THE BROAD DAYLIGHT MADE ITS WAY IN AND THE RAYS OF THE SUN HURTED MY EYES. SO THIS IS WHEN I REALIZE SOMETHING ODD WAS GOING ON SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT , HOW COULD THERE BE BRIGHT DAYLIGHT WHEN SECONDS AGO BEFORE OPENING THE ROOF DOOR WAS PLAIN MIDNIGHT . BUT BEING ME A RATIONAL HUMAN BEING TRY TO FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION. BUT TO THIS DAY I HAVEN’T WHAT I SAW NEXT SENDS CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE . I WAS EXPECTING TO SEE THE FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE AND SINCE I WAS ON THE HOSPITAL ROOF I WAS EXPECTING TO SEE THE WHOLE CITY SKYLINE FULL OF BUILDINGS AND STREETS AND CARS PEOPLE ETC. WALKING DOWN THE SIDEWALK ON BROAD DAYLIGHT . BUT WHAT I CAN ACCOUNT FOR AND REMEMBER VIVIDLY TILL THIS DAY IS WHAT I SAW WAS MEXICO CITY BUT TO ME THE SKYLINE BUILDINGS ETC, WERE COMPLETELY FROM A DIFFERENT TIME AND THE CARS AND THE WAY PEOPLE WERE DRESSED IN OLD FASHION CLOTHES IT LOOKED TO ME THIS WAS BACK FROM THE 50’S IT WAS AS IF I WAS WATCHING AND OLD MOVIE WITH THE OLD FASHIONED PEOPLE IN IT , ALSO THE ATMOSPHERE FELT OPPRESSED AND I KIND OF FELT HARD TO BREATH AND A BIG SILENCE ALL AROUND LIKE WHEN U PUT A TV ON MUTE IS HOW IT FELT . BY THIS TIME I WAS SO SCARED AND SHAKING UNCONTROLABLE AND CONFUSED TO WHAT I WAS SEEING SO IN A SNAP I RAN TOWARDS THE HOSPITAL ROOF DOOR AND QUICKLY SCRAM INSIDE AS FAST AS I COULD WITH MY HEART PONDING VERY FAST AND ONCE INSIDE EVERYTHING CAME BACK TO NORMAL THE STAIRWAY EVERYTHING WAS BACK TO NORMAL. SO I RAN TO MY GRANDPA’S ROOM AND SAT ON THE SOFA IN THERE AND STARTED TO CALM DOWN AND ASSIMILATE THIS FRIGHTING EXPERIENCE . TOOK A COUPLE OF DEEP BREATHES AND CALM MYSELF DOWN SO I GOT UP TO LOOK THRU THE WINDOW OF THE ROOM OUTSIDE AND EVERYTHING WAS BACK TO NORMAL . I WAS TO SCARED TO GO BACK TO THAT HOSPITAL ROOF AGAIN . I THINK A ENTER A TIME SLIP I DONT KNOW ………

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  3. Ignore the previous link, that had problems. This should be OK:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/wgyqhpxqcr1u3fw/THE%20ROUGHAM%20MYSTERY%20%283rd%20Revision%29.pdf?dl=0

    Actually they look the same, but I was told the previous one failed for some reason! After this I plan to take on board info from earth energy dowsers. It seems credit for seeing a link between time slips and earth energy around stone circle should go to Maria Wheatley. Check her website, The Avebury Experience. Then I will concentrate on my catalogue of cases (running at 185 at the moment.)

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  4. John,

    No problem. I will be interested to hear your thoughts about Rougham. A point I didn’t deal with is that the village, although small, has a high suicide rate. The same is also true about another Suffolk village, Kersey, the site of a famous time slip.

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  5. Hey everyone, i’m a late , but i want to add my 2 cts. It happened to me a similar experience in 2004. I have had others but this one is the one closest to Linda history. I completely forgot until I stumbled upon sites about the phenomenon there a few days.
    First, let me say that I am French of Ivorian origin in West Africa ( please bear with me about my english lol). In 2004, I went to Ivory Coast in Abidjan to rest in my family since I was suffering from some depression.
    One PM, few days after arriving, I went out in the center of my town. Since I needed some cash, I decided to go withdraw money to the ATM in the largest hotel in the city. This is a great hotel that I have always known, always crowded with lot of tourists, a large shopping gallery, restaurants.
    The hotel is at the end of a long avenue of around 500 meters lenght. When I started to walk down the avenue, I noticed vaguely that there was nobody in the street. I didn’t pay too much attention since even before when I lived in Abidjan (before 1999) and I passed on this avenue, there was never crowded.
    I arrived at the hotel, that’s when I noticed it was really odd. There was nobody. I used to come to this hotel before and it’s always a lively place with customer cars, taxis, grooms, visitors and that day, it is as if the hotel was abandoned there there was nobody, not a car, not a single person. all was quiet and silent. I found it very strange. but the doors were not closed so I went into the mall. It was even more weird, there was no one, no lights on except emergency lights, there was almost dark, all was quiet without any noise. It was like a ghost hotel, which had been abandoned.I puzzled and wondered if I had come a day off but it did not stick because it was a weekday and it was barely 3 pm. More, this hotel used to be always open 24/24 . Surprised, and feeling alone in this silent dark mall, I hurried to go to the ATM and out of the hotel. Leaving the hotel and up the avenue, I met a lot of armed soldiers with tanks. I was even more surprised because there had been the war in Ivory Coast but it was five years earlier. I started to get scared, I wondered what mess I ‘was. As I passed the soldiers, one of them looked at me , smiled and yelled at me ” good luck”. I did not know why he said that to me, I walked even more faster without looking back . Once out of the avenue, I was relieved to see that everything was back to normal, there were people and many cars as usual. The incident surprised me a lot but I had other concerns to worry so I forgot very quiclky. But since I discovered the examples of time slips, I wonder if I have not been transported to another dimension. It was really scary tough.

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    • Hey Carl — Sorry for the slow reply. I’ll take a look at this ASAP. Been super busy, but my schedule should be easing up after this week and I’ll take a good look then. Thanks for sharing your findings.

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  6. I experience lots of vivid dreams of the past for some reason and many of them are quite bizarre and strange. I often interact with people that I don’t know and it feels like I’ve time-travelled. Rather, I have a lot of odd dreams about being on sinking ships from the 1900s, like the Titanic. And it feels like I’m time-travelling. I’ve read a few time travelling stories in Patty Wilson’s books, like one about a couple who ate at a restaurant and came back to find it was never there to begin with. It’s quite a fascinating thing. Years ago, I had a dream about a little church I went to for school a while ago. But in my dream, it looked completely different and I entered in through a door I’d never used to go in and the rooms looked really odd and foreign and people talked to me that I didn’t know. Overall, my dreams are just really strange and defy explanation a lot of the time. I wake up convinced they’re real. I’m also a writer so maybe that explains it a little…?

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  7. Hi john, this may be off topic but relevant nevertheless.It is a fact that time slips are rare occurance and mostly one off incidents casting a serious ? mark over the credibility and not wrongly by any standard of decorum.I have not encountered any incident of time slip so far but i have been face to face with numerous extreme synchronicities,about 50 to be precise.This number should assure that no hallucination or dream is involved,also i have experienced about half a dozen lucid dreams and that too is more than 1 or 2 normally seen for a person in a life time.Alternate memories aka mandela effect is also a very prevalent phenomena and i have done a survey of about 20 persons and all of them remember a different location of sri lanka.Any thing is possible and i personaly make an endeavor to publicise whatever anomaly in which i see an irrefutable multiplicity.

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  8. I did leave the links to my report but they haven’t gone through either. Not sure what else I can do–don’t want to give my email address publicly!

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  9. Marcelle,

    I did leave a reply to your question a week or so back but it seems not to have gone through.
    No, I don’t have a web site, but I am writing a report on my investigation into the Rougham mystery and will leave a link for you to download it. I have found evidence that earth energy is connected with time slips in this case.

    Thanks for your kind comments!

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  10. So wonderful to hear of people’s serious intentions with this subject. Far too often such items are treated with disdain and never given further thought.
    John – Very happy to see news that your site will be up and running again soon. I check back here once every so often just to see if anything has been happening!

    Carl – I really like your classification ideas. Do you have a site where you post your information? I am always on the look out for serious sites that deal with paranormal subjects.

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    • Marcelle — Thanks. Too much in the way of business and personal issues to spend much time on the site in the past couple of years, but I’m looking forward to relaunching it and getting back to blogging regularly. The comments sections have stayed busy though.

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  11. John, thanks for your response and I will look forward to your comments. I decided to specialise in the time slip area but obviously there is a lot more going on. It seems to me that either time slips are on the increase, or now that we have recognised them, as it were, as a phenomenon in their own right, people are less reluctant to report them. I am hoping to prepare a preliminary report on my research later in the year–Rougham is continuing to throw up unexpected correlations.
    Best wishes, Carl

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  12. I have been researching the subject of time slips with particular reference to the sightings of a mystery house in Rougham, a Suffolk uk village, and I have found your website to be one of the most interesting and informative. In particular, the comments made have been sensible and open-minded. One aspect that may be of interest to you is my attempt to develop a classification system for these phenomena. It is still an ongoing project, but at the moment it looks like this:

    Type 1: A purely visual, hazy or blurred impression of a past location, structure or event.
    Type 2: A sharp, totally realistic image of something from the past. Witnesses can see it and be unaware that it is anything other than an ordinary perception.
    Type 3. The witness enters a past environment and is able to move within it, but can make no physical contact with it. People in the environment seen unaware of the witness’s presence.
    Type 4: The witness seems to physically enter a past environment, can touch, pick up, and carry objects from that environment. The witness can communicate verbally and non verbally with people in that environment and receive replies.

    I anticipate subtypes being needed for types 3 and 4. I have been surprised, from studying over 400 pages of cases taken from the internet, by how many Type 4s there are. If you have any comments or suggestions for improvements in this scheme, I would be very grateful.

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    • Hi Carl,
      Thanks for sharing your insights into the phenomena. I’ll give this some thought and get back to you soon. I haven’t been specifically focused on the time slips per se, but more as part of a larger group of anomalous types of events that I’ve come to call “Time Anomaly Phenomena” (T.A.P.). I’m getting ready to reboot and rebrand my site and I have a lengthy article in the works about all this that I plan to post when after I relaunch. The majority of TAP stories that I receive are from people who have had missing time, but a smaller percentage fall into the time slips classification. It’s a fascinating subset of the phenomena.

      Check back in with you soon. — John

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    • Carl, I admire the intention to develop classifications for the types of experiences that people have in re: this phenomenon. Reading your post jogged my memory and I have a Type 1 and Type 3 to relate. Back in 1992, my stepfather was brought in to manage a property that was in the first stages of a bank seizure/foreclosure. It was an Inn, and the bank wanted to property to bring in as much profit as it could, to help pay arrears.

      The building itself was a gorgeous Queen Ann Victorian structure. Lovely interior, with many of the original features intact ~ woodwork, marble fireplaces, etc. i fell in love with the place during my first visit, which took place Christmas Eve. As we stood around the common room, with a fire in the fireplace, and with the tree lit up, and holiday music playing, I began to feel what I refer to as “echoes” of the past or another time. I felt the presences of people from another, older era, could sense their clothing and appearance, could hear their voices, faintly. I also felt that they were aware of ME… in fact, the overwhelming love and welcoming energy inspired me later to research the family that had designed, built, and first inhabited the house that had become this Inn… as a result of that research, I became convinced that I had, in another lifetime, been a member of that family and had visited there regularly.

      In the months to follow, I took a job housekeeping there and then the year following, worked the front desk. On a regular basis, I would have a kind of “layering” experience that seems to correspond with the Type 3 description. I would be given glimpses of the environment from the past, would “walk into” those environments, but it was like a hologram… I could not touch anything, could not interact. Every detail… original wallpaper, rugs, curtains, furniture and decor… a smell, even, of perfume or smoke, or food… Seeming completely real for a few minutes and then… back to the familiar, everyday, modern environment. The oddest of these experiences was in the back hallway and vestibule of the Inn, which had been rebuilt after a fire in 1905, and then remodeled, sometime in the 1980s… there had been a servant’s dining room behind the original kitchen and pantry, that had become a laundry room.

      One day, while inspecting rooms, I heard voices. The mother and daughter housekeeping team had left for the day. I was the only person there, besides two guests who were staying in rooms at the front of the house, and all signs pointed to them being away for the day. No tvs were on, nor radios. The voices sounded like two men and a woman. I peeked around the corner into the laundry room and I saw, for a split second, as clear as day, a darkened room with candles and oil lanterns and a potbelly wood stove roaring (it was summer as far as I was concerned, and a HOT day). Around the room there were low shelves with dishes and tankards and wooden bowls. The two men and a woman, all of them perhaps in their late 20s or early 30s, were seated at the table, the men smoking pipes and the woman eating from a bowl. i got a whiff of the tobacco smell as one man looked up and seemed to make eye contact with me, furrowing his brow. Then, it was all gone. I saw… just a laundry room. To this day, I swear a doorway between timelines opened up for us all. The Inn was a special place and there are magnetic ley lines that run through that location… who knows if that had anything to do with the almost daily experiences all of the staff had there.

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  13. Likewise, John! Severe arthritis in both knees has put a kink in my travels; still, the other dimension does not fade at all, does it? With my brilliant grand carrying it on, I’m still hooked.

    Can you contact me with my new e-mail address from my recent move? If not, let me know and I’ll bite the bullet to publish it online.

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  14. Vivek, thank you so much for verifying our experience in beautiful India! Two years ago I went there with my 15-year-old grandson, (the psychic) David. In Delhi, he visited the Red Fort while I rested, exhausted from the 23-hour trip just completed. We were both exhilarated but tired, as you could imagine. When the tour group went in another direction inside the fort, he wandered into one empty room that suddenly, to him, became hundreds of years older. And stranger, very different, in his rather reluctant description. (The shocked teen said to himself, “Whoa, what’s going ON here?”) He, being fifteen, never wanted to discuss it much –and please bear in mind he seems to think such things happen to everybody — but, based on his past experiences, I believe whatever happened was very real; I’m confident time shifted inside the Red Fort. I still think fatigue lowers one’s natural immunity to this ‘particular reality’, perhaps ?

    Thanks again for the validation and very best regards ~

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    • I smell another story for the blog 😉

      Wonderful to hear from you again, Linda! I tried your old email address a few months ago but it didn’t go through. A television show contacted me because they wanted to speak with you about one of your experiences, but I couldn’t reach you.

      Thanks so much for your response to Vivek. I’m glad you still check my site. I’m in the process of redesigning it and I have several new articles in the queue.

      Hope you’re well! Stay in touch.

      – John

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  15. Hi, Adding my bit,i have to say that north india is the last outpost of archaic europe(people are mostly white),hence i can throw some light.there are contrasting locales within earshot so within half a k.m you can shift from 21st century to 19th century,and people of such places are very stoic and non interfering to an urbanite stranger.A tired body can sometimes get bewildered in such a seemingly weird situation.But the fact is such places do exist,the city of lucknow was built by british(i live in lucknow)and till 40 yrs back it was almost a british town,and you will be shocked to experience different centuries coexisting even now.

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  16. Everybody’s stories on here are fascinating.

    The only time I’ve ever really thought about time skips is when I read material on the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve always found those reports to be very interesting. Over the years, I’ve read up on different incident reports about The Bermuda Triangle and wondered what it would be like to have an experience like that. I never thought it would happen to me.

    Well, it certainly did.

    This happened sometime in 2011. I’m not certain of the month but this incident happened during a regular drive from point A to point B.

    Everything appeared to be as it always did. The traffic was normal, the town lights off the side of the highway we’re glowing. My wife and I were traveling down the highway in West Virginia one late night and during our drive, we somehow got lost. While being lost on the highway, there weren’t any exits to get off at. There weren’t any other cars. Other than the few dim highway lights every so often, the trees on both sides and pitch blackness seemed to stretch for miles.

    We finally came across one of the large exit signs and we were about 60 miles in the opposite direction. What’s really crazy about this is, we weren’t driving no more than 15 minutes. We looked at the clock, had a conversation about how weird it was that there wasn’t anything in sight, listened to a song or two on low volume and next thing you know, we are 60 miles in the opposite direction in 15 minutes. There was no way it took us 15 minutes to drive about 60 miles. The drive back actually took about the time it typically takes to drive 60 miles. On top of, exits that weren’t seen before and normal highway traffic.

    To this very day, my wife and I still don’t know what to make of this.

    Reply
  17. Everybody’s stories on here are fascinating. I’ve enjoyed reading through all of them.

    The only time I’ve ever really thought about time skips is when I read material on the Bermuda Triangle. I’ve always found those reports to be very interesting. Over the years, I’ve read up on different incident reports about The Bermuda Triangle and wondered what it would be like to have an experience like that. I never thought it would happen to me.

    Well, it certainly did.

    This happened sometime in 2011. I’m not certain of the month but this incident happened during a regular drive from point A to point B.

    Everything appeared to be as it always did. The traffic was normal, the town lights off the side of the highway we’re glowing. My wife and I were traveling down the highway in West Virginia one late night and during our drive, we somehow got lost. While being lost on the highway, there weren’t any exits to get off at. There weren’t any other cars. Other than the few dim highway lights every so often, the trees on both sides and pitch blackness seemed to stretch for miles.

    We finally came across one of the large exit signs and we were about 60 miles in the opposite direction. What’s really crazy about this is, we weren’t driving no more than 15 minutes. We looked at the clock, had a conversation about how weird it was that there wasn’t anything in sight, listened to a song or two on low volume and next thing you know, we are 60 miles in the opposite direction in 15 minutes. There was know way it took us 15 minutes to drive about 60 miles. The drive back actually took about the time it typically takes to drive 60 miles. On top of that, exits showing up that weren’t seen before and normal highway traffic.

    To this very day, my wife and I still don’t know what to make of this.

    Reply
  18. I am so glad to have found this site and read these stories. I have 4 stories but each uniquely mystical. 1 happened the day my finances mother died. All time stopped. All sound. I was at a family picnic and all my family at the table were frozen. I felt this overwhelming peace surround me. I looked in the blue warm summer sky. saw three birds circling then slowly sound came back and family members were moving again. Oh so freaked me out. Learned later that this was the time stopped she passed. 2 Next time same thing happened but this time I was in a grocery store. Again all sound then motion stopped. Again the wonderful peace ed me. I was going through a difficult emotional tome then and a voice came out of the silence telling that everything would ne alright and predicted how other would work out and it happened as predicted. 3 The day my former father in law passed but I had not yet heard. I was cleaning and saw a pen on the floor. turned away then when I turned back kpen was now on little mounted rack with a dry erase board. Turned back and now its back to original location on floor. That got me looking into dimensional slips. Then again maybe it was my deceased father in law. Last was dental floss on left night stand. I thought I should move other to right one. Next I look its on right. I only live with my teenage daughter and she was not in the room. Some of this may be ghosts but the time stops still freak me out.

    Reply
  19. I had a similar, if not much more odd experience of ‘another realm’ not unlike my time sleep as seen on https://www.theparanomalist.com/184/missing-time-experience/ but in September 2008 my best friend Ciera (pronounced Sierra) and I went to a park named Hocking Hills in Ohio for a day retreat from our busy lives. She and I had decided on this at random when we first got together early in the morning just after sunrise; it was a nice warm late summer day and we’d just decided to make a full day drive and hike out of it. Hocking Hills is well known for it’s several walking trails, a cave or two, and several water falls and running water / creek areas. The day was very warm, sunny, hardly a cloud over head, and very nice.

    We started a walk at random and found that one of the trails had been washed out so we had to take another path which forced us to cross a road; on the other side was a tall fire look out ranger’s station which doubled as a Fire Tower. We had seen a lot of people out walking with us that day and a few hiker/backpackers had passed us by on their treks up until that point. We played with our phones a bit on the way to show each other some pictures we took a few days before on a different outing and noted it was roughly after 12-noon when we came out of the woods and walked across the road; it was then that we noticed there was caution tape all over the fire tower, there was a pungent smell in the air which we could not identify, the windows on top of the tower appeared to be taped up, grimy, and there were flies all over the area. We walked past it, commenting how odd it was, and continued down a seemingly new trail we hadn’t seen on a previous walk in the area. The trail took us past the fire tower and then cut into the woodlands; as we walked into the forest we took notice that no one seemed to be around. In fact not only did we feel isolated from others but we felt very chilled without explanation. That day had been very warm as we both wore very cool clothing and when we entered the forest it began to feel very cool, much cooler than we expected and we both were shivering as we felt the temperature drop.

    As we continued down the way my friend pointed out that it was getting darker than either of us should have expected or seemed to be – we looked around and there were nothing but trees on all sides, there should have been a forest edge somewhere as the area wasn’t really that big but aside from some hills and tall pine trees there wasn’t a real ‘ending’ to the woods like we expected as the area tends to be narrow and normally you can see the edges. She took out her phone to use her GPS because she instinctively felt lost but her battery was nearly gone, I took mine out and it had no signal, the battery was also near dead, and showed “EE:EE” for the time (meaning it couldn’t update as it was a older style flip-phone with camera and when set to auto-adjust would contact the mobile phone network every 15 min).

    It was only then as the light grew dimmer as we continued on our way that I noticed it was very silent suddenly. Our foot steps echoed, the leaves, grass, twigs, and our breathing just echoed. Ciera got spooked and I did too, she mentioned it was very out of ordinary. I agreed but I couldn’t shake this sense of foreboding that something was amiss. I tried to rationalize it but I really, honestly, couldn’t figure any of it out at all.

    We continued forwards going down a small hill on trail and back up when it got darker. The world seemed to have gone from shadowy to near twilight darkness. My friend grabbed my arm and started freaking out about how weird it got – then the air grew chillier, and had a feeling of something wrong. We both took off running looking for an exit, for some odd reason we never thought to turn around at all as we ran we could hear our steps echo off the area as things just felt like they grew more gloomy.

    Then ahead of us down a small hill and back up the other side we could see two large bushes on either side of the trail like a gate. We made a mad dash for the bushes and just as we pushed through the plants something odd happened – we were nearly blinded by light as sound and warmth returned all at once. It was like stepping outside of a cold, empty, and dark building to a warm busy street. We stood at the edge of a place known as Old Mans Cave which has a large water fall and a u-shaped cliff where you can look down into where the water and people gather. We turned around and the bushes were the same but the area was different, brighter, not silent for sure, and warm. In fact our skin was cold to touch which just reinforced the facts. We took out our phones and the time had finally updated, it was now 4pm. The normal trail would only have taken an hour to walk fully so it was a loss of three full hours!

    Logic attempted to set in and we decided the trail we came up must have just appeared creepy because there may have been clouds over head or a storm blew by but when we went back between the bushes there was no trail. Nothing looked like it had a few seconds ago. Ciera walked around the bushes twice and it was the same bright sunny day with no darkness and no trail. We waited, it was blue sky over head and we could see the edges of the forest and other people. The trail had simply vanished as it we had never walked it.

    On returning past the trail where the fire tower was located, we noticed it was normal looking and there was a blond haired young lady with her hair in a pony tail climbing the steps, the windows were not taped and very clean, and no pungent smell. We don’t know what it was, but it certainly was creepy. Of course I jokingly told her later that day over dinner we had entered the faerie realms by mistake and were lucky to get away, she didn’t find that funny of course but either way we felt we should share this with you and if anyone out there has had a similar experience perhaps they can provide insight.

    Reply
  20. Very observant, Andy! Good job. The fact is that I arrived in Newtonmore by train, with my described scene before my eyes and with the longish walk up Station Road to Newtonmore’s Main Street and my hotel — all the stranger since I recall nothing from the next intersection up the road from the platform until I found myself on Main Street! Three hours later.

    I left the town by bus for Inverness, which stops on Main Street near the hotel’s front and saved me from trekking back a mile to the train station, and I never saw the train station again — until the year I was passing through on the train. And that’s why I was so terribly shocked, realizing then that something was terribly wrong (with me or whatever).

    As for the train station/building, I realize I have been confusing in my description of both buildings as Victorian (old girl being so long on the throne; serves me right). The building by the platform was a two-story early Victorian mansion with an open door, which was slammed violently from behind when I walked up the front walk. It burned, according to internet records, from sparks thrown out by a passing train and was replaced c. 1896 by a more modern train station that is in the pictures you found. (I believe it was closed by Britrail and has now been turned into a B&B). You are correct, though: the house I walked to does not appear anywhere that I can find on existing maps, and I am concluding (?) that is the one that burned and was replaced with the station that is more customary, in appearance, which you see today.

    And I hope, in the effort to clarify, I haven’t ended up being too confusing! I do hope this helped, but we are still left with my haunting questions: why were the people so terribly strange that night but so lovely the next couple of days? And why did time seem to be — shall we say — so SIMULTANEOUS? Unless it is…and I’m beginning to think so .

    Reply
  21. Linda, I found your Scottish train story interesting. I had a good look at the area on google maps and street view and can clearly see the stone built station, houses and two schools in the vicinity. What’s interesting is that although the pram appeared to be old, you say that you didn’t notice anything strange about the truck or the woman’s attire and also there was a transformer on the platform so it seems that no particular date would apply. What you didn’t mention is your departure from Newtonmore. Did you leave via the same station, and if so, what did it look like then?

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  22. Also, Great learning and reading up about everybody’s stories, beliefs and ideas! Thanks Linda and John, I have thoroghly enjoyed this. Your theories seem to match mine indefinitely. Good to know there are still deep thinkers like me out there. I want to know all!

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  23. Great point Tim Swartz! I have often wondered this possibility myself. Maybe ghosts don’t exist at all but possible “time slippers”. I have a strange encounter with all this myself.

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  24. Verry interesting ghost stories, John — so much so that I’ll post my British ghost sighting-while-fatigued in the ‘Baltimore Ghost Story’ because of its similarity. Our fatigue was similar to the Scottish experience, although there were no time slips. What a website! I can’t wait for the new and improved edition, and I can’t thank you enough for your vote of confidence in my (remaining) sanity.

    Reply
  25. John, please accept my sympathy for your grief on your father’s passing, but be assured I do know he’s very alive, just without the old 87-year-old flesh and bones, and he — along with your mother — are with you now: just in another dimension. How do I know this? My grandson, old enough to detect truth from imagination, saw his grandfather, my deceased husband, for a few years after his death when David was four. It was quite astounding, and if you want to start up a ‘ghost’ category I’d be happy to chip in with a few more stories. Actually, my promised tale about the haunted cottage might more properly belong there? I’ll try to get to it ASAP. Again, though, I respectfully ask you to grieve for your loss but rejoice for your parents…(maybe you could honor their memory with a pilgrimage to England… just a thought).

    Reply
    • Thank you, Linda. It’s been just over three years since my mother passed on and my father’s health, which hasn’t been great over the past fifteen years, took a sharp downturn. This past year has been particularly rough for him and it’s been hard for me to watch him become so frail and sickly. I’m more relieved than sad at his passing because I know he’s no longer suffering and with my mother. I have no doubt that there’s an afterlife where we’re free of our physical and spiritual limitations.

      I have written a couple of ghost stories. If you haven’t read them, there’s Visited by the Dead and Baltimore Ghost Story, which you may find interesting.

      I’m about 3 or 4 weeks from relaunching the website as The Paranormalist, http://www.paranormalist.com, with a new design and a lot more features. Once that’s complete I plan to get back on schedule with writing new posts and finding more guest writers. I’d love to post any new accounts that you have at that point, so anytime you’d like to submit them please feel free to do so. Honestly, this past year I’ve been taking care of my dad more than I’ve been doing anything else, so the site has kind of stagnated because I simply haven’t had the time. But I am preparing to kick it into high gear very soon, including getting back to doing a weekly (or at least semi-monthly) podcast. Perhaps we could do a phone-in interview at some point if you’d be interested?

      I’d love to get to England and Ireland in the near future. I have a couple of friends from northern England visiting in September and I’d like to get over to their homeland for a visit too. Maybe also a visit to Sweden, where my father’s parents were born.

      Thanks again for the condolences and kind words. Great to hear from you, and I hope all is well.

      — John

      Reply
  26. Wonderful to know people are still interested in this time slip phenomenon! I was especially intrigued by JayKay’s and Dill’s insights. Since mystics seem to be increasingly insisting that time is NOT linear but simultaneous, could that not explain why there’s no problem with such things as money of another ‘time’? Could it explain why, in my case, I met a bicycle rider in ageless black clothing and a rather strange conical hat (sorry, I didn’t mention that before but didn’t want to clutter the bare bones of the story), a Victorian house that burned, possibly 120 years ago, a young woman pushing a vintage pram but in modern dress, apparently — because I didn’t notice anything unusual in her dress, and a truck driver in a forgettable, presumably modern, vehicle? Bare open moorland of a far earlier day instead of a village, too? I would infinitely prefer to tell you that all was in a setting straight out of a particular age, but I just can’t lie about it!

    I do think Dill is onto something with his theory about part of the brain being involved.In my case, I was undeniably fatigued* but momentarily revived with the company of the traveling Scots on the train. When I got off on my own at that deserted platform, perhaps I just rebounded into another (timeless) dimension. ?

    But I still am obsessed with the question of why those villagers, so polite and charming the next day, were obviously terrified of me —

    *Just realized, John, my high strangeness experiences tend to appear with fatigue. I’ll write you at another time my ghostly encounter at a 16th century Kentish cottage in those exact circumstances. Until then…!

    Time is, indeed, passing strange.

    Reply
    • Hi Linda. Great to hear from you again. I look forward to hearing about your ghostly encounter — sounds like the making of another hit article! Your Train Ride and Stone Circle stories have been two of the top-five most popular posts on my blog.

      I’d like to make clear the point that, by attributing some of these time-slip, missing time, and other anomalous experiences to the human brain is not meant to suggest the dismissive idea that these phenomena are “just all in our imaginations”. You seemed very obviously to have physically experienced these things as well, just as I did during my own time anomaly incident. But, I do the think the way the human mind works has much to do with these things. Interesting that you say they often happen when fatigued. Perhaps the mind slips into a different frequency where we can access these other dimensions?

      Sarah, Dill, et. al. — Sorry for not following through yet with a reply to your comments. I do try to get back to everyone who writes on the blog. Tough couple weeks, as my father just passed away. I’ll read through the comments more thoroughly and respond back shortly.

      Thanks — John

      Reply
    • Linda, your description of the landscape and people that you encountered matches the kind of thing that happens when I lucid dream or astral travel. I have come to be familiar with a phenomenon that dictates that those “realms” are an amalgam of past-present-future… overlapping much in the same way you experienced. An outfit from this era, a vehicle from that era, mixed or blended styles of architecture, spoken language that is typical of particular periods … and it is always that particular location, say, for instance, my hometown of Burlington, Vermont. The lucid or astral “Burlington” is recognizable as that location, without doubt, but the timelines have converged and are layered. It is fascinating to me, and in a way, kind of fun. I believe that the dreaming and the astral journeying are only several of the possible available methods of “visiting” other dimensions or alternate realities or hanging out in a place that is not “settled” or “static”, an in-between locale. Traveling, of any sort, seems to trigger “currents” that allow for us “slip” into another experienced reality.

      Reply
      • Adam, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I just discovered (strangely believe it!) your 1/25/16 comment in the midst of a bunch of replies from four+ years earlier. No matter; your explanation has helped me so very much. Now I really — well, almost — believe I’m not totally crazy. Your description makes totally perfect sense. And you are so right: it is, if you’re not terrified, as I strangely wasn’t, kind of fun! Maybe that’s our little cosmic reward? But again, I really can’t thank you enough for your enlightened explanation. Namaste.

        Reply
  27. Ok John. This is weird. The old inn Mel speaks of is in Salado, Texas. I’m thinking maybe there is something going on there. I have heard that it is unusually haunted due to the age of the community and the fact it was a stagestop. ?????

    Reply
    • Hi Sarah,
      Sorry, I’ll have to look into this and read over your previous comment more thoroughly in the morning. It’s late and it’s been a rough couple days, but I’ll definitely check this out and get back to you shortly. Thanks for posting this and your other comment. Looking forward to chatting with you further.
      — John

      Reply
  28. hi John I think that this phenomena is caused by the percentage of the brain we don’t use that works whilst our mind is resting. I reckon that this can cause the traveller to travel in to past, present, future and parallel reality. i find that when im in a dream state such as the border between awake and asleep I can sense smells and taste that arnt there. or even memories where the sun is so bright that i have to squint my eyes. this also gives me a sense of understanding of deja vu.
    That’s just my theory hope it helps look froward to hear from you

    Reply
    • Hi Dill —

      I think that could be a very plausible theory to explain something like what Linda went through. More and more evidence is suggesting that the mind is non-local entity (rather than just a series of chemical and synaptic reactions confined to the gray matter inside our skulls), which would explain the ability to see the past or future, communicate with people who are deceased and other beings that live on different planes of existence. Yes, would work for deja vu as well — and would explain my mother’s ability to sometimes predict future events and have very accurate premonitions and precognitive dreams. I read a couple of very interesting books on this subject by author Lynne McTaggart. The first was called The Field, and the follow-up book was called The Intention Experiment. Covers a lot of technical research by scientists like Hal Puthoff, Russel Targ, Dean Radin, and Michael Persinger. She manages to put their findings in very understandable terms for the layperson. Both very good books and worth a read if you haven’t already picked them up.

      Thanks for the input. Feel free to check in again any time. — John

      Reply
  29. Even though it doesn’t concern railroads I’m posting this family story because it’s another one of those grand English tales …

    I’m -very- distantly related to an American author who was a colleague of Mark Twain, though rather less famous of course. He died long ago so there’s no way to confirm what he said but the story has been in the family for 4 generations.

    Like Twain, he travelled around the US and Britain giving public readings of his works. On one such trip he stayed in a large manor house in the south-central part of England. After dinner he decided to explore his lodgings. He walked down a long corridor and through a door to what appeared to be a set of rooms furnished in what he guessed to be a late 16th or early 17th century style.

    The next morning he congratulated his hosts on having done such marvellous work to preserve an older part of the house. They stared at him and asked him to retrace his steps. When he reached the corridor the door was now a solid wall. The lord of the manor told him that yes, there had once been another section to the house but it had been pulled down at least a century and a half earlier.

    On another path – despite the fact that I do believe time slips are both possible and real, I have difficulty accepting the validity of some stories that involve direct interactions between a traveller and the residents of their temporal destination. None of the purported travellers ever recount being asked about their apparently strange clothing – certainly a golf shirt or pair of trainers would raise at least one eyebrow among the citizens of an early 20th-century village! Even stranger, in several of these tales people report paying hotel bills or buying souvenirs using modern notes and coins yet they’re never accused of using fake currency. That just seems to pat to be true.

    Reply
    • JayKay — Thanks for sharing that story. Good one! I’ve heard similar tales of people finding places or rooms that were later nowhere to be found, or were supposed to have existed in times past. I’m trying to make sense of these accounts and I’m wondering if they’re independent of the individual or if the person experiencing them are more sensitive and receptive to these phenomena.

      I do agree that some of the facts don’t add up in a number of these accounts. As fascinating as some of these tales are, I don’t think it’s wise to accept all of them without question. Thanks again checking in. — John

      Reply
    • 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

      Reply
  30. 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.

    Reply
  31. 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.

    Reply
    • 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.

      Reply
  32. 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……

    Reply
  33. 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 .

    Reply
    • 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.

      Reply
  34. 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.

    Reply
    • 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!

      Reply
  35. 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…!

    Reply
  36. 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.

    Reply
    • 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.

      Reply
  37. “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 🙂

    Reply
  38. 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

    Reply
    • 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

      Reply
  39. 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.

    Reply
    • 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.

      Reply

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