Time Slips
Time feels solid. Predictable. Something we count in hours and calendars. But what if it isn’t?
What if time is layered instead of linear? What if someone occasionally steps into the wrong layer?
Time slips are real, documented experiences where people claim they suddenly found themselves in another era. These moments don't happen in dreams or during altered states. They occur while people are wide awake. Just as quickly, they return. There is no machine, no portal, and no warning. Only a shift.
These stories come from skeptics, academics, pilots, tourists, and people who had no interest in the paranormal until something changed their minds.
The Versailles Incident
One of the most famous time slips happened in 1901. Oxford academics Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were visiting Versailles when they experienced a strange shift. The air became heavy, the colors dimmed, and the silence was unsettling. They saw people in 18th-century clothing, including a woman sketching who they believed resembled Marie Antoinette. Later, they wrote down separate accounts that matched. Their book, An Adventure, remains one of the most studied time slip cases in history.
Modern Reports
In 1979, a businessman in Toronto checked into a hotel that felt strangely out of date. The decor, the newspapers, and the television all looked like they belonged in another era. The next day, the hotel was gone. Official records showed it had been demolished years earlier.
Drivers often report time slips while traveling rural roads. Some describe finding themselves in a different time period, seeing vintage cars or people in old-fashioned clothing. A couple in England once found themselves on a muddy road surrounded by 1940s vehicles. A woman stared at them in shock, and seconds later the modern road returned.
Battlefields and the Future
Battlefields are common locations for time slip reports. People visiting Gettysburg and Edgehill often describe hearing cannons, smelling smoke, or seeing soldiers who disappear when approached. Some researchers believe emotionally intense events may imprint themselves on locations and cause time to momentarily overlap.
Not all time slips move backward. In 1935, RAF officer Victor Goddard flew over a deserted airfield in Scotland. During the flight, he saw the airfield fully operational with blue-uniformed mechanics and modern aircraft. At the time, RAF mechanics wore brown. Four years later, the airfield reopened with the exact uniforms and layout Goddard had seen. He stood by his account for the rest of his life.
The Science of It
Skeptics suggest these are memory errors, hallucinations, or responses to stress. But physicists agree that time is not as simple as it seems. Einstein showed that time is relative. Quantum theories allow for multiple realities and even loops in time. No theory confirms time slips, but none fully disprove them either.
Time slip witnesses often say they felt something was different afterward. Like time never quite snapped back into place.
Maybe time is not a straight road. Maybe it is more like fog. And every now and then, something or someone moves through it.
And if you ever feel like time hesitated around you, maybe it did.
