A comment and a promise from Josh, a kindly visitor to this blog, reminded us of an old favourite that has been covered here in late 2008. All the material for that entry was gleaned from books, most especially from Brennan's Time Travel: A New Perspective, so we only included data that were available in those sources.
But early today, thanks to insomnia and the full moon that kept me happily awake, I found myself watching TV in the early hours of the morning, when an old programme I had totally forgotten about came on: Ghost Hunters.
As I sat watching it, I suddenly remembered that an episode of that series covered the Wotton Hatch incident, among others. I could not remember the title (the first and so far last time I had watched it was in 1996 or 1997), but it didn't take me long to find it.
It is the episode called Ripples in Time. (And it covers not only the Wotton Hatch incident, but starts with another one of our favourites: C. G. Jung's "time slip".)
The "Mr and Mrs Allan" from our post were really a well-known bookshop owner, Eric Barton, and his wife, Irina. And there is much, much more additional - and more importantly, first hand! - information about the whole incident.
Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch it
EDIT: The link seems to have gone dead.
For the time being, you can see the video
EDIT (4. I. 2013): Watch it here... while you can.
If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.
11 comments:
Hi all,
Sorry I haven't been back in touch for a while but I haven't returned to Wotton as yet. When I get some time we're going to take a walk there again and find out what we can.
Where should I post my findings when I have them? In the comment box or somewhere else?
All the best,
Josh.
Hello, Josh - good to have you back. :)
You can post your observations either in the comment form (and you know by now that sometimes it takes time to publish the comments :)) OR you can send an email to
myosotis.info@gmail.com
Hope to hear from you soon!
Came across an experience in a paper on Out-of-Body-Experiences published in the medical journal 'Brain' during 2004.
Here's a link to the original paper:
http://m.brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/127/2/243.full.pdf
Patient 5's experience on page 249, is very different from the other experiences documented in the paper. In fact it's completely out of place, but the papers authors don't seem to have recognised it's significance.
Looks like a time-slip to me, see what you think... here's the experience...
Patient 5 was sitting at a table in a room of the hospital while a nurse was re-adjusting a venous catheter on his right arm.
Suddenly, he felt intense fear and was convinced that the "nurse wants to intoxicate me". This was associated with the experience of slow backward rotation into a horizontal position. There, he suddenly saw himself standing behind the nurse. He stated that: "He looked like myself, but ten years younger and was dressed differently than I was at that moment". Patient 5 saw only the upper part of himself, including the trunk, head, shoulders, arms and hands. Then he had the impression of being examined by a physician. This was interrupted by the intervention of his second body, who was seen to start a fight with the physician and nurses.
Patient 5 had the impression of seeing the scene either from his rotated position ("look[ing] at the ceiling") or from his initial sitting position in the chair prior to the seizure. These different perspectives changed a few times during the episode. During this episode, Patient 5 felt extremely tense; he was shaking and making fists so strongly that his fingers were perforating his palms.
This is extremely interesting, and thank you so much for this, because, obviously, such occurrences are highly relevant to the topics covered here.
I wouldn't dare to offer an opinion at this point - I am simply too aware of the fact how little we, as a a species, and I as an individual, really know about the wider reality of things.
It would be interesting to know whether this patient remembered having had any "dreams" or "premonitions" of seeing himself ten years prior to this experience.
If that were the case, then it would strongly suggest a time (to time-perception) anomaly.
But even that might not give us a definitive answer. Our reality may be infinitely more plastic - pliable and dynamic - than we ever imagined. For all we know, the "past" itself may be subject to manipulation, to change.
In such cases, I often like to let my free associations lead me and make connections which I can then explore and analyse; and of course, the first thing I remembered was Goethe's experience (it is described here under the title My body, myself?)
Now, child of the Enlightenment that he was, he may have dismissed the vision as a fruit of his intense desire and what-not, but that doesn't explain the fact that he was wearing a suit he had never seen - the exact same suit that he was, in fact, wearing eight years later, when the vision "materialised".
Food for thought. :)
Anyway, very interesting!
Thank you so much.
CORRECTION:
I meant: "It would be interesting to know whether this patient remembered having had any "dreams" or "premonitions" of seeing himself IN SUCH A SITUATION ten years prior to this experience."
I'm forced to question whether patient 5 was really certain that it was himself he was seeing - 10 years younger and dressed differently? I'm not so sure I'd be able to reliably identify my younger-self...
The paper is after all about the relationships that the author believes exist between autoscopy and OBE's? If it was not patient 5 seeing patient 5, then it poses some serious question marks about the authors theory? Further, there is nothing in the other OBE's where the patient sees themselves as younger?
Speculating... I prefer the idea that patient 5 was perhaps seeing/feeling what somebody else was seeing and feeling in the same setting, but from a different time.
Perhaps another patient, who appears to have collapsed to the floor, and was feeling very strongly at the time. Who later feels the hands of the medical staff examining them, and sees someone known to them becoming angry.
Who knows... it's fun thinking about these things though. :-)
Of course, it is impossible to KNOW what really happened. I can only speculate - as we all do, basically - based on my own experiences.
(I, for example, would identify a former self of mine quite easily. :) But that's me, not this person.)
As a side note, there have been myriad cases of OBEs and NDE where the subject saw their deceased relatives much younger than they ever saw them in real life.
It's cases like Goethe's (among others) that make this whole question so interesting.
(Here's a direct link:
http://time-slips.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-body-myself.html
And for the benefit of anyone else who might be reading these comments and doesn't know this, Goethe was a highly scientifically-minded individual who contributed greatly to the science of optics, among others. The only way to explain away his experience is that he was lying. Not much of a theory, eh?)
Yes, it is great fun to ponder on these things. :)
Came across a comment from a MR C of Portsmouth on a Skeptic blog debunking The Versailles Time Slip... thought you might like it as an interesting addition to your own blog, pity we can't get in touch with Mr C
http://skeptoid.com/episode.php?id=4296
Mr C Says...
I have often wondered about this tale but I do know that our minds can be fooled!!!
In about summer 1986 I was on Southsea beach, Portsmouth, and looking out towards the Isle of Wight - about two miles away - I could see and hear two old sailing ships - 'men-o-war' - shooting cannon at one another. I can remember thinking it strange, that no one else on the beach was looking at it - people are always looking at the ships out to sea in Portsmouth.
I told people for ages afterwards and looked in the local paper - it has ALL local ship movements - and checked to see if anything was being filmed out at sea.
Never found anything to confirm it actually happened and I don't believe in ghosts !!!
I just think the mind plays tricks at times. Quite weird though.
Mr C, Portsmouth, England
July 16, 2012 2:16pm
Very interesting! Thank you so much.
Of course, my first thought was "ah! a mirage"... but I've never heard of mirages that could be HEARD. :)
It must have been something similar to what Toynbee experienced more than once in Greece and elsewhere. (For those who're not familiar with his story, it is published in the post called "History in the Making".)
After having read so much on these topics, I am more and more inclined to believe Thomas Lethbridge, an extraordinary mind, who advocated the "tape recording" theory. (In fact, I believe he coined that term, but I could be wrong.)
In any case, I strongly recommend his books to anyone interested in apparent dimensional anomalies.
I don't much like the 'stone tape theory', it doesn't match up very well with my own experiences.
My own belief at present is that our conscious awareness is somehow correlated with a field/s that bind together in a mutually coherent way, all those neurons distributed throughout the brain, which are actively responding to different aspects of a perceived object (i.e. visual binding fields?). This field forms a spatial and temporal 3D pattern. Intersecting our brain as feedback loop.
Similarly shaped 3D field patterns of conscious awareness from the past can resonate with our present conscious field shapes, but, they don't tend to breach into our conscious awareness unless they were also accompanied with strong emotion in the past.
Very interesting.
(And not as far removed from some of Lethbridge's theories as one might think. ;))
If you're ever in the mood to write a post as a guest, let us know. ;)
Or if you write it somewhere else, do let us know so we can link to it.
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