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