Time Slips: An Overview
Time slips aren’t a foreign concept to us here at Astonishing Legends. We’ve had whole episodes dedicated to the phenomena. But have we ever dived deeper into what time slips are? How they’re define (or if there is a single definition). So on this entry of blogstonishing we’ve been called to dive into an overview of time slips.
First off, to classify what time slips are we have to delive into what they’re not…time slips are not just explained by ghosts. Some folks argue that there aren’t true time slips and the realistic historical figures we see are ghosts. And, I guess ghosts and time slips do have something in common…but how do you account for the very real passing of time?
So, that brings us to something we can agree on when it comes to time slips: time passes in “real life.” Whether it’s a lost hour, day, or even more…time passes in the reality we have come to understand as ours. And, it doesn’t always match up with the experience with time the person had in the slip.
What triggers a time slip? Because most time slips seem to happen when the person is doing, well, nothing special in particular. Joan Forman, a time slip researcher has studied time slip events from across the UK and has a theory. There is some sort of trigger factor that occurs when someone is "interested in their surrondings but not concentrating on them...a slip can happen at a precise place and moment and the witness is thrust seemingly, into another time."
Based on the stories we’ve covered at Astonishing Legends, like Electronic Fog, The Moberly Jourdain Incident, and Micah Hank’s Missing Time (with Dan & Susan)...they don’t have much in common but they do have the above in common: folks focused on the task at hand but not paying deep attention. In fact, interestingly enough, all three were also in movement: in a plane, while walking, and in a car.
So, maybe to trigger these events you have to be focused…but not too focused, and in motion.
Most time slips stories also seem unintentional and even random, both on the experiencer side and to the time they go to. None of the experiencers that we’ve covered, or any stories I have come across, involved people actively trying to slip through time. Similarly, the time that they travel to (or through? Around? Something else?) there isn’t a direction or sometimes even an understanding of why they traveled to a certain time. Almost as if the universe wasn’t asking for anyone to slip through, either.
After all this, here's my rough definition of a time slip: Time slips are an alleged paranormal phenomena in which a person (or potentially multiple people) travel through or across time without the use of technology. They likely leave their "objective" reality and when they return to that reality, are missing some length of time. While they are missing time they may find themselves going back in time, to the future, or just somewhere else. While an extract trigger point is not understood, people in motion and not paying close attention to their surrondings are more likely to experience a time slip.
Thanks to Claire Mitchell for this blogstonishing suggestion!
This image is by flickr user Giallo, and is licensed under Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal.