Speaker 1: When we think of time, the first thing we think
Speaker 1: of are units of measurement past, present, future, seconds, minutes, hours.
Speaker 1: In the love song of j Alfred prufrock, T, s
Speaker 1: Eliot writes, I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,
Speaker 1: and I suspect that many of us have developed similar
Speaker 1: idiosyncratic methods for marking time. Our time on Earth being limited,
Speaker 1: how else we expected to take stock of our place
Speaker 1: in the universe if not through quantification. Our relationship with
Speaker 1: time is one of the first things we learn when
Speaker 1: our parents and school teachers educators on the correct way
Speaker 1: to read a clock. Our working lives and labour are
Speaker 1: remunerated in money, which is often valued on the time
Speaker 1: we dedicate to a given task. But there is something
Speaker 1: ineffable about time in moments when we drift away only
Speaker 1: to find that several minutes or several hours more than
Speaker 1: what we'd bargained for passed by unnoticed like a flock
Speaker 1: of migrating birds. Why does a boring task seem to
Speaker 1: take so much longer than one we enjoy. We feel
Speaker 1: it when we're sleeping, too, not only via the slow
Speaker 1: dictations of our body clocks, subject as they are to
Speaker 1: circadian rhythms and the hormonal balances of melatonin. But in
Speaker 1: the days, months, and years that seem to play out
Speaker 1: in our dreams, only for us to then waken from
Speaker 1: a single night of slumber. Time also seems to constrict
Speaker 1: as we get older. Where days to us as children
Speaker 1: seemed endless, as adults, weeks can seem to go by
Speaker 1: in the blink of an eye, to the point we
Speaker 1: find ourselves like Sandy Denny, perennially asking who knows where
Speaker 1: the time goes? With that in mind, it might not
Speaker 1: surprise you to learn that the concept of time is
Speaker 1: far from straightforward. In theoretical physics, the problem of time
Speaker 1: refers to the conflict between Einstein's theory of general relativity
Speaker 1: and more recent developments in quantum mechanics. Given some of
Speaker 1: our previous examinations of quantum concepts on the show, it
Speaker 1: may surprise you to know that the field of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics does not permit the possibility of time travel. That,
Speaker 1: for all of its revolutionary potential with regards to overturning
Speaker 1: Newtonian ideas about a fixed and stable universe, it still
Speaker 1: regards the flow of time as all encompassing and absolute
Speaker 1: general relativity meanwhile, regards time like space, as a malleable thing,
Speaker 1: something which is dependent not only on the experience of
Speaker 1: the beholder, but which is ordered by the speed and
Speaker 1: distance at which they move. The conflict arises at the
Speaker 1: sub atomic level, where no known physical laws requires the
Speaker 1: movement of time in a single direction. Given that this
Speaker 1: is so, since inasmuch as we seem to experience it,
Speaker 1: time is a very real and observable phenomenon, why should
Speaker 1: it follow that time only ever appears to move forward,
Speaker 1: if meaning an order all moved toward entropy. Why is
Speaker 1: it that the deeper we delve into the building blocks
Speaker 1: of the universe, patterns break down and tend towards something
Speaker 1: a little more nebulous. You're listening to unexplained, and I'm
Speaker 1: Richard mc lean smith. Uncertainty regarding the nature of time
Speaker 1: has led to some of the most captivating philosophical conundrums
Speaker 1: in human history. It has produced art, music, poetry, and
Speaker 1: prose that not only continues to endure through time, you
Speaker 1: might even say transcend it, but also provides fertile ground
Speaker 1: for the creation of new work. From depictions of time
Speaker 1: travel in Emily Saint John Mandal's The Sea of Tranquility
Speaker 1: to the dilation, expansion, and quickening of time in films
Speaker 1: like Christopher Nolan's Inception and Interstellar. Our obsession with the
Speaker 1: subject seems as much to do with it our own
Speaker 1: mortality as with any grander notions about unlocking the secrets
Speaker 1: of the universe. Perhaps that's why more anecdotal examples of
Speaker 1: time strangeness captivators. So I find myself frequently traveling through
Speaker 1: time whenever I'm with my daughter, my brain fragmenting into
Speaker 1: sections of a strange loop where at once I am
Speaker 1: with my daughter as her parent in the present, but
Speaker 1: then I'm suddenly cast back into the past, picturing the
Speaker 1: moment from her point of view as a reflection of
Speaker 1: my own memory of being with my father when I
Speaker 1: was a child, while simultaneously I find myself also projecting
Speaker 1: the experience forward, imagining a time in the future when
Speaker 1: she is as old as I am now, reflecting back
Speaker 1: on her own memories of being a child with me
Speaker 1: in this moment. Alas this is of course only the
Speaker 1: illusion of time travel, a trick of the imagination, but
Speaker 1: might it actually be possible to travel purposely through time?
Speaker 1: Or will it forever be nothing more than an imaginative
Speaker 1: device through which to convey longing and nostalgia, or, in
Speaker 1: some cases, a way to overcome regret. Perhaps maybe the
Speaker 1: answer lies in one of the UK's great cities, a
Speaker 1: northwestern port town famous for its music, proud industrial heritage,
Speaker 1: and brimming with a passion unlike any found in places
Speaker 1: of similar size and significance. I'm talking, of course, about
Speaker 1: the city of Liverpool and the baffling phenomenon of the
Speaker 1: bold Street time slips. Sean's chest felt tight as he ran.
Speaker 1: Despite his youth at just nineteen years old, something in
Speaker 1: the air seemed to weigh on him as he moved.
Speaker 1: He found it difficult to understand. He was frequently running
Speaker 1: like this, so it played on his mind that now,
Speaker 1: on to day, of all days, his body seemed to
Speaker 1: be betraying him while his opponent closed in as wasn't
Speaker 1: a competitive race though, or a football match, for the
Speaker 1: person Shorn was running from was a middle aged security guard.
Speaker 1: It was a warm spring day in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and Shorn had just Pilford a handful of clothes from
Speaker 1: a shop on Hanover Street in the middle of the city.
Speaker 1: He felt his breath, leaving him more and more the
Speaker 1: closer toward the city center he got. He could hear
Speaker 1: the guards huffing as he drew breath between shouts, and
Speaker 1: it seemed his only recourse was to try for something
Speaker 1: desperate in a bid to lose his pursuer and by
Speaker 1: himself more time. Shawn veered into a dead end enclosure
Speaker 1: of the city's main thoroughfare at Bold Street Brook's Alley.
Speaker 1: He read on the sign upp ahead. It would have
Speaker 1: to do. He took a turn between some bins and
Speaker 1: dropped down on his haunches. He spluttered on the moisture
Speaker 1: in his throat and slowly gathered his breath. It was
Speaker 1: then he noticed something odd, how old everything looked, the
Speaker 1: archaic galvanized metal bins with the rattling tin lids, the
Speaker 1: fluttering newspaper segments and stray cigarette butts. Curious as still
Speaker 1: was that there was no sign of the security guard.
Speaker 1: The tightness in Shorn's chest reached an almost unbearable crescendo.
Speaker 1: Fearful of an asthma attack from which he'd suffered as
Speaker 1: a child, Sean cautiously stood up and made his way
Speaker 1: to the alley's entrance to see if there was any
Speaker 1: sign of his pursuer. Perhaps the security guard had finally
Speaker 1: stopped to put a call into the police, perhaps they'd
Speaker 1: be waiting for him when he emerged into the daylight.
Speaker 1: But as he stepped back onto Hanover Street, sew noticed
Speaker 1: that not only was everything in the alleyway old fashioned
Speaker 1: and strange, now the entire city was too. The road
Speaker 1: works he'd passed while running away were gone. Even the
Speaker 1: cars were different, odd shaped, brown, electric, blue, and white,
Speaker 1: seeming to sputter and rattle as plumes of toxic smoke
Speaker 1: belowed out of their exhaust pipes. People's clothes seemed different.
Speaker 1: The men wore trilby hats and long coats, the women
Speaker 1: Bobby's socks, long skirts and blouses. For a moment, he
Speaker 1: wondered if he'd stepped onto a TV set, something like
Speaker 1: that Heartbeat show his mum liked to watch on Sundays.
Speaker 1: Sean took his mobile phone out of his pocket, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't get a signal. He walked a short distance
Speaker 1: to a kiosk selling newspapers. When he read the front page,
Speaker 1: he noticed in shock that it too was wrong. Daily post.
Speaker 1: It read May eighteenth, nineteen sixty seven. He continued up
Speaker 1: Ball Street to H. Samuel, a brand which, though the
Speaker 1: shop front still looked old, was at least something he recognized.
Speaker 1: He tried his phone again, and this time the signal
Speaker 1: clicked through. When he looked around one once more, he
Speaker 1: found that everything seemed to have returned to the present.
Speaker 1: People were now wearing tracksuits, jeans, trainers and T shirts.
Speaker 1: The display window of H. Samuel was now in full color,
Speaker 1: in remarkable contrast to the drab, beige landscape he just
Speaker 1: emerged from. But when he looked down the street from
Speaker 1: the direction he just traveled, he was startled to see
Speaker 1: the people there still looked as though they were walking
Speaker 1: around in nineteen sixty seven. Thoroughly freaked out and with
Speaker 1: his chest now all but closed over from panic, he
Speaker 1: jumped on to the first bus he saw, then made
Speaker 1: his way home. Also, it was, according to Sean, when
Speaker 1: a local journalist caught wind of his strange story, he
Speaker 1: decided to interview him for the Liverpool Echo. The journalist
Speaker 1: was understandably scared upon going into the meeting, but when
Speaker 1: he emerged he was thoroughly rattled by how sincere Sean
Speaker 1: had seemed, how adamant that this had happened to him.
Speaker 1: The journalist may have first dismissed the story as some
Speaker 1: drink induced vision or the drug addle testimony of a
Speaker 1: young person who, after all, had been engaged in an
Speaker 1: act of criminality when it occurred, but he couldn't shake
Speaker 1: the fact that during their conversation, Sean had repeated the
Speaker 1: same account over four times with no deviation, seeming almost
Speaker 1: on the point of tears, So desperate was he to
Speaker 1: be believed. The journalist eventually tracked down the security guard
Speaker 1: who'd chased Sean that day, only to find that he
Speaker 1: too seemed equally rattled by the experience. As he explained
Speaker 1: to the journalist, it seemed to him that when Shawn
Speaker 1: turned down Brooks Alley just ahead of him, he seemed
Speaker 1: to completely vanish into thin air. A story such as
Speaker 1: Shan's might be easier to dismiss if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: the fact that when the journalist from the Echo checked
Speaker 1: the historical details he'd been provided, they apparently matched up
Speaker 1: exactly with what existed in May nineteen sixty seven. The
Speaker 1: security guard's corroboration could have simply been an expedient way
Speaker 1: of explaining why he hadn't caught the shoplifter, But it
Speaker 1: didn't explain Shawn's motivation for opening up in the first place.
Speaker 1: Not only was there the potential for ridicule, but he
Speaker 1: also ran the risk of marking himself out as a criminal,
Speaker 1: and so at the very least Sean and the security
Speaker 1: guard it seemed truly believed what they'd experienced. As it happens,
Speaker 1: Sean's story wasn't the first of its kind. Back in
Speaker 1: July nineteen ninety six, off duty police officer Frank and
Speaker 1: his wife Carol were out for a stroll in Liverpool's
Speaker 1: city center. They'd come in for the day from Melling
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of town so that Carol could pick
Speaker 1: up a copy of Irvin Welsh's blistering novel Trainspotting. She'd
Speaker 1: been excited to read it since the award winning Danny
Speaker 1: Boyle film adaptation of the book several months earlier. She
Speaker 1: thought it would be good for Frank two to get
Speaker 1: out of the house for some well earned r and
Speaker 1: r from the stresses of its job. As the couple
Speaker 1: emerged from Lord Street onto the same Hanover Street that
Speaker 1: Sean had been running down, Frank bumped into an old
Speaker 1: friend from school. He lost sight of Carol, but knew
Speaker 1: that he'd find her in Dylan's, the bookshop they were
Speaker 1: heading to, located at the bottom of Bold Street. After
Speaker 1: chatting with his friend for several moments, Frank ambled up
Speaker 1: the street with his bags, heading towards the book shop.
Speaker 1: But when he looked up, he saw, with some surprise,
Speaker 1: not the name Dylan's, but Crips written above the door
Speaker 1: of the store in old fashioned cursive. Meanwhile, rather than
Speaker 1: a neat display of books in the shop window, Frank
Speaker 1: saw only department store Mannikins. He wandered for a moment
Speaker 1: if Carol had given him the wrong address for the bookshop.
Speaker 1: Frank turned at the sound of a vehicle heading down
Speaker 1: the street, a van with the name Cardins written on
Speaker 1: the side. When it honked its horn at a passing pedestrian,
Speaker 1: it sounded jarring the old fashion to Frank, almost like
Speaker 1: the vehicles he remembered from his childhood. Like Sean. He
Speaker 1: then noticed that the people around him seemed to be
Speaker 1: dressed in unusual clothes, a mixture of sports jackets, oxford brogues,
Speaker 1: slacks and pinafore dresses. For the women. He noticed the
Speaker 1: almost demure shying away from color in everyone's outfits, almost
Speaker 1: as if brightness had been avoided at all costs lest
Speaker 1: they stand out. The other vehicles he spotted were older models, too,
Speaker 1: bygone English makes that reminded him of his uncles and
Speaker 1: grandfather Morris and Leyland Vauxhall's and MG Minnie and Morgan,
Speaker 1: all leaded petrol and clattering exhausts. Feeling a panic rise
Speaker 1: up in sight, Frank searched desperately for something familiar, then
Speaker 1: spotted a young woman wearing modern clothes more suited to
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, a lime colored sleeveless top and low
Speaker 1: rise hipster jeans. The woman was standing in front of
Speaker 1: where he thought the bookshop should have been, and the
Speaker 1: look on her face told Frank that she was just
Speaker 1: as confused as he was. Frank headed over to her
Speaker 1: and followed her into the store, only to find then,
Speaker 1: much to his relief, that things had inexplicably reverted back
Speaker 1: to the present. The woman turned to look at him,
Speaker 1: remarking the amused expression on his face that was strange,
Speaker 1: wasn't it, she said, before disappearing back into the street.
Speaker 1: For many what gives Frank's storey ry credibility is the
Speaker 1: fact that Frank is a former police officer who, despite
Speaker 1: the risk of ridicule, as always stood by the more
Speaker 1: fantastical aspects of his story. Cripps and Gardins were well
Speaker 1: known Liverpool brands, and in twenty twenty three, the BBC's
Speaker 1: Uncanny TV show even managed to track down a woman
Speaker 1: who claimed to be the elusive woman that Frank met
Speaker 1: that day. Her name was Julie French. When Julie spoke
Speaker 1: to the show, she not only corroborated Frank's story, but
Speaker 1: claimed that she'd gone on to experience a number of
Speaker 1: other time slips in her life since then. I thought
Speaker 1: it was some kind of promotion or something to do
Speaker 1: with the war, Julie said, then in her twenties, now
Speaker 1: in her fifties. But when I looked down at the floor,
Speaker 1: the pavement seemed to go darker. I turned around, and
Speaker 1: as I looked up Bold Street, I saw about thirteen
Speaker 1: people walking by, all dressed in nineteen forties coats and hats.
Speaker 1: Even more significant, she said, was on the day it happened,
Speaker 1: in June nineteen ninety six, it was warm and I
Speaker 1: was wearing a t shirt and jeans. The people on
Speaker 1: the street seemed to be in the cold. Julie claims
Speaker 1: she was then startled by the sound of an old
Speaker 1: fashioned car with round side mirrors, honking its horn as
Speaker 1: it hurtled towards her, despite the street being pedestrianized. She
Speaker 1: went inside the shop where she'd eventually encountered Frank, where
Speaker 1: a woman in nineteen forty style clothing was apparently manning
Speaker 1: the till and shaking her head at her. Julie continued,
Speaker 1: it had old fashioned mahogany display cabinets and everything was dark,
Speaker 1: which is odd because shops are normally bright. Suddenly I
Speaker 1: saw a bookcase with Dylan's written on it, and a
Speaker 1: man grabbed my arm and I was back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six. Like Frank and Sean, Julie believed she experienced
Speaker 1: a time slip on that day, finding herself transported to
Speaker 1: a different time or place, despite having no memory of
Speaker 1: ever having moved from where she stood. She went on
Speaker 1: to explain to the UK's The Sun newspaper that nine
Speaker 1: months later, when she was working for a TV program
Speaker 1: that was filmed at Liverpool's famous Albert Docks, she experienced
Speaker 1: something terrifyingly similar. This time, she was making her way
Speaker 1: to a local bank on North john Street on her
Speaker 1: lunch break when she found herself entering an adjacent shop
Speaker 1: filled with baby clothes and maternity aids. When, as she said,
Speaker 1: she grabbed a small gray cardigan, she looked up to
Speaker 1: see a sign saying the price was two D, an
Speaker 1: abbreviation for the British pence that hasn't been used since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, and when she looked up, everyone around
Speaker 1: her appeared to be dressed in clothes from the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: On this occasion, she said, the experience was much quicker
Speaker 1: than what she encountered on Bold Street, with things returning
Speaker 1: to normal as soon as she left the shop. Things
Speaker 1: would apparently come to a head for Julie a few
Speaker 1: years later, when, according to her, she experienced yet another
Speaker 1: brief time slip, this time on a train near Waverley
Speaker 1: Station in Edinburgh, Scotland. As the train slowed down coming
Speaker 1: into the station, Julie prepared to disembark, but when she
Speaker 1: approached the door to the carrier, which once again she
Speaker 1: apparently became faintly aware that things looked different suddenly, where
Speaker 1: the carriage had previously been packed full of commuters, Julie
Speaker 1: saw only two or three others sitting in the seats.
Speaker 1: The carriage apparently seemed older too. However, the greatest shock
Speaker 1: was when she supposedly looked out into the station, only
Speaker 1: to find that everyone was dressed in clothes from the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Julie claimed the events had caused such
Speaker 1: mental distress that she sought help from Liverpool's self described
Speaker 1: medium and psychic, Derek Acorra. A Coorra supposedly performed a
Speaker 1: ritual to try and close off, as he called it,
Speaker 1: what he described as Julie's third eye, which he said
Speaker 1: was sensitive to paranormal phenomena. It was this, he claimed,
Speaker 1: that was causing the strange time slips she was experiencing.
Speaker 1: She was told to imagine a purple cloak covering her
Speaker 1: from top to bottom, an imaginative device which a Corus
Speaker 1: said offered security and protection from what he termed the
Speaker 1: other side. Though Julie says she felt safe for a
Speaker 1: short time afterwards, she claimed that other little slips have
Speaker 1: occurred since, and that she has effectively resigned herself to
Speaker 1: being under their influence. One thing that Julie posited about
Speaker 1: her own apparent time slips is the possible connection between
Speaker 1: always being in a hurry of being in transit during
Speaker 1: those times, and that there may be a connection with
Speaker 1: train systems in particular. Though this might seem tenuous, researchers
Speaker 1: and skeptics have long speculated about the presence of infra
Speaker 1: or ultrasound sites of supposed paranormal activity, specifically with regards
Speaker 1: to low frequency sounds that have the ability to trigger hallucinations.
Speaker 1: Like any other major city in the UK, Liverpool has
Speaker 1: a long and sometimes troubled history which seems to have
Speaker 1: seeped into the fabric of its paving, stones and walls.
Speaker 1: From its involvement as a major port of the British
Speaker 1: slave trade to the thousands of starving migrants who arrived
Speaker 1: in the city during the nineteenth century while fleeing from
Speaker 1: the Great Famine in Ireland, there is certainly a case
Speaker 1: to be made that the city lends itself to dark imaginings.
Speaker 1: There is still the question, of course, about the accuracy
Speaker 1: of the details recounted in each witness's story, the consistency
Speaker 1: of their accounts, and the apparent lack of gain to
Speaker 1: be had in making such unusual and outlandish claims as theirs,
Speaker 1: Julie was told by Derek Acorra that she had one
Speaker 1: foot in this dimension and one foot in another. Funnily enough,
Speaker 1: this is a concept often repeated throughout folklore going back
Speaker 1: to ancient times. In Irish mythology, the notion of thin
Speaker 1: places is said to account for areas of the land
Speaker 1: where the veil between reality and the mythical other world
Speaker 1: is supposedly at its most porous. The ancient Celts believed
Speaker 1: that the distance between Heaven and Earth was just three feet,
Speaker 1: while some Native American tribes are known to ascribe such
Speaker 1: profound mystical significance to sights of baled reality that they
Speaker 1: tend to avoid them completely. Danny Robbins, who hosts The
Speaker 1: Uncanny series in which Duly featured, has said that the
Speaker 1: experiencing of an apparent time slip is not as uncommon
Speaker 1: as it might first appear, and that since broadcasting the
Speaker 1: episode in question, he's received dozens more testimonies with eerie similarities.
Speaker 1: One individual described walking out of a record store in
Speaker 1: London's Oxford Street in the nineteen nineties, only to apparently
Speaker 1: find themselves suddenly transported back to Victorian times. All strawn
Speaker 1: carriages trundled down the Cobble Street as it had once been,
Speaker 1: and they even claimed sadly for them to have experienced
Speaker 1: the smells of Victorian London. Whatever your belief, what is
Speaker 1: clear is that the past will always haunt us in
Speaker 1: some way, whether through memory, celluloid feelings of regret and longing,
Speaker 1: or more literal forays into some forgotten corner of history.
Speaker 1: One thing is for sure, the past is never dead.
Speaker 1: To quote the great American author William Faulkner, it's not
Speaker 1: even past. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson
Speaker 1: and Richard McLain Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet.
Speaker 1: His debut collection of poems, titled Bandit Country, exploring the
Speaker 1: hinterland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted
Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty two T. S. Eliot Prize and
Speaker 1: is out now to buy. Do check it out. Thank
Speaker 1: you as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe
Speaker 1: and rate it if you haven't already done so. Unexplained
Speaker 1: will be coming to YouTube very shortly in video form,
Speaker 1: so please watch out for future developments there. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to the channel at YouTube dot com, Forward Slash
Speaker 1: at Unexplained Pod. You can also now find us on
Speaker 1: TikTok at TikTok dot com. Forward Slash at Unexplained Podcast.
Speaker 1: Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
Speaker 1: McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
Speaker 1: are also produced by me Richard mccleinsmith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
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