The following fascinating account comes from a reader, Susan.
(Thank you, Susan. As great as all those famous "reality hiccup" stories are, nothing beats first hand accounts of direct experience.)
My name is Susan O. I am 52 years old and in reasonably good health both physically and mentally.
I experienced a recent incident that I described to my family as a sort of phasing through time. Here are all the facts, both objective and subjective that happened on May 9th, 2015 in Williamson County, highway 96, just outside of the city of Franklin Tn., traveling toward that city from the direction of Murfreesboro Tn.
It
was close to 11:30 am. The day was clear, sunny and the temperature
was around 78 Fahrenheit with low humidity. I have traveled this
highway many times in the past, to take my daughter to horse shows,
though that was ten years ago. I probably haven't driven to Franklin
on this road for several months at least.
I was driving my car about 40 mph. I was not listening to the radio or any music. I was in a very good mood, on my way to deliver flowers for a wedding. I am a wedding and event florist. I am also a photographer and I have learned to be very observant.
I was passing a large brick house with a stone front and archway leading to the front door. The yard was large and open. The house was on my right. Then suddenly, I was standing under an archway made of stone. It was cold and damp, very overcast. I could feel the cold wind blow around my ankles, so I must have been wearing a dress of some sort. I could also feel the cold wet stone of the arch underneath my right hand, I was leaning against it for support. There was a man present to my left, and a woman beside him, and a little behind me. I didn't look at them. I was looking out at a landscape of rolling hills, rocky and the vegetation looked like it was late fall, early winter. The wind was blowing, it was very overcast and gray. I felt like the building behind me was a church. there were people inside, I could hear voices faintly. I was extremely sad, it felt like grief. I think I was crying.
The next thing I knew i was back in my car, still passing the house, barely further than I was when I found myself in another place. Not much real time has elapsed. It was very unsettling. I felt like I should go back, but I didn't know how to do that. Then I finished driving to the wedding, I set up the flowers and the reception, stayed to help with the wedding, cleaned up and drove home that night along the same road about 10:45 pm. I was a little spooked, so talked on my cell phone with a friend until I got close to Murfreesboro.
This is what happened to the best of my knowledge and recollection I have spent time talking this over with my husband , my daughter, and her boyfriend. I tried to search on the internet to see if I could find any information. Finally I got directed to several sites which describe incidents of something called "time slips". Then I found your site.
Let me know what you make of this. I have always experienced deja vu since i was very young, and have had a few dreams where I saw locations of children kidnapped, but never enough to tell me where they were, mostly like I was seeing through their eyes. These happened in my teens, and I was scared of them, so I stopped watching the news for several years.
I don't know about other readers, but I find this type of event among the most interesting timespace-perception-transcending experiences. It deserves much deeper an analysis than I am going to attempt right now (but I might edit this entry in the future to add more thoughts, so stay tuned).
Based on a few other similar experiences I have heard or read about, I think what MAY have happened is that - assuming information really isn't local (as modern physics seems to suggest) - you accessed fully that reservoir of collective experience that Sheldrake (among many others) talk about, and "picked up" the full experience of someone else. Perhaps it was someone's "memory field". Perhaps it was something else entirely.
For the sake of (relative) completeness I should also mention the possibility of an image-triggered memory of a long-forgotten film scene or even a dream. (In other words, there is a possibility that many years ago you saw a film scene like the one you described, one that you identified strongly with; or perhaps you had a dream like the scene your experienced. For some reason - probably quite specific, but forgotten almost instantly after the association was made - the image of that house, which you had seen before, had become associated to that memory. Seeing it again triggered - for some reason - the memory of the film scene or dream.)
That COULD happen.
But do I really believe that happened in this case?
Well, no, not really.
As I said earlier, I may edit this entry in the future, as more thoughts come along, so check back from time to time.
P.S. If Carl Grove (see the comments section in: Have you seen this house?) happens to read this... Carl, we would appreciate your help with this one. ;)