Time slips may feel like a product of science fiction. But they bear similarities with folklore. A person journeys to a strange place, sees odd things, and is not always believed upon their return. Sounds a lot like the tale of Thomas the Rhymer and his trip to Fairyland.
Time slips also have things in common with ghost stories and urban legends. So we’re going to examine the whole kit and caboodle in this post. Now, when you say “time slips”, most people think of the Versailles Time Slip, aka the Moberly-Jourdain Incident. So we’ll start there.
But we certainly won’t stay there…
Come with me and let’s explore the folklore of time slips! Hit play to listen below or keep reading…
The Versailles Time Slip
Let’s journey back to 10 August 1901. Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain visited the Palace of Versailles and its gardens. Moberly was president of Oxford’s St Hugh’s College, while Jourdain was her assistant.
According to the story, the palace didn’t impress either Moberly or Jourdain. I’ll be completely blunt; it didn’t impress me either. The palace of Herrenchiemsee, built by Ludwig II in Bavaria as a copy of Versailles, is far nicer. But I digress.
The women decided to head off to see the two Trianon Palaces in the gardens. The stretch of gardens between the main gardens and the smaller palaces is a bit of a jumble. I’d imagine the signage was less helpful in 1901, too.
The Grand Trianon was closed for the day so the two women decided to visit the Petit Trianon instead. This gorgeous little building was Marie Antoinette’s private palace and in a lot of ways, it’s much nicer than the main building.
While searching for the Petit Trianon, they passed a small cottage and a farmhouse. It’s at this point that it all starts to get a bit weird. According to the book they wrote in 1911, the women saw a range of men in different period costumes in the gardens. A man in a sombrero showed them the way to the palace and Moberly spotted an elegant woman sketching the Petit Trianon. Jourdain didn’t see her but Moberly claims she later recognised the woman when she saw a particular portrait of Marie Antoinette (below).
The women revisited Versailles many times over the years, but things they remembered from the gardens had disappeared. Even worse, instead of the quiet gardens and the weird atmosphere, they kept having to contend with tourists on each visit. They never managed to recreate the experience.
The Aftermath
Over the years, many people have tried to discredit their story, particularly due to their claim of having seen Marie Antoinette. Moberly continued to have paranormal experiences throughout her life. Jourdain died in mysterious circumstances in 1924. Bear in mind these were professional, academic women; Jourdain was a vicar’s daughter.
The Society for Psychical Research reviewed their book, An Adventure (1911). Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick thought they’d simply misinterpreted ordinary events. In The Ghosts of the Trianon (1988), Michael Coleman analysed different editions of the book. He noticed that later editions contained descriptions that grew more fantastical after they’d conducted research into the palace and the time period.
Philippe Jullian explained that the French poet Robert de Montesquiou held elaborate parties at Versailles. His guests often wore period costume. Jullian claimed that Moberly and Jourdain had encountered one such party. So they had met Marie Antoinette that day…just not the Marie Antoinette!
Other people think they’d been hallucinating, or simply misremembered things.
It was 32°C in the shade when I visited Versailles in July 2014. I can well believe that too much sun could make you see odd things. Add the charged atmosphere of a French palace into the mix and you could see all sorts of stuff. (I sincerely hope the man I saw wearing what looked like tinfoil was a living statue and not my imagination).
Yet in 1903, someone found an old map of the Trianon gardens. It showed the bridge the women had talked about – a bridge that didn’t exist in 1901, and that wasn’t featured on any other map they could have seen.
Ghosts or Time Slips?
Let’s say something strange did happen that August afternoon in 1901. Did the women see ghosts from a bygone age? Or did they experience a time slip and briefly visit an earlier time?
Ghosts and time slips differ in one fundamental way. In ghost stories, the spirits cut across time, appearing in all periods following their death. You could consider them the supreme time travellers.
Time slips let the living experience another period. No one knows if those affected actually travel to another time. Perhaps the space-time continuum simply has a hiccup and we briefly glimpse earlier versions of the space we occupy.
Time travel as a concept was not unheard of in 1901. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Scrooge goes forwards and backwards in time. The Time Machine (1895) depicted people using machines to travel through time. I have no idea if Moberly or Jourdain were fans of Dickens or Wells. But could either of them have been subconsciously influenced by such popular tales?
Other Tales of Time Slips
The Moberly-Jourdain Incident is perhaps the most famous of the time slip tales. Yet other incidents have given people pause.
During the LA premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Circus in 1928, a woman passes who appears to be speaking into a mobile phone. Various experts believe the device to be an early hearing aid, though no one has definitively disproven the urban legend.
Or how about the time-travelling hipster? A photo from 1941 appears to show a man in present-day clothing. His appearance has been debunked, since his printed T-shirt is, in fact, a sports sweater. His ‘modern’ sunglasses actually resemble those from the 1920s.
Two married couples drove through France in October 1979. Rather than driving through the night, they stopped at an old-fashioned inn. According to the couples, it didn’t have telephones, lifts, or even glazed windows. But it was quaint and they enjoyed it there.
The husbands apparently took photos of their wives outside. A fortnight later, the couples couldn’t find the inn again on the way home. The photos taken in the hotel were missing from the roll of negatives.
Time Slips in the UK
In 1957, three naval cadets on a map-reading exercise appeared to stumble across a deserted medieval village in Suffolk. The Smithsonian has an excellent article on the case.
In 1973, a chap apparently bought 36 envelopes for a shilling from a shop in Great Yarmouth. Crucially, the assistant dressed in Edwardian clothing. Three weeks later, he popped in again. A different woman worked there and the whole shop was a modern affair. The manufacturers stopped making the envelopes he bought fifteen years earlier.
There’s a clutch of tales about a potential time slip in Liverpool’s Bold Street. According to Nell Rose, a former police officer in 1996 had a strange experience in the thoroughfare. Heading to a bookshop, he found himself in a street, surrounded by people dressed in 1950s fashions, with 1950s and 1960s cars in the road. A clothes shop stood where the bookshop should be. He bumped into another person in modern clothing who seemed equally confused.
Some of these examples have either been debunked or could have plausible explanations. Although the Liverpool example is harder to ignore, given the level-headed nature of the witness.
But they do prove a fascination with retrocognition, the rare ability to know things about the past that couldn’t otherwise be known. (The opposite of precognition, which deals exclusively with the future)
A Personal Story of Time Slips
Back in 1997, I went to Derbyshire on holiday with my family. We stayed in a small rental cottage, named Diamond Cottage. One day, I sat writing at the table in the entrance hall. My mother walked through and looked at me. What she saw made her pause.
As she tells it, I still sat writing, only my long, straight dark hair had become ringlets. My Independence Day t-shirt had become a black dress with a wide white collar. A few moments later, I went back to ‘normal’ (or what passes for normal where I’m concerned). What’s especially weird is that she continued talking to me throughout!
My mother is not prone to flights of fancy so did she experience a time slip to an earlier version of the cottage? Or – even weirder – did she find a time slip that showed an earlier version of me?
Perhaps reincarnation explains time slips. The person experiencing the time slip crosses through space they’ve occupied in a past life. For a short period, their past memory briefly intrudes upon current time.
Have you ever experienced such a time slip? Let me know in the comments below.
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Excellent Icy. I am fascinated by timeslips. Is there some truth to this strange phenomena? I wonder……
I was actually surprised how few stories there were about it!
Hi, Is there a certain time of year that correlates to a majority of these stories? I’m want to plan a trip to Bold Street. I want to spend time walking up and down and in and out of the stores and shops. I thought if it seemed to happen More at a certain time of year than others …. I would plan accordingly.
I don’t think these time slips happen at a specific time and I don’t think you can ‘make’ them happen, either. In all of the cases, the person who experiences it is simply going about their business. In some cases, they don’t even realise it’s happened until some time later when they’ve discussed a strange or unusual shop with someone else.
Unsure.? How 100% are you convinced it was your brother?
My first paranormal experience happened in February 1992 (I checked the date). My bedroom is located on the first floor,at the front of my house in Sandyford Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. Previous owners had used this large room as the lounge/living room – but I decided to make it my bedroom (and have the lounge in the room below on the ground floor).
Late one evening (after working hard on a major project) I went to my bedroom, undressed and got into bed. As I sat in bed (still awake) I had a strange experience. It was as if I was looking back in time to an earlier scene in that room. A Time Slip?1
A grainy black and white film is all I can describe what I saw – with two, possibly three people standing in front of me. The figure standing immediately in front of me was a middle-aged man who had a beard. Off to my left was one, possibly two women. I remember the man was smiling, unfortunately I can’t remember much about the woman/women.
After less than 20 seconds the vision/film/glimpse of the past ended and it disappeared.
It was rather disconcerting and I wondered whether I had been hallucinating – but It was so vivid that I don’t think this was a creation of my mind.
I had something like that happen to me, lasting maybe 12-15 seconds. I was sitting on my living room sofa listening to music and reading. House was quiet, and at some point I felt a heavy feeling like a wave overtook me. Suddenly everything was a grainy black and white image, had gone absolutely silent, and crossing the room was my long-deceased but well-loved old cat Katy. I’d seen her take that exact route to her favorite sunny spot in the next room. She passed a young man, a stranger to me, who was standing at my partner’s desk with his hands in his pockets. He turned to me quickly as if I surprised him, then a powerful rippling wave of heaviness overtook me. The room was back to normal, just as it had been before my “trip” somewhere, where my departed cat trots through the living room to her favorite place to take a nap and a stranger is startled by my presence in my own home.
Reminds me of the Scottish musical Brigadoon.
Yep, there is definite crossover!
I have never heard the expression “time slips”, but according to what quantum physics says about the nature of “time”, it makes some sense to me. Without knowing “time slips” were actually a thing, this is how I have explained the possibility that “ghost” sightings might be real to my son (they aren’t ghosts, it is just a visual “time bleed” is how I put it)…
Exactly! It would also explain why some people see the same ghosts in different locations.
I did experience something that I can only call a time slip. It was the early 1960s before television commercials repeated themselves frequently and in succession as they do now. I was sitting on the couch in our living room (I was in my early teens at the time). The program we were watching cut to a commercial. I didn’t think anything of it. Then the program came back. Only a minute or two later, the program cut to a commercial again – the same one I had just seen. I turned to my mom and said, “This commercial was just on a minute ago.” She looked at me strangely and said, “No, it wasn’t. There hasn’t been a commercial break for fifteen minutes, and this ad wasn’t on then.”
Whoa, that is really weird! Has it ever happened since?
Thats amazing…that soinds more like deja vu tho, no?
Deja vu would imply you’d been there before though?
No, just that once, but I have always remembered it.
Tom Slemen details some incredible timeslips in his excellent Haunted Liverpool books.
I’ll have to check that out – thanks!
I believe I have experienced a Time Slip. When I was in second grade 1997ish my teacher sent me on an errand to run something to the music teacher on the other end of the school I took the shortest route which took me between the school and the library, I delivered the package and went back the same way but there was a fence blocking the the way I had just came and a fence on the other side of the walkway as well, I had only been gone 2 minutes and 2 sections of fence had appeared out of nowhere. There was no one near by or working on it either. I had thought of this occurrence on and off over the years until i heard of Time Slips on the radio from Coast to Coast I had no answer to this event.
That’s fascinating! Did it ever happen again?
I have this very prominent memory from my childhood where my parents took me to this rotating stage with birds dressed like Uncle Sam and they sang. This alone already sounds insane but my parents claim to have never taken me to anything remotely similar to that. So, I described what I remember in as much detail as possible and I did some research. My family goes to Disney annually and I had heard of an old attraction called “America Sings” but I had never seen videos, I just knew what it was. I decided to look into it and I watched an old video of it, and it was EXACTLY what I remember from my childhood. The only problem with this, though, is that America Sings closed in 1988, and I wasn’t even born then!
Whoa, that’s amazing!
That almost sounds like a past-life memory.
I saw it for real. it was a little creepy America Sings in 1977 or 8. I believe it was built for the Bicentennial
I have had two time slips, the first when I was 11 years old. I was looking through my house window at home hoping to see mum. Instead, there was a man wearing brown trousers and a wight shirt stood at the kitchen sink. Then I noticed that the kitchen was different very old fashioned with what I now know as a Belfast sink. I entered the house only to see that the man had disappeared and the kitchen was back to it’s 1979 norm. As a young boy, I was convinced this was a ghost.
Fast forward 39 years and I was walking up a street after parking my car to go buy some lunch and noticed a very old elevator with metal folding doors in a small factory. I had not even noticed the factory before, so I walk over to investigate. There was a man operating the elevator dressed in a brown work coat (similar to you find in old hardware stores) and a few people already in. The operator said to me “are you getting in or what?”. I did jump in and the elevator went up a floor and everyone alighted. The operator then asked me if I was getting off. “No thanks, I need to go back” I replied and then I alighted back on the ground floor and made my way to my car. After crossing the road and opening my car door I turned to look at the factory. It was no longer there. Instead, there was a row of shops and cafes. This was in broad daylight during my lunch hour and certainly not a dream. Only then did I realise that this was similar to the man and the sink when I was a child. I just cannot stop thinking about it now.
Whoa, that’s amazing!
Hey Darren, do you have any more information regarding the street involved or look into the history of the area? Would love to hear more from you.
When I was about 8 years old, I described in great detail the house my Mom lived in as a child. There were no pictures of the inside, and I was never inside the house. But, I “knew” about secret hiding places my Mom had as a teen for the toys she didn’t want to share with her siblings. She and her sisters sat in awe while I told them the details.
Then around 1994 I was driving home from work around 11:15pm and slowed for a large bird in the road. Eagles are common in Minnesota, but when this bird opened it’s wings, the span was the width of my car, and had multiple joints, like a pterodactyl. It flew away, but was only visible for a few feet, it just kind of disappeared into the darkness.
Oh wow!! That’s amazing!!
I seem to have architectural time slips–I see buildings as they were or–strange thought–ghost buildings. For example, I was asked to visit a house (to check for ghosts) in a Dayton, Ohio neighborhood. The house next door, where I parked, was a rather ramshackle farmhouse and behind it I could see a tumble-down barn, its doors open, covered with vines. I thought, “That must have been the original farmhouse for the plat–they built more modern houses around it.” I did my ghost-house visit, then the lady of the house walked out with me to my car. I commented on the old farmhouse being original to the neighborhood and said something about, “It’s amazing the barn is still there.” “Barn?” she said, puzzled. “There used to be a barn, but we had it torn down because it was dangerous. The only thing holding it up was the vines.”
“Tore it down? 15 minutes ago?” I thought, and I walked around to where I could see the hill behind the farmhouse.
The barn I saw when I drove up wasn’t there any more.
On another occasion, I was visiting a former orphanage building near Lebanon, Ohio. Two staircases, facing each other, flanked the central hall. Try as I might, I could not walk through the part of the hall between those staircases; I kept bumping into something solid. When I mentioned this to the facility administrator, he told me that, in the 19th century, when the building was an orphanage, one staircase had been for the girls’ wing and one for the boys’. There had formerly been a wall build down the middle to keep them from looking at each other.
This is such an interesting topic. I love reading the stories and wondering what happened and if we’ll ever be able to figure it out.
So many time slip stories! Amazing.
Omg one of my favourite paranormal mysteries! I’ve been fascinated by time slips ever since I heard the Versailles story. Even tried writing a few stories. Great post!
I have also experienced a time slip!
Went to an auto tag place in south Philly that I knew, to help me get my Mothers car transferred to my name? She was home on hospice and only had about 2 months left . Went in the store, spoke to a woman who explained to me that what I needed to do would be easier and cheaper if I waited til after my Mom had passed, I left the store and went home and told my wife about what the woman told me.
Fast forward 3 months, after Mom had passed , I took all the documents I needed back to the Auto tag shop. When I got there, the store was VACANT!!! I went to the shoe store which was right next door and inquired about when the Auto Tag place left ? They then told me the Auto Tag Store hasn’t been there for over a Year !!!!
Needless to say this has really Screwed with my head and continues to.
The empty store front still had the old tape on the walls from where the signs were posted!!! The same counter was in there , I could see it all through the large front windows!! I’m really having a problem with all of this !! Where was I ??, When, was I ????
Whoa, that is really weird. You obviously got the information you needed though!
Last Sunday I was driving from southern Indiana back home to South Central KY. I passed an older car hauler that was hauling antique cars. I was behind a silver SUV. Out of nowhere it was passed by its doppelganger. Same model, color school sticker in the window etc. The twin SUV drove beside it for awhile. The one in front of me pulled over to the shoulder. About ten minutes later I passed an old car hauler loaded with antique cars and was behind the twin SUV. It was like I did the same thing miles apart
That is so weird!
I have no written evidence of this story, but it’s been handed down in our family for several generations. One of my moderately-distant relatives was a writer and storyteller much in the same mold as Mark Twain, though not quite so famous (of course, who else was?).
Like Twain and his contemporaries, my relative often went on so-called “speaking tours”, giving public readings of his works. One tour took him to Britain where he stayed in his host’s manor. For whatever reason he had difficulty falling asleep and so decided to explore the building a bit. According to the story he walked down a corridor which led to a set of rooms he hadn’t seen before. He was surprised to see that everything in them – furniture, lamps, paintings and so on – appeared to be very old, as if the rooms had been preserved from an earlier era. After wandering around for a while he finally started to become tired and went back to his bedroom.
The next morning he complimented his host on the wonderful job he’d done of maintaining that part of the manor in its original condition. The host was confused, saying the building didn’t have any rooms like that. Together they walked back to where my relative had been the night before. As you might expect … there was a wall where corridor had been. Yes, the host told him, the manor DID have another wing there but it had been razed over a century and a half before.
Weird stuff.
Oh wow, do you know which manor that was?! (Naturally, I’d love to visit!)
I’m not sure if this is a time slip, or a ghost sighting…
So basically, a few years back during the summer time, when I was 10, I was sitting on my sister’s bed in her room. I don’t think anybody else was in the house. It was 8 am. My parents and my older brother had left for work at 6 am. I’m not sure, but my sister was either hanging out in my parents’ bedroom, or at an interview. as I was saying, I was sitting on my sister’s bed in her room. Since my dad had turned the network connection off for my computer, I was playing Candy Crush, which was offline. As I was playing, my brother walked into my sister’s room. He said, “You suck at that game,” and I replied with, “I know.” I didn’t think anything about it. I kept playing until 9 am, and then went to do something else. When It was 6 pm, my parents and my brother came back from work. That was when I realized that my brother hadn’t been in the house earlier when I was playing Candy Crush. So, I’m not sure if it was a ghost posing as my brother, or a time slip back to when my sister was in her room or something.
When I was 9 or 10 I was walking outdoors in between my parents. This was in the early 1990s. I suddenly stumbled but managed to catch myself before I fell, but the scene changed. I was wearing a dress from the 1950s and walking in between two people who no longer appeared to be my parents. My dad had transformed from a blonde to a brunette who was also wearing clothes from the 1950s, and my mom turned into a woman who looked like a younger version of my grandmother (also 1950s), even though they don’t share a resemblance. I wasn’t scared, they were looking at me with parental concern and I was confused. I remember the scenery changed but I was too focused on the people to note how the scenery had changed. I walked forward with them for a few steps and then things reverted back to modern time. I didn’t say anything to my folks. My parents are very rational skeptic types.
While the rational part of me says it was some sort of bizarre hallucination, it’s never been a satisfying answer. At the time I’d wondered if I’d someone connected with a younger version of my mom (the man could have resembled my grandfather when he was younger, but I’m not sure, it happened so fast). Recently I’ve been thinking about it more, wondering if other people have encountered something similar and what explanations have been posited. Thank you for this.
That sounds like the flash my mum had, seeing me as a different version of me! It’s totally weird when it happens.
I was interesting in your comment on “retrocognition”. That is something I have experienced throughout my entire life – to the extent that I often experienced a strong sort of homesickness, making me physically ill. I am 60 now, and I believe I have knowledge of somewhere else – another era – in explicit detail that should not be possible. I wish I could talk to you more about it. Perhaps related to that and perhaps not, I had an odd experience when I was a teenager. At the time I was living in Denmark as an exchange student (I’m American) and had gone into a local medieval church for a service. When I left I exited not up the aisle and out the front, but through a side door which led to the green lawn space to one side of the church. I stepped out of the door and started toward the parking lot. As I did, I had an experienced which lasted a few seconds. An odd feeling came over me and I sensed – rather than saw with my eyes – an alternate atmosphere around me, in which there was a sort of orchard of small trees, and I sensed men working amongst the trees; these men were quiet and there was what I would describe as a prayerful mood around me. I sensed they were all monks. But in 1978 the space there was actually just a well-manicured flat green lawn of grass. The vision or whatever it was was fleeing, and after it left I was a bit shaken – it had been different than having one’s mind simply wander into imagination. It was full sensory. There and gone, hitting me with force. I’m a fairly grounded person – educated, practical. I am creative, but skeptical by nature and logic-driven. However, through the years I was haunted by that few seconds. Later in my life I had an experience with a ghost – evidently I do sense things, and I tend to be a bit psychic, as are many in my family. But I approach these things with a doubting mind, looking for the rational. But that experience was so startling – I was about 17 at that time – that it troubled me for years. I never spoke to anyone about it – after all, what on earth would I say? About a decade ago, I was researching some of the places in Denmark I had lived and visited, and I went to a website for that church. There was a modern photo – and as I looked at it I noted the green lawn and spotted the side door, and thought about that day again. Digging, I discovered a history describing the church as it would have been in its early days: it was a not a parish church but had been part of an abbey/monastery. The space of lawn through which I had walked had been a fruit orchard, where the monks grew fruit for wine and other means of supporting the monastery. It would have been covered with small trees.
That certainly sounds like a time slip!
While I firmly believe in time slips (more below), my knowledge of coins and currency makes me wonder about two of the stories. First, how were the two couples staying at a 1905 hotel able to pay for their lodging using 1970s-era francs? Neither the coins nor the banknotes from that period looked anything like those used 75 years earlier. It would be like handing Federal Reserve notes or Washington quarters to a clerk in early-1900s America. Second, something similar should have happened to the person buying stationery for a shilling in 1973. Britain had switched to decimal coins over the period 1968-71, so prices would have been given in decimal pence rather than shillings. Also, while older shilling coins continued to circulate for years after the switch, they had designs and metal compositions that would have been obviously out of place during the Edwardian period.
That said, my family’s told the following time-slip story for many years. Our family tree includes a writer who was both a contemporary and sometime competitor of Mark Twain. While not quite so famous (after all, who was?!) he was still well-known with numerous publications. Also like Twain he would make what were called “speaking tours”, traveling to different places where he gave public readings of his works. According to family lore, on one such tour to the UK he was hosted by a member of the aristocracy who owned a large manor house that dated back multiple generations. During the night my ancestor had trouble sleeping and decided to explore the house. He walked down a corridor and opened a door, only to find himself in a series of rooms that appeared to be a kind of museum containing everything from old-style furniture to antique tapestries and lamps.
The next morning he complimented his host on the excellent job he’d done of preserving part of the house’s history. The host was puzzled and asked my ancestor to replace his steps. The corridor was there, but not the doors … because, as the host explained, that wing of the house had been torn down nearly two centuries before.
I was listening to a supernatural podcast today that covered the Versailles timeslip. I’d never heard of it before and thought I’d do some research this evening and found you! Reading these comments I realised I have a similar story. I love history and rambling through old ruins. At one site that was barely stones sticking out of the grass I turned to my partner and said this was the monastery’s refectory. He said what are you on about and I realised as I walked into the ruin I’d seen just for a moment a busy room full of monks eating at long wooden tables. On our way out we came across one of those signs showing where each room was and yes I had located the refectory correctly. It was so vivid and so real if just for a moment.
So here is my story in a nutshell
I was sitting on a bench people watching in my local mall. (some context its a one story mall with a long walkway from where i was sitting to the food court) it was a quiet day and i noticed a couple walk by me, and for some reason i watched them walk all the way to the end by the food court and turn towards the exit, so far big deal right … so they turn off and i’m like okay i don’t know why I watched them the whole way … then i look up again and the exact same couple is walking past me again … suffice to say i was freaked out because of its impossibility of that happening logically haha
Are you writing a book on time slups
I vaguely remember that the people who claimed to have stayed at an early-1900s hotel eventually (2008?) admitted it was a hoax. There were just too many holes for the story to stand up – no one noticed their clothing or car, their money would have been different, and they had no physical evidence that the event happened, not even a hotel receipt which is something nearly everyone keeps even when they’re not time-travelling.