A Series of Time Slips from Texas to Egypt!

I received these stories from an anonymous poster:

The first incident I recall was in 1975. I was at an old house in San Antonio. A couple of college friends lived there, but the house was about to be condemned so they were throwing a huge, boozy party one last time. Rumor had it that the house had been a bordello, but college kids and creepy rumors inevitably go together. Anyway, it was old, creaky, and huge. I went upstairs, and crept down a hallway with multiple doors on each side. I opened the door, and there was daylight.

And I saw two men arguing. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I sensed it was about a woman. Apparently, they could not see me. Both men were in their late 20s, early 30s. One man was Latino. The other man had blond hair, and his shirt collar was open and sort of hanging weird. (I learned later this was probably a detachable collar, although I'd never heard of such a thing.) The Latino man pulled out a knife, and suddenly the blond man had a gun in his hand and shot the other man in the chest. Then, it was night again, and I could hear the party going on downstairs.

In 1981, I was visiting a friend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. We went to a bar, located in the basement of an old, historic hotel. (I was not drinking alcohol.) Suddenly, the bar was gone. I was in a quiet room. In the room were two tables that looked like hospital exam tables. There were white sheets on the tables, and the room felt very clinical and sterile. I don't recall seeing anyone in there; just the room with two beds. And then...the bar returned. I asked my friend (I was pretty excited) what he knew about the history of the place. "Was it ever a hospital?" I said. But he knew nothing about it. This was in June. I couldn't stop thinking about what I saw, so in late October of that year I wrote out something much like what I've just shared, and put it in an envelope addressed to "Local Historian, c/o Eureka Springs, AK". I also enclosed a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All small towns had a "local historian" I figured. I mean what did I have to lose?

A couple of years passed. I moved to another apartment. Then, one day, my former land lady called me to tell me a letter had arrived at my old address. (Which in itself was odd, because she had never contacted me before.) I drove over to pick it up, and I was momentarily confused when I saw it, because it looked like my own handwriting! Of course, it was,  and I had entirely forgotten that I'd ever sent it. Inside was a letter from, indeed, the local historian. Somehow, it had made its way to her. She explained that she had wanted to reply months ago, but the letter had fallen behind a dresser. She had just found it, and wrote back immediately. In the letter she said that the basement had served as a makeshift morgue during the Civil War, and that the room I had been in had served as the embalming room. She was really excited, and asked me to come back sometime and tour the town. But I had learned what I wanted to, and just let it drop.

After that, all sorts of small but odd things happened periodically. I would see the former occupants of a house, and sometimes even get a sense of who they were. For example: I would see a young woman who had lived there, and I would know that she very fond of a young boy. He was not a relative, but she felt very sisterly towards him. I could see them clearly (I still remember her cloche hat she wore, and how cute she looked.)

Some times I would smell things. One winter, when I lived in Scotland, my husband and I were driving in a particularly barren area. We saw an old castle, and a sign that said it was part of the Scottish trust. When we arrived, it was closed for the winter (this was 1993 or 94), but the caretaker drove up and kindly let us in to look around. I had been in many, many castles, but this one viscerally creeped me out. I had to leave one room, and I made my way to the lowest level. I relaxed once I was down there, because I could smell delicious bread baking. I did find that odd, but we all love that smell! A while later, the caretaker and my husband came down there, and I asked why they were baking bread today. My husband said he didn't smell anything. The caretaker just looked bemused, and told us that the area had once been a kitchen. Nothing had been baked in there for hundreds of years...

The last experience I will share is my most memorable. It happened in the Valley of the Kings, in Luxor, Egypt. It was 1996, and we were at the Ramaseum, a wonderful site of toppled statues, ancient ruins, and a still-functioning nileometer. I walked out onto the excavated foundation of something, just a scraped-out square of sand surrounded by what looked like the remains of a low wall. I stood in the center, feeling the heat of the blazing sun, throat dry and raw from the dust.

Suddenly, I felt cool water trickling over my feet. I actually jumped from the unexpected feeling. The water level didn't quite reach my ankles. Above me were banners of colored cloth, stretched across a pergola. There were also fluttering flags along the sides of the structure. The floor was at an incline, and a wide stream of water flowed from the elevated side down (using an Archimedes screw, although why would I know that then?) and people were seated in low chairs and benches, talking and enjoying the feel of the cool water. It was absolutely the most refreshing thing I have ever felt. Then, it just went away. I was back in the unshaded sun, and I was actually a little emotional because the moment was gone.

I did contact a couple of American Egyptologists, hoping to find one who was familiar with the Ramaseum. No one ever answered me back, so I just shut down and gave up.

Road Trip to a Time Slip

Sometime around 1974, I was driving from Madison, Wisconsin, to Bayfield, Wisconsin, a distance of something more than 300 miles and a six- or seven-hour drive. As is my habit even today whenever I can do so, I kept off the primary highways in favor of county roads. I had made the same trip several times before, and I had a consistent route: this far north on this road, then west a few miles on that road, the north again on another road, then…. You get the point.

Because I had made the trip before, I knew three things: which roads I was going to take, how long it would take to get from one to the other, and the total time for my trip. On this day, however, my best-laid plan went all catty-wampus. At some time during my trip I suddenly found I was on a northbound road I had not intended to take, a road I had never taken and would not have taken under any circumstances. I also found that I had “lost” something more than an hour. That is, given the amount of time that had passed, I should have been an hour farther north than I was.

Sounds almost like an alien abduction, doesn’t it? But I don’t have any mysterious implants in my body, and I don’t remember (poor me!) having had a sexual encounter with a comely alien female.

It does sound a lot like an episode of “highway hypnosis,” but for several reasons I don’t think it was highway hypnosis. With highway hypnosis you do lose a sense of time passing, but in this case the amount of time exceeds typical highway-hypnosis loss of time; I was not on a road with which I was familiar; I did not remember driving during that loss of time; during the time lost, I did not have peripheral knowledge of anything that was going on around me–I was not aware of anything. Furthermore, when you’re driving the back roads of Wisconsin, you must stay alert because you never know when you’ll top a rise and be faced with a slow-moving tractor pulling a manure spreader. If you’re not paying attention in that situation, you’ll soon literally be in the shit.

Charles Wesley Orton

Ancestral Memory?

We were en route to Israel and were in a small cathedral in Austria. Jon McCallum was directing the singing. It was beautiful. I looked up and saw small balconies surrounding the second floor. I had a flashback of myself standing on the middle balcony dressed in clothing of what I would call the Renaissance Period. ([I was]more than likely a servant) LOL! Seriously, it was heart stopping. I never believed in reincarnation but it opened my mind to the possibility of maybe it being one of my female ancestors I was having a connection to at the time. Just something to ponder.

Submitted by Peggy Brown

The closest thing to a time slip I've experienced

I'm one of those people who thinks I want to experience the paranormal, but would probably go into panic mode if anything significant actually occurred. I jump out of my skin if a real person speaks when I think I'm alone in a room, so it's somewhat laughable to think I'd appreciate a ghost sighting. (Except I swear I would...)

I had a small taste of how I'd probably react to a time slip. It was my senior year of college and I lay down for a nap one afternoon. As I entered sleep, I began to feel a spinning sensation. (I had not been drinking :-D). Then I was dreaming. The dream began with me floating through the air and into my early childhood bedroom on Hurricane Creek Road in West Virginia. A Rod Serling-type voice was narrating, "Sometimes, when we dream, we go back in time." (Pretty hokey, but I've had credits scroll up at the end of a dream, so...)  I floated down until I was sitting on my carpet. The carpet and decor were yellow, as they had been in my earlier childhood before we had redecorated. I only took vague notice of this, because I was instantly panicked. All I could think was that I was stuck in the past. I scrambled to my feet and raced to open my door. I ran through the hallway to my parents' room. Even in my panic, I noticed with some surprise that the hallway had the earth tones that were also from my early childhood before we had redecorated. (I'm not sure I could have even told you what color they were until that dream reminded me.) 

I rushed into my parents' room. My dad was sleeping, his face to the wall as he most often did. My mom was sitting up and I believe she was sewing/mending something. I ran to her, still panicked, and threw my arms around her. "Mom, you've got to pray for me - I'm stuck in a --" I started to say "dream" - which indicates I was realizing that this was a dream - but I stopped, worried that I would scare her. She was watching me with alarm, and I struggled with how to approach the issue. I looked out the window of the balcony to the backyard, still thinking. Finally, I asked, "Are we on Hurricane Creek?" Logic clearly failed me here, as it does in dreams, because asking my mom if we were on the street where we clearly were could be no less alarming than asking what year it was. "Yes," Mom answered, still watching me in concern. 

Then I remembered that I always pray to get out of terrifying dreams, but it hadn't occurred to me. I said, "Jesus, help me to wake up." Immediately, my eyes flew open and I was back in my own time (or, awake).

I had an immense sense of relief, and now that I knew it had just been a dream, I decided to go back to sleep and finish my nap. I closed my eyes, and within a few minutes that spinning sensation started back up. It freaked me out so much that I decided not to nap after all, and I got up.

If anyone had told me that I would react in such a way to being sent back to my early childhood, I wouldn't have believed them. I would have thought that I'd enjoy exploring my old house again, seeing my parents, venturing into the wooded foothills and creeks with my friends. But in that moment that I settled onto my yellow carpet, I felt only panic. I knew I was in the past and I was afraid I was stuck.

So when I consider people who have been wide awake and found themselves displaced in time - and realized that is what was happening - I can't imagine they would enjoy the experience.

Naomi West