Time slips, also often called time shifts or time warps, are a phenomenon whereby a person experiences a sudden change in time and space. This may manifest as a sense of being transported to a different time or place, or perhaps a transient glimpse into the past or future. This phenomenon has been reported throughout history and across cultures, and has been the topic of much debate and speculation.
On Wednesday, June 11, 1997, violent storms raged over the Wirral in northwest England and a dramatic light show appeared within the sky over Hoylake as an odd forked lightning streaked forwards and backwards across the clouds, making a loud crackling and hissing sound.
As thunder shook 4 corners of the peninsula, a 67-year-old widower named Jimmy disappeared from his home and was last seen walking near Hoylake Promenade.
Jimmy was being treated for clinical depression on the time, and his two sons, Roger and Martin, drove around on the lookout for him.
Roger thought his dad may need opted for a “walk” and a pub crawl, but Martin, ever the pessimist, feared his father would live “off the grid” as a vagabond just to keep up his independence.
The sons couldn’t find their absent father. They began a brand new search the subsequent day as area fire departments were inundated with calls to pump water from rooms flooded by the biblical storm and take care of clogged sewers.
Police also had their hands full with the huge clean-up operation and the chaos it caused on Wirral roads.
Roger suddenly spotted his father Jimmy walking through The King's Gap with a real smile on his face – something he hadn't seen in an extended time. He stopped, shouted to his father, and got out of the automotive, and Jimmy stood there, still radiating that smile.
– Dad, where the hell have you ever been? Me and Martin have been on the lookout for you in all places! said Roger, hugging his father, who returned with an odd and shocking answer: “Boy, I think I've died and gone to heaven.”
Roger almost pushed him away as he stepped back in surprise. – What?
Jimmy wasn't speaking very coherently and was talking about Hoylake Sands, ice cream and the way he had gone back in time.
“Get in the car, Dad,” Roger said, gently guiding his smiling, cheerful father into the vehicle.
When they returned home, Martin was very offended at his father for wandering around without leaving a note saying where he was going, but Roger begged his brother to shut up for some time in order that his father could tell where he was.
It was an odd story.
Jimmy slipped out of his house in Hoylake at 11pm and was caught in a torrential downpour.
He felt almost hypnotized by the lightning flashing through the black and grey storm clouds, after which he saw a shiny light overhead that he assumed was a part of some form of near-death experience; the sunshine was blinding and hot, and Jimmy slowly realized it was the sun – the offended, blazing summer sun within the sky that was now blue.
He saw a red, diamond-shaped kite hanging within the sky, after which Jimmy looked down – and saw Hoylake Sands, crowded with people wearing colourful costumes from so way back – to Jimmy, it looked just like the late Fifties or Nineteen Sixties.
He couldn't imagine his eyes. For a moment he thought it was paradise – every thing was as he remembered it when he was a young man in his thirties, when he had never had any health problems and life was so beautifully easy.
Jimmy ran to the sands and felt the new sun drying his wet clothes and couldn't stop smiling; the terrible depression that had ruined his life had now evaporated.
The initial religious belief that this was some type of nostalgic paradise eventually wore off and Jimmy realized that he had someway traveled back in time, and from talking to confused people he discovered that he was in 1966.
The people reporting time skips to me appear to fall into two groups; those that are afraid of being stuck prior to now (and sometimes in the long run) and those that need to stay in a bygone era because they feel that times were higher back then – Jimmy belonged to the latter group.
He had two sons and knew he would miss them terribly, but seeing Hoylake on a hot day in 1966 and seeing a few of the characters he knew from his youth (like old Mr. Prescot from nearby Market Street) was simply utopian to him .
Jimmy could hear The Beatles music coming from a small transistor radio next to a girl sunbathing, and now he felt like crying. Was it only a dream?
He crouched down and went to grab some sand to be sure that it was true when the kid unintentionally kicked him within the face with a beach ball.
He laughed because the child apologized. He glanced on the ice cream parlor and knew that the bank card in his pocket couldn't buy a Ninety-Nine – technically, he was stingy. Jimmy spent a while on that beach, all of the while dreading the arrival of 1997.
He walked away and at last went to Market Street and stopped on the Woolcraft Shop where Jimmy's mother and aunt at all times bought wool to knit sweaters for him and his brothers, and stopped on the Trustee Savings Bank on the corner of Wood Street before a visit to the constructing materials store where his uncle at all times sent him to purchase screws and nails.
And then, because the pink paraffin van passed Jimmy, every thing disappeared.
As he feared, the dull, rainy 12 months of 1997 returned, and at first he desired to turn around and return to 1966, but then he felt that some higher intelligence – perhaps God – had allowed him to return to 1966 just to indicate him what form of person he was. he was still there deep inside, despite years of depression and anxiety.
Well, Jimmy's sons insisted that he see his “quack doctor” because after hearing about his “time travel” they were really concerned about his mental health, but when Jimmy calmly discussed his experience together with his doctor, the family doctor seemed fascinated and said that he believes Jimmy didn’t hallucinate during his walk back in time, but someway – through some phenomenon waiting to be discovered by science – he visited 1966.
“I still have the sand shoes,” Jimmy said thoughtfully, “the sands from 1966 – the only piece of my past I could save, and I'll treasure that sand, and I know some people might say Potty, but I don't care what they say and think. I'm back there, doctor.
Science now recognizes time shifts – there are kinds of tiny shifts in the space-time continuum caused by gravitational waves. They were first properly observed in September 2015, and since then scientists have been steadily learning more about how these shifting waves can distort time and space.
They also discovered that despite what people say, that nothing can move faster than light, space-time itself can expand faster than light: this does not violate the principles of relativity, since nothing physically moves in space, but rather space itself expands. stretches, and some physicists believe that these small discoveries will one day lead us to a machine as sophisticated and powerful as the Large Hadron Collider, which will enable us to first televise the past and then enable us to visit the past in person.
I sincerely hope that they will use such a machine for peaceful purposes.
Author: Tomek Slemen, a writer from Liverpool, best known as the author of the best-selling “Haunted Liverpool” series of books documenting paranormal phenomena and unsolved or unusual crimes. Check out his books Amazon here.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
