I have always, even as a child, suspected that there may be something quirky about "time": that it may not be all that it seems to be - or not to be.
But before I discovered the internet, I had no idea that so many other people had occasional... »issues« with time/space. And it took me a relatively long time to google for »lost time« - just to see what would come up (apart from -->Proust, of course.)
Nor did I have any idea that so many people seem to associate this phenomenon (be it subjective perception or something else) with UFOs and/or with "spirit activity" (scroll down to "lost time").
But the odd occurrence I am about to describe has nothing to do with either "spirits" or UFOs, even if they do come and visit us and/or influence our perception of timespace. That much I (seem to) know.
What exactly it was, I don't know.
You decide.
Salvador Dalí, Soft watch at moment of first explosion, ink on paper, 1954. It happened one mid-afternoon in the summer of 1999 or 2000.
I was waiting, somewhat impatiently, for a re-run of a TV documentary that was scheduled to start about 25 minutes later.
I checked the hour, turned on the TV to see whether there was any change in programming - no, there wasn't (checked it against the printed programming in the TV guides, too) - and turned it off again to do some work at the PC.
As I sat down to work, I glanced at my PC clock and then at another clock in the living room. (Both were always on time.) I opened a document file... and closed it again, almost immediately (certainly before writing a single word) - I decided I was in no mood for work, after all.
So I got up, sat on the sofa and turned on the TV again - just in case... But of course the documentary I was waiting for was still some 20 minutes away, according to both the schedules and my clocks. And obviously there had been no sudden change in the programming; the channel where the documentary was coming up was still showing a different programme, exactly according to the schedule. I turned the TV off. (Yes, I have this mania of never leaving the TV on if I am not watching - sue me.)
So I got up again and went to the kitchen, to have a drink - but not before checking the hour on my monitor screen and on the other clock. (Needlessly - about a minute, at most, had passed - but automatically.)
I crossed the two or three metres that separate my sofa from the kitchen. I opened the fridge, took out a drink, closed the fridge door and went back to the sofa. Still bored, I switched the TV on again... and there was my documentary, WELL under way!
(How do I know that? Because I had seen the programme before, but had missed the first part of it - that's why I wanted to watch the re-run. What I saw when I turned on the TV was the part I was already familiar with.)
At first, I was incensed (at the TV station, for its highly irregular programming - or so I thought). I took the TV guide again, checked the schedule, checked the clocks... and discovered that, somehow - I have no idea how or when - more than 20 minutes had passed since I last checked the hour.
What happened there?
Or rather... HOW did it happen?
I have no idea.
I do know that it was NOT a »seizure«, as some people are quick to suggest.
I mean, who on Earth has seizures standing in their kitchen and not even notice it?
Besides, what kind of "seizure" exactly - and I emphasise: exactly, i.e. am asking for a scientifically rigorous definition - would that be, especially considering I had never experienced any before?
(But then, the most »scientific«-sounding explanations are usually the most ridiculous and in-credible ones. The often flippant tone that comes with them doesn't help either.)
I was under no influence of drugs (don't use them), alcohol (I rarely keep even a drop of booze in my home, and that wasn't one of those rare occasions), or any type of medications. As far as I can remember, I had slept normally the night before.
The weather, by the way, wasn't unusual in any way - not that I can remember. (I mention this because an electrically charged atmosphere seems to be much more conducive to time/space anomalies.)
Whatever it was that happened, I do know I am by no means the first, the last or the only person to have experienced this.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of accounts of this kind.
To read more about such experiences, go here and here.
(And if you had one yourself, be sure to drop us a line.)
But if you'd rather forgo timespace speculation and invest your time in Marcel Proust's quest (always a wise investment, if you ask me), go here.
It is a totally delightful website; I could not recommend it warmly enough. The time you spend there, or indeed with Proust himself, may be lost - but never wasted.
11 comments:
I was just reading this and looked at the clock on my computer and it said 1:59. Finished the article and check my clock again and it said 1:01. That is too weird.
What can I say, Grant...?
This is a place where time magic happens! ;-)
(I wish... :))
Anyway, I am endlessly fascinated by such events (as you can gather, I am sure).
So, THANK YOU for sharing this!
It turns out it was only the time change. Time goes back at 2:00AM Eastern Standard Time.
Sorry.
Ah - you change the hour later than in Europe... (Here we usually do it the lat Sunday of October, at 3 a.m.)
I LOVE it when people actually take the time and the effort to go back and report the cause of whatever was baffling them.
Thank you!
Back in 2011, somewhere around the middle of June, my former foster brother and I had a similar experience. We were both in college at the local technical college, taking the same classes. The school wasn't too far from his house, maybe a half mile, but we never walked because our first class was extremely early and the time between the two classes was generally for doing homework while eating lunch, and the more time we had for homework then, the less we had to spend on it later in the evening. One afternoon, we had less homework than normal (or decided against doing it, I'm not entirely sure) and were able to leave a bit earlier than normal. When we got in the car and I pulled out my phone to send a quick text, we had 17 minutes to spare before class started. The drive to the school generally took about two minutes. However, when we pulled in to the parking spot we generally stopped in, 14 minutes had passed. We had to run to make it to class, and were still late. Neither of us can figure out how we both lost around 12 minutes. If it were just one of us, it could be attributed to a before unseen mental issue (we were both 19 at the time, and so were, and are, still growing), but since it was both of us at the same time, that seemed nigh on impossible. As to the weather, it was in the mid 90s and mostly sunny, with only a few clouds. Beautiful day, no storms at all in several weeks around that time.
This actually seems to happen a lot around our town, but this was the first of about 5 or 6 that I have been involved in, and the only one notable in that I wasn't the only person who "lost" or "gained" time.
Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your experience, Daniel!
(And an extra thank you for the additional remarks about the weather. :-)
All too few people do that.)
I wish I had an explanation for such events...
Or maybe not. :)
One thing is sure: they are fascinating.
and they are highly relevant to our understanding of the nature of this world.
I wish more scientists would take this phenomenon seriously.
Burying their heads in the quick sands of positivism and scientism helps no one - least of all science.
One more thing, Daniel: do you mean other people in your town are reporting "lost time"?
Or some other type of anomaly?
And would you mind telling which town is that?
(Such data are always valuable because they could help determine a possible cause.)
But I totally understand if you'd rather not.
Two people (aside from my brother) have told me that they have lost time, one has said that he went to the park in the middle of town and was suddenly "in the past" (he told me a fairly detailed account of a duel, more on that below), and there are "ghost" stories all around. There have been several reports of seeing a "ghost" that is "stuck in a loop", in several different locations. However, two of those aren't in the town I currently live in, but around the towns I have lived in before.
As to the duel, I looked into it so I could post about it. It definitely was real although it apparently didn't happen in our town. According to historical records, the actual location was in a town somewhat south of us. The duel was in 1907.
I'd rather not say specifically what town, but I will say that it's in the Ohio River Valley. I hope that's enough to be of some help.
Thank you, Daniel.
Very interesting.
Are there any ore-rich mountains or mines nearby?
Or any other possible sources of electro-magnetic radiation?
I am not saying you should report back with that information. :)
Only that it's worth exploring, if you ever inclined to do so.
Well, whether I should report back with that information or not, it's worth reporting. It might even help anyone interested in finding a cause for the time slip phenomenon (phenomena? there seem to be several types of time slips).
So, as to what I found... The entire region is rich in iron ore, mainly in the form of magnetite, although there is apparently also some hematite around, and small amounts of other types of iron deposits.
Exactly, it's worth reporting, because it's always good to gather as many physical data as possible.
Thank you very much, Daniel.
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