Unexplained Slips Into The Past
By James Donahue
I have
always been interested in the phenomenon of time. This appears to have been a human invention based on the movements of the
sun, moon and stars. Thus we have the calendar that establishes days, months,
and years, tells us when it is time to plant seed and harvest crops, and in more contemporary times, when to punch in for
work.
During our years of dabbling with esoteric
matters, and while subjecting our brains to more abstract ideas, my late wife Doris and I began to notice peculiar lapses
in time that did not always fit our daily schedule. And we began to question whether time, like the reality of everything
in our life, was part of a collective and complex matrix produced by millions of human brains all working in unison.
And sometimes . . . on rare occasions . . . people have found themselves
spending a few strange moments observing events of the past, or perhaps even the future, before snapping back into the reality
of the collective brain.
We offer here
a collection of true stories involving real people who claim to have had such experiences.
Walking Into A Battleground
It
was January 2 and an elderly Scottish woman named E. F. Smith was with friends celebrating the launch of the year 1950, the
midway point through the Twentieth Century and the beginning of a new decade in the town of Brechin. After a few cocktails
Smith left the party to drive home in the town of Letham, located under Dunnichen Hill. There had been a wet snow that night,
the road was slippery and Smith’s car skidded into a ditch.
She was not hurt but the vehicle was helplessly stuck, so Smith decided she had no choice but to walk home. It
was a long walk because Letham was still about eight miles away. As she approached the town around 2 a.m. Smith noticed some
strange lights on the road ahead of her. When she got closer she realized she was looking at a number of shadowy figures all
carrying fiery torches. Next she realized that there were bodies lying on the ground. The men with the torches were turning
the bodies over. They were attempting to identify dead and lost comrades after a battle.
What had Smith seen? Research into the history of the area turned up the story of an ancient battle of Nechtansmere
when forces under Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, attacked the army of Picts, under Bridei, in the year 685. Ecgfrith’s
army was defeated and the king was slain.
Flight
Into The Future
Early in his career
as a British pilot, Air-Marshal Sir Victor Goddard spoke of flying his biplane over an abandoned airfield in 1935 near Edinburgh.
He said from the air it appeared to be a dilapidated place with cattle grazing on grass that had once served as an airfield.
When returning to his base, Goddard said he flew into a heavy rainstorm
and became lost. He flew back to the old airfield to get his bearings. This time he found the place to be an active airfield
with an ultra modern yellow aircraft he could not identify parked at the hanger. Mechanics in blue overalls were walking around.
It had strangely turned into an active airfield.
Four years later, as war was now raging in Europe, Goddard flew over the same place once again. This time he said
he found the airfield looking exactly like the vision he had in 1935 with mechanics in blue overalls working on yellow planes.
It was as if Goddard had flown into a time warp in that 1935 flight and captured a glimpse of the future.
Lost Time On The Road
An unidentified man recently posted a personal account of a time in July, 2011, when he and his wife were traveling
along Route 164 from Missouri to North Carolina and they drove into some kind of time warp. He said his wife, who was driving, announced that the gas gauge was reporting the tank was half full, that it
was about noon, and she thought it would be a good time to make a stop. He said he was watching road signs, looking
for a gas station. He noticed a sign that said they were approaching a military base. At that moment he said both he and his
wife experienced what he described as "a head rush." When they looked again, they had
passed the military base, the gas gauge said the tank was almost empty. He estimated that about an hour had passed during
that strange moment.
My wife and I had a similar
experience one night when driving from Ubly to Bad Axe in Michigan's Huron County. It had just gotten dark and there appeared
to be storm clouds in the air. We felt that sense of unease that often accompanies an electrical storm. As we drove the five
mile-stretch on M-15 from Ubly north of Highway M-53 we found ourselves caught in what seemed to be an endless drive on a
dark highway. There was no traffic. At some points we would reach the top of a hill and could see the yellow blinking light
at the M-53 intersection far ahead. But we couldn't seem to get to the light. It was as if we drove for about an hour before
we reached the end of that five-mile-long stretch of highway.
Stepping Into The Past
A
person named Frank told a story about how he and his wife, Carol, were shopping in Liverpool. He said they split up, his wife
going into Dillons Bookshop and he headed for a music shop to look for CDs. About then, Frank noticed a strange "oasis of
quietness" surrounding him, and then was nearly struck by a 1950s styled van because he found himself standing in the middle
of the street. He looked back at Dillons Book Store and saw the store was now called Cripps, and women's handbags and shoes
were displayed in the window.
Frank said
people were wearing clothes that were clearly out of date. He followed a young woman back into the Cripps store, in search
of his wife. As they entered both he and the woman watched in amazement as the interior of the store changed back into Dillons
Book Store. He said he asked the girl if she saw what he just saw. He said she answered: "Yeah. I thought it was a clothes
shop but it's a bookshop."
Into Merry
Old England
Glyn Jackson of London,
England, tells of the day he was driving in heavy traffic on Regent Street in the central part of the city. Suddenly the vehicle
hit a bumpy part of the road and he realized that he was driving on cobblestones. When he looked around he saw that the road
he was driving on had disappeared. So had the traffic. He said the stores around him were replaced by small shops, and the
people around him were dressed in Eighteenth Century clothes. Instead of cars, he said the people were riding in horse-drawn
carriages and carts.
Jackson said he
experienced a panic. He put his car in reverse and backed up. He noticed people staring at his vehicle was his engine roared
to life. Suddenly the world around him changed back to contemporary times and he nearly collided with a vehicle that was directly
behind him.
