S02 Episode 2: Time Out of Joint

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past wrong or merely to escape our present reality. But it wasn't until Einstein's special relativity introduced us to the tantalizing concept of space, time, and the fourth dimension that such notions were given mathematical credibility. No longer was time a mere subjective unit of measurement, but suddenly we were invited to imagine it as a space within which we might move, a theory that, as the earlier quote suggests,

did away entirely with any notion of past, present, and future. Or, to be clearer, as physicist Max Tegmark notes, time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is for much in the way that matter may appear differently from one observer to the next, So two, according to Einstein, does time. Incidentally, although the concept of space time is often linked with Einstein, it was actually his teacher Hermann Minkowski, who first proposed the idea back in nineteen oh eight

in a paper titled Space and Time. Remarkably, author Edgar Allan Poe is believed to have come to the same realization himself as far back as eighteen forty eight, writing in an essay titled Eureka, that space and duration are one. Certainly, it is an area that has been well explored in fiction. The oddly Unsettling nineteen seventies television show Sapphire and Steele and Joan Lindsay's Haunting and Mesmeric Picnic at Hanging Rock are two of my favorite accounts of one such temporal

corruption that is equal parts fascinating and terrifying. The notion of the time slip you're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McClean smith. To paranormal researchers, the fabled time slip is considered to be the rarest of all documented paranormal experience, the most well known account of such an event being the Mobile jur Dan incident. The event is alleged to have occurred on Saturday August tenth, nineteen o one, at

the Palace of Versailles. In France, when two British women visiting the palace on a day trip claimed to have found themselves inexplicably transported back to the late eighteenth century, to be surrounded by Pallace courtiers and even at one point crossing paths with Mary Antoinette. The women, Charlotte Mobiley and Eleanor Jourdan, were both well educated and had no obvious reason to fabricate the events, and published a book of their account in nineteen eleven, which was predictably met

with much ridicule. There are two accounts of alleged time slips that took place in Britain in the nineteen fifties. The writer and longtime member of the Society of Psychical Research Andrew McKenzie documented both the events in his nineteen ninety seven book Adventures in Time. For McKenzie, the accounts were nothing less than two of the most convincing that he had ever come across, mysteries that remained to this

day unexplained. On Monday, January the second, nineteen fifty as the new decade entered its third day, so too did the New Year's celebrations, as is customary in Scotland. In a small house in the town of Brecon in the eastern County of Angus. A cocktail party is coming to an end. Sensing that the party was beginning to wind down, one of the guests, fifty five year old Miss Elizabeth Smith,

decided to call it a night. It was, after all, getting late, and Elizabeth wasn't much relishing the ten mile drive back to her house in Leatham. After saying good bye to her friends, she collected her small terrier dog that she had brought with her, and together they climbed into her car in preparation for the journey home. It had been a relatively mild winter, but the last few days had seen a light dusting of snow along much of the East Coast, snow that by nightfall on the

second had turned steadily to ice. Undeterred, Elizabeth switched on the engine and pulled off into the night. A short time later, not more than two miles outside of Brecon, Elizabeth lost control of the car, spun off the road and plummeted straight into a ditch. Miraculously, neither Elizabeth nor her small canine companion were harmed, but the car was

completely written off. Relieved and more than a little dazed, but the temperature outside steadily dropping, Elizabeth knew she had only two options, returned to her friend's home or strike out on the eight mile journey back to leathm Deciding on the latter, Elizabeth gathered her things and, together with her dog, she set out on the long walk home. At first, Elizabeth was at ease taking the deserted country lane back towards her village. She felt safe with her

dog by her side, cheerily keeping her company. But it was hard to ignore the strange sense of foreboding that is wont to arise when you are out in the wilderness, with no light to be seen, and even the moon declines to reveal itself. Such was the thickness of cloud it was difficult even to make out the contours of the surrounding fields save for the dark silhouettes of hedgerows

and trees dotted about like thick, formless shadows. It wasn't long before the eerie quietude of the night started to gnaw away at her nerves, so much so that Elizabeth neglected to take the well trodden shortcut through the field. Better to stick to the open country, she thought, than venture nearer to the ominous looking woodlands to her left. With the temperature dropping even further, Elizabeth and her little

dog plowed on gallantly towards their destination. Roughly too miles from leatherm Elizabeth's dog began to tire, leaving Smith with little choice but to pick him up and carry him on her shoulders. Less than half a mile later, Smith was hugely relieved when she was able to make out the distant rise of Dunichen Hill, a clear sign that she was almost home. And so it was with little surprise when she saw a few small lights in the distance.

Only there was something odd about them. Firstly, it was strange, she thought, why so many lights would be on when it was almost two o'clock in the morning. But what was perhaps even more unusual was that the lights, unless she was mistaken, appeared to be moving. A short time later, not only had the number of lights increased dramatically, but she soon realized with some surprise that each of the lights were being held aloft in the air by strange,

shadowy figures. The lights were in fact flaming torches being held aloft by men wearing dark tunics with roll collars and tights. What was also odd was the manner in which they were moving. Rather than walking straight across the field, they seemed to be skirting in a semicircle around the bottom of it. But then the figures disappeared, only to be replaced by another set of men in the field to her left, who were this time close enough for her to notice that the torches seemed to be strangely

red in color. At this point, Elizabeth's dog, sensing the peculiarity of the occasion, began to bark, much to Elizabeth's alarm. Trying to ignore the strange men, she hurried on towards home. But the most extraordinary vision was yet to come. Not long after, a third set of men appeared, even closer than the previous groups. She could see them clearly now as they made their way through the field, just like before, with their burning torches held aloft. But they weren't merely

marching as she had first thought. This group seemed to be moving much more diligently and with purpose throughout the field. Elizabeth wondered why it was that they would stop from time to time, bringing the torches close to the ground, and that was when she saw them. The bloodied corpses of the dead. It was as if she had wandered into the aftermath of some great and ancient battle. The

field was littered with them. The men with torches were clearly scouring the ground to see if anyone was left alive, turning the bodies over in the darkness to check for signs of life. Smith and her dog eventually made it home safe and sound, but unsurprisingly, the ghosts of those dead never truly left her. However, it wasn't until a further twenty years later that Smith's account of the extraordinary

event was formerly recorded. The task was taken up by fifty four year old doctor James mc carg, a much respected and well loved psychologist and contemporary of Andrew McKenzie at the Society for Psychical Research. In the intervening years, Smith had come to the realization that what she had seen had indeed something to do with an ancient battle once fought on the very land she had walked across.

After spending some considerable time interviewing Smith, mac carg was left with little doubt that she had somehow slipped back in time and witnessed the aftermath of a brutal and bloody battle known as the Battle of Necton's Mere. The battle occurred in six hundred and eighty five, a d between the Picks, an enigmatic tribal people from what is now the north and east of Scotland, and the Northumbrians.

Fifty years previously, the Kingdom of Northumbria, led by King Edwin, had risen to become the most powerful in all of the British isles, but by the end of the seventh century the kingdom had diminished considerably, thanks largely to the disastrous defeat they suffered at the hands of the Picks

at the Battle of Necton's Mere. McCarg found Smith, who at one time had been the president of her local women's rural Institute, to be an extremely credible witness, concluding that her recollections of the Knight's events were at the very least genuine to her, and a few elements of the story stood out. In particular, Smith's insistence that the torches had been read was puzzling at first, until Andrew McKenzie later made a discovery that was believed to have

not been known by Smith at the time. He discovered that torches of that era were often made from the resinous roots of Scott's fir, which in their natural state do indeed have a distinctive red color. Macag was especially intrigued by Smith's description of the movement of the men who seemed to be walking in a curve around the field, and so it was with some surprise when he discovered that back in the seventh century, the field had in fact been a small lock that had later been drained

and turned into farmland. His startling conclusion was that perhaps the apparitions had merely been walking around the lock to get to their fallen comrades. This revelation, he believed, was ultimate proof of Smith's story, since it demonstrated that the apparitions must have come from a time before the lock had been drained. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make

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of England. It is the birthplace of the Infamous, which find a General Matthew Hopkins, whose reign of terror in the sixteen forties resulted in many local women being murdered due to egregious accusations of witchcraft. Nowadays, however, it is perhaps better known for its tranquil wetlands and rich arable soil.

It is a county that echoes with bird song and the music of Raye Fawn Williams, a place where the earth is as dark and rich as the sky is wide, a place perhaps best summed up by W. G. Seaboard's exquisite travelog The Rings of Saturn. And so it is to that place that we now travel. It is Sunday morning in October nineteen fifty seven. Up above the skylarks ascend, chirrup, whistle, and shake as below them, three young boys, uipped with a map and a compass are steadily making their way

across the countryside. They are taking part in an orienteering exercise organized by the Royal Navy Cadets. The boys, who are all fifteen and brand new recruits, are William Lange from Perthshire in Scotland, Bray Baker from London, and Michael Crowley from the County of Worcestershire. Today their task is to locate a specific waypoint, record their findings and then returned to base camp to report back to their superiors. Finally, after a few miles of trekking, the boys were excitedly

homing in on their mysterious destination. They had been coming up a slight rise when they first heard the sound of church bells. As they approached the top of the hill, they noticed smoke rising from chimneys and the spire of

a church towering prominently above a small village. As they finally made it over the hill, the rest of the small community was revealed to them below, and with the boys in agreement that this was indeed where they were supposed to be, they continued their journey down into the village. But as they got nearer, something very peculiar happened. Part Way into the village was a small stream that flowed over the road. As they approached it, they became aware

that something wasn't quite right. It was Michael who noticed it first, the silence. Only moments ago, the church bells had been ringing and the sound of bird's song had filled the air, But now, as they entered the village, the place was eerily silent, save for the gentle trickling of the stream. As they carried on over the ford, William noted that even the ducks seemed unmoved by their arrival, and as for any sign of people, the place was

completely deserted. It was then that they noticed the trees. Only a few minutes earlier, they were surrounded by a countryside decorated with the reddish golden browns of autumnal leaves, but the leaves on the trees in the village were anything but. Here, the leaves appeared to be vibrantly green, almost as if it were springtime. As the boys walked on, a strange picture was beginning to emerge. All of the houses looked as if they were from another age, hand

built and slightly crooked in design. Some were timber framed, and others looked positively medieval. Looking around, they saw no sign of street lights or even aerials on the houses. There was also no smoke coming from the chimneys as they had seen before entering the village, and absolutely no sign of the church that had been so visible from the hill. What's more, the wind had completely dropped, with not even the leaves rustling in the trees, and there

was no sign of anybody anywhere. The boys made their way over to a building with a green door and a large front window split into smaller panes that had not been washed in some time. They pressed their noses to the glass. Just like the rest of the village, the shop was deserted, but at the back of the room, hanging on meat hooks were the skinned carcasses of three large cows. The meat green and moldy, having long ago

turned putrid. Unnerved by what they had seen, and somewhat in a daze, the boys soon found themselves staring through the window of another building, but again found no sign of life inside, the rooms completely emptied of all furniture. Ray and Michael suggested did knocking on some of the doors, but William refused to move. Ever since entering the village, a strange feeling had fallen over him. It was an overwhelming sense of sadness and the unmistakable sensation that they

were being watched by unseen and unfriendly eyes. The three boys hurriedly made their way back up the track to the top of the hill. Finally satisfied that they had reached a safe distance, the boys turned back and were amazed to find the village just as they had seen it before. The smoke was again rising from the chimneys,

and the church spire stood tall and proud. The autumnal colors had returned to the trees, and once more the sound of the bells and bird song could be heard all around a short time later, the boys returned to base camp and relayed their experiences to their skeptical superiors. Despite their baffling description, the petty officers confirmed the boys had indeed reached their designated waypoint. What they had supposedly

seen was the picturesque village of Cursey. It wasn't until thirty years later that Michael Crowley and William Lange, who by then were both living in Australia, contacted McKenzie and relayed their extraordinary story. A few years later, McKenzie revisited the village with Lange, and together they retraced just what exactly had occurred that day, Much like doctor mc hark had been with Miss Smith in Scotland. McKenzie was impressed by Lange's sincerity and the detail of his description of

the events. McKenzie ultimately came to the conclusion that what the boys had experienced was not the Cursey of nineteen fifty seven, but rather the village as it had been in the fourteen twenties in the aftermath of the Great Plague. Is it really possible that both the young Cadets and Elizabeth Smith, and anyone else for that matter, could slip

unwittingly into another time? Perhaps not in the manner suggested by McKenzie, but in two thousand and eleven, one man was to make a remarkable claim that we might all, in a sense be slipping in and out of time constantly. In March of that year, a paper was published in the Journal of Personality and Psychology titled Feeling the Future Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Effect.

It had been written by a brilliant but controversial social psychologist of Cornell University in the States called Professor Daryl Bemm. The paper was extraordinary from its opening line to its mind boggling conclusion. After all, it isn't often that a paper published in an elite journal begins with a definition of PSI, which he described as the anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms

of known physical or biological mechanisms. It is even more of a rarity that a paper would then go on to prove that such phenomena, an area most associated with telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis, might actually be real. The paper presented the results from a number of experiments involving over one thousand volunteers. One such test was to have the volunteers study a list of words, from which they would later be asked to try and recall as many of the words as possible.

Having completed this part of the experiment, the volunteers were then given random words from the list that they were then asked to type out as a counterintuitive act of reinforcement. Incredibly, ben results seemed to suggest a direct correlation between the words that the students had been able to recall and the words that they were later asked to type out. In essence, Bem had turned the notion of cause and

effect completely on its head. In another test, volunteers were shown two curtain graphics on a computer screen, behind one of which was a highly stimulant, erotic image. The volunteers were then tasked with selecting correctly which curtain hid the image completely. Random guesses would return a roughly fifty percent success rate, but amazingly, Professor Bem recorded a fifty three point one success rate. The difference may sound minimal, but

in statistical terms, it is dramatically significant. What Bem's paper seemed to be saying was that everything we thought we knew about the unidirectional nature of time was a fallacy. Before long, however, there were suspicious rumblings amongst the scientific community. Questions were asked about the validity of Bem's methodology and the lack of any other findings that might link with Bem's extraordinary claims, and ultimately, what distinguishes scientific theory from

fact is the reproducibility of the results. In two thousand and twelve, psychologists Stuart Ritchie, Richard Wiseman, and Chris French of the Universities of Edinburgh, Hertfordshire and Goldsmith's respectively made an unsuccessful attempt to replicate Professor Bem's findings. Their attempts were repeated in the same year by Jeff Gallick of Carnegie Mellon University, who also failed to replicate Professor Bem's results. It remains to be seen whether Bem's findings will gain

a wider credibility. For what its worth, Bem stands resolutely by his fine one perhaps more rational, but in some ways no less extraordinary. Explanation for the bizarre accounts of Elizabeth Smith and the Three Cadets is a phenomenon known as derealization. The experience is thought to be brought on by a dysfunction in the occipital or temporal lobe of the brain. The condition can often leave sufferers with a sense of disassociation from the external world, whereby familiar places

suddenly become alien and surreal. Regardless of whether such a condition had afflicted Smith or the young boys, the suggestion brings to mind an intriguing concept that I believe strikes at the heart of our fascination with the notion of traveling back in time. The term horntology was coined by French philosopher Jacques Reader in his nineteen ninety three book Specters of Mars, The State of the Debt, the Work

of Mourning, and the New International. The word is a portmanteau of the words haunting and ontology, the philosophical study of the nature of being. For Derida, the term is essentially a play on the temporality of ideas, or more precisely, the impossibility of eradicating knowledge or ideas, in this case, as they would pertain to Marxist philosophy. Once they have been conceived, from the moment they exist, they remain forever a part of our collective knowledge, haunting our perception of

both the past and the future. The implication being that only by returning to a time before the idea could we hope to imagine an alternate future unshaped by that idea. And it is this that I believe most resonates with us when fantasizing about the possibility of traveling back in time. Not the fantasy that we might exist in a different and more agreeable past, but that by returning to that

past we might realize a different future. What tantalizes is the promise that our fate could somehow be changed for the better, this currently being an impossibility. To paraphrase the composer William Bazinski, we find ourselves perversely left pining for

futures that can never happen, but continue to haunt us. Nonetheless, a concept that you might say achieves physical form in the architecture around us, perhaps no more strikingly than in places like the Barbican Center in London, a place now extant as a literal Ballardian testament to a vision of the future that never materialized. Of course, change for the better,

like all things, is a relative term. For example, it is through concepts such as horntology that we might better understand, at least the despotic fixation for burning books, or, in the recent case of Isissel, their destruction of ancient cultural artifacts. Such practices formed the practical reality of attempts to expunge the past in the hope of creating a different future.

The concept of horntology was reinvigorated in the naughties by a number of cultural theorists eager to apply the term to emergent trends in art and pop culture, in particular with regards to the growing sense that Western music and

especially electronic music, had reached an evolutionary could sac. Perhaps most prominent among them was the writer and theorist Mark Fisher, who saw in the music of artists such as Burial or the groups perform under the ghost Box label, an attempt to navigate away out of the cul de sac. Fisher also recognized an unsettled nostalgia for the past that in some ways was merely serving to reinvigorate the specters of what those musicians saw as their many lost futures.

But what Fisher found most troubling, as mentioned in a piece for the fall two thousand and twelve edition of Film Quarterly, was the sense that we were losing the capacity to conceive of a world radically different from the one in which we currently live, that escape from the cul de sac was an impossibility. And yet for those left despondent at this notion, who pine for an escape from an uncertain present, it is worth bearing in mind some of the thoughts of Arthur Kessler, as addressed in

his seminal work The Ghost in the Machine. In a concept he refers to as drawback to Leap, Kessler demonstrates that not only is the history of evolution littered with cul de sacs and dead ends, but that some of the greatest revolutions in science, art, and biology were dependent

on them. That it isn't until periods of cumulative progress reached their inevitable stagnation that we are left with no alternative but to go back and find a new way out, as exemplified, for example, by the way in which Pablo Picasso's reversal to primitivism enabled him to forge a brand new paradigm in Cubism. So for anyone feeling afraid that the future they invested so much hope in seems to be disappearing before their eyes, worry not that it is

the end. Not only might it merely be the draw back before the leap, but also remember that the past, present, and future is now. Perhaps those lost futures aunt specters after all, but real attainable spaces just waiting for you to arrive. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or

ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now. It's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you. Tell a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video any time between seven a m. To nine pm local time, seven days

a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app, or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's t e ladoc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast