• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Time Or Dimensional Slips

And one that sounds familiar:

"Location: Lambourn Woodlands (Berkshire) - M4, between Junction 15 & 16
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Circa 1990, 00:30h
Further Comments: A witness passing along this road noticed a group of people walking towards the motorway. Even though the ground was uneven, they moved as if on a smooth path. The lead figure, a woman wearing a maroon Victorian dress with matching bonnet, held aloft a ridiculously small umbrella. A man close behind appeared to be listening to the woman, and wore a top hat."

Source: https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
I'm sure someone has posted an IHTM on here about that area and sighting.
 
With the World Cup in Qatar, here is an incident from there.

It is described by the writer, a man named Pasindu as having happened around 2002.

https://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=26938


This story I am about to tell you that happened to me over 13 years back. I was in Qatar for my industrial degree and I never had anyone there as a friend or a family to look after me.

I was living in a small room, I even had to use a common toilet until I made some friends after about three weeks attending my classes and we all moved in to one Villa. Seven guys; two from Nepal, two from Philippines, one India and myself and another from Sri Lanka.

It was a two story house and newly built and situated in Matar Qadeem Area, it's a residential area with shops and shopping malls.

What's common in those houses are the rooftops, there were no roof top except decorated with chairs and tables to chill in the evenings which is what exactly we did when we came home after lectures.

I have to tell you, we all of us were smokers, we smoke cigarettes often at home specially after coming home on the roof top chatting and drinking energy drinks, eating junk.

Behind to our house these was a road, width of four vehicles and next to the road (Left Side) a huge empty land, this land was under construction and it was all covered by a wall. We could see inside of that land from our roof top but not from the road.

One day as usual we were on the rooftop at around 6.15PM and having red bull and smoking and talking about movies and just spending time.

We were looking at the surroundings while we talk. But something was unusual, the land which was under constructions were missing, missing in a sense the wall was not there and no construction vehicles were there. The sun was almost gone and we could only make very little vision of the place. But the only available light sources are the yellow street lamps but that is also on the right side of the road.

Strange stories started coming in from every one of us, like maybe the owner stopped the construction or they have changed the plan... But still within one day all this change could not happened. That day morning when we were going we did not notice about this land until now.

So we decided to have a walk and see what has happened since the wall also not there.

As we walk close to the place we could see trees without leaves were planted, and they were tall trees, about eight to ten feet tall. They were not many but three trees with dry bushes and the worse is some gravestones. But the writing we could not recognize since it was all curved in to the stone in Arabic (I think) and it was dark already.

We were getting into more and more into the land passing gravestones and then all of a sudden we heard a voice, rather an angry tone with Arabic as if a person is shouting. We stopped and looked at him and by his body language we could see he was not happy and showing us to go outside.

We asked him what happened here and why the land was changed as if it's a horror movie site.

But the man kept on shouting at us saying the same thing. One guy said let's ignore him and walk around the place and as we did this man came running at us with a stick!

We ran and thought we were trespassing some private property and that's the reason why he do not want us in there.

And it's very dangerous get caught by police in Qatar for any reason.

We ran to the other end of this land which is a normal dust and stones filled area that had nothing unusual.

I turned around to see if the man is chasing us but no. He was standing firmly right at the edge of the graveyard holding his stick.

This man, his skin color is dark like an African. Tall but slim wearing a big head scarf and brownish robe with another scarf around his heck which was dancing to the evening wind and a long stick but we could not make up his face it was all blurry.

I told the others that he must be a hired local guard for the movie site. (Why I come up with a movie idea it's because those days Transformers were done in Qatar so we thought there were more movies coming up)

For us to get back to the main road either we have to pass across the graveyard movie site again, or walk around so by default we took the around walk. Panting and coughing, smiling we walked home.

We came home had another round of red bull and cigarettes, I had a bath and head to bed.

Following day morning (Friday - Holiday) when I woke up there was a big fuss with my colleagues, some are on the rooftop shouting and some are in the ground floor shouting.

First I went up to the roof top to find out that the construction site is back again. It's all there as it was on the night before. I felt like my mouth fell to floor with confusion.

I ran to the ground floor to see others are arguing over a video on a phone.

The Philippine guy accidentally had videoed the whole thing when he tried to turn on the flashlight.

On the video we were inside the construction site and everything looks not like a graveyard but a construction site. We were running and there were no grave stones but JCB's, tractors piles of dirt and even pits but we were running avoiding them.

The video was not that clear, over 13 years back there were no night mode and this guy's phone was a Sony Ericsson P990 PDA with a 2MP camera but since his flash light was on we could see bits and pieces.

The whole Friday we spent looking at the construction site, no one was at work there as I said Friday was officially a holiday in Qatar.

Next day morning we woke up and was waiting for our van to the university, driven by a Sudani person, very calm, good with English and educated though.

We started talking about that matter again and this person Mr. Siddque overheard what we were talking and decided to cut in.

He said, that land supposed to be an old graveyard but it was long LONG time back which he also have heard stories about that place.

But we... Were actually there for several minutes!
 
A Norwich toilet timeslip to the future (it was a notorious cottage though, and I'm sure there were ways for people to "disappear" should they need to)

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23147452.tombland-norwich-creepy-toilets-time-travel-tale/

Tombland Norwich: creepy toilets and a time-travel tale
It was a trip to the toilet that led to time travel into the future: and despite being in the centre of Norwich’s clubland, it didn’t involve any intoxication whatsoever.
This curious tale is courtesy of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a retired British priest who has also worked as a journalist, teacher, TV presenter, author and lecturer and who was born in Dereham and taught in Norfolk from the 1950s to 1979.
It involves the incredibly creepy but now-demolished underground toilets at Tombland, which were built in the 1930s and demolished in 2020, and time travel into the future: not your standard visit to what even Norwich City Council described as “generally unwelcoming” public loos.
Tombland has been a market place, a centre for merchants, the home of a palace and a cathedral and a place which has witnessed revolts, great fires and medieval fairs.
Although its evocative name suggests a place where burials occurred, Tombland takes its name from an old English word derived from the Danish meaning ‘empty space’.
Rev Fanthorpe has spoken several times of something strange that happened in the sunken toilets, which until they were demolished were visible from street level due to a Cold War bunker-style ‘lid’ which announced them to the public.

The tale begins as Rev Fanthorpe and wife Patricia had returned from a walk around the Cathedral and to their car parked next to the underground toilets in Tombland (neither exist today, dating this experience to, we believe, before the mid-1990s)
In an interview with themalestrom.com he said: “…as we came out [of the Cathedral gate] a poor woman came running across to us, her car was parked pretty close to ours. She saw my dog collar and realised I was a priest and she said, ‘Father can you help me?’
“’I don’t know what’s happened to my husband. He went to the toilet and left me in the car and didn’t come back. I asked a traffic warden who went past if he’d be kind enough to take a look down there in case he’s had a heart attack or fallen on the stairs.’

The traffic warden had walked down the steps and into the toilet, checking the cubicles and the urinal, but there was no one there: the woman swore she could not have missed her partner leaving.
“She was getting more and more worried so I went and had a look down there myself and just as the traffic warden reported, the place was empty,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“Then, not long after, as Patricia and I were talking to her and trying to comfort her, to my utter astonishment, a man emerges from this toilet that I had seen empty with my own eyes, looking very bewildered.”
The man walked to his car to the delight of his worried wife. Ashen-faced, he told her he needed to recover for a moment before he could explain. Then he told a strange tale.

“He said he’d gone down to use the toilet, then come up again, only to find his car was not there, his wife was not there and everything looked strangely different,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“The cars a little way ahead of where that toilet was located were going past on the road and he said they were almost silent, it sounded as though they had electric engines rather than the normal internal combustion engines we’re used to.
“He said: ‘I stood there and it was as if I’d gone into the future.’”
The man added: “I’ve read science fiction stories in which there are time slips and if you can get back to the right place again you might be able to slip back.”
Looking out over an unfamiliar view, the man stood staring for a few minutes and then went back down the stairs, rested for a moment and walked back up into what was, for him, the present day. His wife and the Fanthorpes were waiting.
Rev Fanthorpe said: “I tried to weigh up what might have happened and it seemed when he came up the stairs the first time there had been some sort of time slip, – you get time slips and time quakes just as you do earthquakes or faults in the electricity supply.
“I certainly couldn’t explain how or what had happened. I think time is very mysterious and he did exactly the right thing by going down again and when he came back up, he was in our time.”

The underground Tombland toilets were closed by Norwich City Council in 2012 due to maintenance costs and lots of plans were mooted as to what should happen to them.
City Hall’s feasibility study in 2018, noted: “The toilets are not easily accessible and were generally unwelcoming when they were open to the public, at times attracting antisocial behaviour.”
In November 2020, work began on the disused block as part of a shake-up to the area which saw bus stops moved and open space created for pedestrians.
As the work continued, a skull was unearthed followed by around a dozen skeletons.
Analysis of two of the skeletons suggested they could be brothers – one in his late teens, the other in his early 20s - who were executed, possibly during Kett’s Rebellion.
The other skeletons were far older, dating from between 772AD and 941AD and offered a tantalising insight into where one of Norwich’s lost churches might once have stood.

Archaeologists believed they would have been buried in what was once the churchyard of St Michael’s, a church which was known to have been demolished at the turn of the 12th century, but which has never been precisely located.
Tombland is a treasure trove of ghosts. There’s also the Grey Lady of Tombland and the cannibal child ghost of the street’s crooked house.
 
A Norwich toilet timeslip to the future (it was a notorious cottage though, and I'm sure there were ways for people to "disappear" should they need to)

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23147452.tombland-norwich-creepy-toilets-time-travel-tale/

Tombland Norwich: creepy toilets and a time-travel tale
It was a trip to the toilet that led to time travel into the future: and despite being in the centre of Norwich’s clubland, it didn’t involve any intoxication whatsoever.
This curious tale is courtesy of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a retired British priest who has also worked as a journalist, teacher, TV presenter, author and lecturer and who was born in Dereham and taught in Norfolk from the 1950s to 1979.
It involves the incredibly creepy but now-demolished underground toilets at Tombland, which were built in the 1930s and demolished in 2020, and time travel into the future: not your standard visit to what even Norwich City Council described as “generally unwelcoming” public loos.
Tombland has been a market place, a centre for merchants, the home of a palace and a cathedral and a place which has witnessed revolts, great fires and medieval fairs.
Although its evocative name suggests a place where burials occurred, Tombland takes its name from an old English word derived from the Danish meaning ‘empty space’.
Rev Fanthorpe has spoken several times of something strange that happened in the sunken toilets, which until they were demolished were visible from street level due to a Cold War bunker-style ‘lid’ which announced them to the public.

The tale begins as Rev Fanthorpe and wife Patricia had returned from a walk around the Cathedral and to their car parked next to the underground toilets in Tombland (neither exist today, dating this experience to, we believe, before the mid-1990s)
In an interview with themalestrom.com he said: “…as we came out [of the Cathedral gate] a poor woman came running across to us, her car was parked pretty close to ours. She saw my dog collar and realised I was a priest and she said, ‘Father can you help me?’
“’I don’t know what’s happened to my husband. He went to the toilet and left me in the car and didn’t come back. I asked a traffic warden who went past if he’d be kind enough to take a look down there in case he’s had a heart attack or fallen on the stairs.’

The traffic warden had walked down the steps and into the toilet, checking the cubicles and the urinal, but there was no one there: the woman swore she could not have missed her partner leaving.
“She was getting more and more worried so I went and had a look down there myself and just as the traffic warden reported, the place was empty,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“Then, not long after, as Patricia and I were talking to her and trying to comfort her, to my utter astonishment, a man emerges from this toilet that I had seen empty with my own eyes, looking very bewildered.”
The man walked to his car to the delight of his worried wife. Ashen-faced, he told her he needed to recover for a moment before he could explain. Then he told a strange tale.

“He said he’d gone down to use the toilet, then come up again, only to find his car was not there, his wife was not there and everything looked strangely different,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“The cars a little way ahead of where that toilet was located were going past on the road and he said they were almost silent, it sounded as though they had electric engines rather than the normal internal combustion engines we’re used to.
“He said: ‘I stood there and it was as if I’d gone into the future.’”
The man added: “I’ve read science fiction stories in which there are time slips and if you can get back to the right place again you might be able to slip back.”
Looking out over an unfamiliar view, the man stood staring for a few minutes and then went back down the stairs, rested for a moment and walked back up into what was, for him, the present day. His wife and the Fanthorpes were waiting.
Rev Fanthorpe said: “I tried to weigh up what might have happened and it seemed when he came up the stairs the first time there had been some sort of time slip, – you get time slips and time quakes just as you do earthquakes or faults in the electricity supply.
“I certainly couldn’t explain how or what had happened. I think time is very mysterious and he did exactly the right thing by going down again and when he came back up, he was in our time.”

The underground Tombland toilets were closed by Norwich City Council in 2012 due to maintenance costs and lots of plans were mooted as to what should happen to them.
City Hall’s feasibility study in 2018, noted: “The toilets are not easily accessible and were generally unwelcoming when they were open to the public, at times attracting antisocial behaviour.”
In November 2020, work began on the disused block as part of a shake-up to the area which saw bus stops moved and open space created for pedestrians.
As the work continued, a skull was unearthed followed by around a dozen skeletons.
Analysis of two of the skeletons suggested they could be brothers – one in his late teens, the other in his early 20s - who were executed, possibly during Kett’s Rebellion.
The other skeletons were far older, dating from between 772AD and 941AD and offered a tantalising insight into where one of Norwich’s lost churches might once have stood.

Archaeologists believed they would have been buried in what was once the churchyard of St Michael’s, a church which was known to have been demolished at the turn of the 12th century, but which has never been precisely located.
Tombland is a treasure trove of ghosts. There’s also the Grey Lady of Tombland and the cannibal child ghost of the street’s crooked house.
If the toilets were closed in 2018 and demolished in 2020, the man could not have exited them or gone back in any later than that. Yet he experienced a world where most cars operated silently, a condition I don't think we've quite reached yet. Were the toilets and the man inside a bubble that went into the future?
 
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23147452.tombland-norwich-creepy-toilets-time-travel-tale/


This curious tale is courtesy of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a retired British priest who has also worked as a journalist, teacher, TV presenter, author and lecturer and who was born in Dereham and taught in Norfolk from the 1950s to 1979.

If true...

What makes this extraordinary is that the man physically left one place and went to another, then returned to the original place.

I can get my head around some sort of astral projection, or someone's consciousness having a vision of another time/place, but not someone physically being involuntarily transported.

And where to?

The future?
Or the same time/place, but an alternative/parallel version of reality?

It defies all known laws of science.


A suggestion though:

What if the couple had spotted Fanthrope, and knew of his interest in Fortean matters?

So quickly planned a fictional tale, to try and fool Fanthorpe?
 
Last edited:
I really should point out that Rev Lionel Fanthorpe is a dedicated follower of Fortean subjects, and presented a highly entertaining TV program a couple of decades ago about the weird and paranormal. He is also a prolific writer of a wide range of fiction, including science fiction and
supernatural tales. His fiction is well-known for being of variable quality, as he himself would no doubt admit.

I really wouldn't take anything he said as necessarily true or reliable; this tale may be some kind of metafiction or embroidery involving the truth. Or it could be a hoax aimed at him, as suggested by Victory.
 
Last edited:
Man goes into an underground gents which are notorious for cottaging, spends long enough down there that his wife becomes concerned before returning to ground level all flustered and with a fantastic tale to explain his absence? Hmm yes, it’s a mystery alright...

Taking the tale at face value, I wonder if these toilets had a cleaner’s cupboard or an attendant’s office? The old ones in Glasgow did - perhaps he had an assignation with someone in there since it would presumably be even more private than a cubicle? It would be easily overlooked but if you did notice it and the door was locked from the inside, you’d never know if there was someone in there. He wouldn’t be the first married man to go out seeking a bit of strange and perhaps the risk of his wife catching him was part of the fun. Maybe the arrival of the traffic warden wasn’t just a coincidence if-you-see-what-I-mean, nudge nudge, wink wink.

Or perhaps he slipped and banged his head in a dark corner and was overlooked by both the traffic warden and Rev. Fanthorpe? The unnamed traffic warden may well have just taken a very cursory look round from the bottom of the stairs and said he’d checked everywhere. Looking at the Streetview link above it seems to have had two entrances (presumably Gents and Ladies) so perhaps the chap had gone into the Ladies by mistake and the traffic warden and Rev. Fanthorpe both simply looked in the wrong half of the building?

If the chap was physically transported to the future, why were the traffic warden and the good Reverend not similarly whisked away after descending into the same building just a few minutes later while the gentleman was absent? Time does work in mysterious ways but I would have thought if some sort of portal to the future was open (which presumably must have stayed open long enough to allow the gent in question to return to his own time) the other two would have fallen into it as well. And if the toilets were demolished in 2020 does that imply the whole building physically transported into the future while simultaneously remaining in the present too? It’s all very complicated once you start thinking about the implications of it.

It’s an interesting story and I do like the idea of a toilet timeslip bodily hurling this hapless man into a future version of Norwich with electric cars, but I expect the truth of what happened is rather more mundane.
 
Last edited:
With the World Cup in Qatar, here is an incident from there.

It is described by the writer, a man named Pasindu as having happened around 2002.

https://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=26938


This story I am about to tell you that happened to me over 13 years back. I was in Qatar for my industrial degree and I never had anyone there as a friend or a family to look after me.

I was living in a small room, I even had to use a common toilet until I made some friends after about three weeks attending my classes and we all moved in to one Villa. Seven guys; two from Nepal, two from Philippines, one India and myself and another from Sri Lanka.

It was a two story house and newly built and situated in Matar Qadeem Area, it's a residential area with shops and shopping malls.

What's common in those houses are the rooftops, there were no roof top except decorated with chairs and tables to chill in the evenings which is what exactly we did when we came home after lectures.

I have to tell you, we all of us were smokers, we smoke cigarettes often at home specially after coming home on the roof top chatting and drinking energy drinks, eating junk.

Behind to our house these was a road, width of four vehicles and next to the road (Left Side) a huge empty land, this land was under construction and it was all covered by a wall. We could see inside of that land from our roof top but not from the road.

One day as usual we were on the rooftop at around 6.15PM and having red bull and smoking and talking about movies and just spending time.

We were looking at the surroundings while we talk. But something was unusual, the land which was under constructions were missing, missing in a sense the wall was not there and no construction vehicles were there. The sun was almost gone and we could only make very little vision of the place. But the only available light sources are the yellow street lamps but that is also on the right side of the road.

Strange stories started coming in from every one of us, like maybe the owner stopped the construction or they have changed the plan... But still within one day all this change could not happened. That day morning when we were going we did not notice about this land until now.

So we decided to have a walk and see what has happened since the wall also not there.

As we walk close to the place we could see trees without leaves were planted, and they were tall trees, about eight to ten feet tall. They were not many but three trees with dry bushes and the worse is some gravestones. But the writing we could not recognize since it was all curved in to the stone in Arabic (I think) and it was dark already.

We were getting into more and more into the land passing gravestones and then all of a sudden we heard a voice, rather an angry tone with Arabic as if a person is shouting. We stopped and looked at him and by his body language we could see he was not happy and showing us to go outside.

We asked him what happened here and why the land was changed as if it's a horror movie site.

But the man kept on shouting at us saying the same thing. One guy said let's ignore him and walk around the place and as we did this man came running at us with a stick!

We ran and thought we were trespassing some private property and that's the reason why he do not want us in there.

And it's very dangerous get caught by police in Qatar for any reason.

We ran to the other end of this land which is a normal dust and stones filled area that had nothing unusual.

I turned around to see if the man is chasing us but no. He was standing firmly right at the edge of the graveyard holding his stick.

This man, his skin color is dark like an African. Tall but slim wearing a big head scarf and brownish robe with another scarf around his heck which was dancing to the evening wind and a long stick but we could not make up his face it was all blurry.

I told the others that he must be a hired local guard for the movie site. (Why I come up with a movie idea it's because those days Transformers were done in Qatar so we thought there were more movies coming up)

For us to get back to the main road either we have to pass across the graveyard movie site again, or walk around so by default we took the around walk. Panting and coughing, smiling we walked home.

We came home had another round of red bull and cigarettes, I had a bath and head to bed.

Following day morning (Friday - Holiday) when I woke up there was a big fuss with my colleagues, some are on the rooftop shouting and some are in the ground floor shouting.

First I went up to the roof top to find out that the construction site is back again. It's all there as it was on the night before. I felt like my mouth fell to floor with confusion.

I ran to the ground floor to see others are arguing over a video on a phone.

The Philippine guy accidentally had videoed the whole thing when he tried to turn on the flashlight.

On the video we were inside the construction site and everything looks not like a graveyard but a construction site. We were running and there were no grave stones but JCB's, tractors piles of dirt and even pits but we were running avoiding them.

The video was not that clear, over 13 years back there were no night mode and this guy's phone was a Sony Ericsson P990 PDA with a 2MP camera but since his flash light was on we could see bits and pieces.

The whole Friday we spent looking at the construction site, no one was at work there as I said Friday was officially a holiday in Qatar.

Next day morning we woke up and was waiting for our van to the university, driven by a Sudani person, very calm, good with English and educated though.

We started talking about that matter again and this person Mr. Siddque overheard what we were talking and decided to cut in.

He said, that land supposed to be an old graveyard but it was long LONG time back which he also have heard stories about that place.

But we... Were actually there for several minutes!
Crikey, they say Red Bull gives you wings but that as something else (groan). Thanks for posting.
 
A Norwich toilet timeslip to the future (it was a notorious cottage though, and I'm sure there were ways for people to "disappear" should they need to)

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23147452.tombland-norwich-creepy-toilets-time-travel-tale/

Tombland Norwich: creepy toilets and a time-travel tale
It was a trip to the toilet that led to time travel into the future: and despite being in the centre of Norwich’s clubland, it didn’t involve any intoxication whatsoever.
This curious tale is courtesy of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a retired British priest who has also worked as a journalist, teacher, TV presenter, author and lecturer and who was born in Dereham and taught in Norfolk from the 1950s to 1979.
It involves the incredibly creepy but now-demolished underground toilets at Tombland, which were built in the 1930s and demolished in 2020, and time travel into the future: not your standard visit to what even Norwich City Council described as “generally unwelcoming” public loos.
Tombland has been a market place, a centre for merchants, the home of a palace and a cathedral and a place which has witnessed revolts, great fires and medieval fairs.
Although its evocative name suggests a place where burials occurred, Tombland takes its name from an old English word derived from the Danish meaning ‘empty space’.
Rev Fanthorpe has spoken several times of something strange that happened in the sunken toilets, which until they were demolished were visible from street level due to a Cold War bunker-style ‘lid’ which announced them to the public.

The tale begins as Rev Fanthorpe and wife Patricia had returned from a walk around the Cathedral and to their car parked next to the underground toilets in Tombland (neither exist today, dating this experience to, we believe, before the mid-1990s)
In an interview with themalestrom.com he said: “…as we came out [of the Cathedral gate] a poor woman came running across to us, her car was parked pretty close to ours. She saw my dog collar and realised I was a priest and she said, ‘Father can you help me?’
“’I don’t know what’s happened to my husband. He went to the toilet and left me in the car and didn’t come back. I asked a traffic warden who went past if he’d be kind enough to take a look down there in case he’s had a heart attack or fallen on the stairs.’

The traffic warden had walked down the steps and into the toilet, checking the cubicles and the urinal, but there was no one there: the woman swore she could not have missed her partner leaving.
“She was getting more and more worried so I went and had a look down there myself and just as the traffic warden reported, the place was empty,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“Then, not long after, as Patricia and I were talking to her and trying to comfort her, to my utter astonishment, a man emerges from this toilet that I had seen empty with my own eyes, looking very bewildered.”
The man walked to his car to the delight of his worried wife. Ashen-faced, he told her he needed to recover for a moment before he could explain. Then he told a strange tale.

“He said he’d gone down to use the toilet, then come up again, only to find his car was not there, his wife was not there and everything looked strangely different,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“The cars a little way ahead of where that toilet was located were going past on the road and he said they were almost silent, it sounded as though they had electric engines rather than the normal internal combustion engines we’re used to.
“He said: ‘I stood there and it was as if I’d gone into the future.’”
The man added: “I’ve read science fiction stories in which there are time slips and if you can get back to the right place again you might be able to slip back.”
Looking out over an unfamiliar view, the man stood staring for a few minutes and then went back down the stairs, rested for a moment and walked back up into what was, for him, the present day. His wife and the Fanthorpes were waiting.
Rev Fanthorpe said: “I tried to weigh up what might have happened and it seemed when he came up the stairs the first time there had been some sort of time slip, – you get time slips and time quakes just as you do earthquakes or faults in the electricity supply.
“I certainly couldn’t explain how or what had happened. I think time is very mysterious and he did exactly the right thing by going down again and when he came back up, he was in our time.”

The underground Tombland toilets were closed by Norwich City Council in 2012 due to maintenance costs and lots of plans were mooted as to what should happen to them.
City Hall’s feasibility study in 2018, noted: “The toilets are not easily accessible and were generally unwelcoming when they were open to the public, at times attracting antisocial behaviour.”
In November 2020, work began on the disused block as part of a shake-up to the area which saw bus stops moved and open space created for pedestrians.
As the work continued, a skull was unearthed followed by around a dozen skeletons.
Analysis of two of the skeletons suggested they could be brothers – one in his late teens, the other in his early 20s - who were executed, possibly during Kett’s Rebellion.
The other skeletons were far older, dating from between 772AD and 941AD and offered a tantalising insight into where one of Norwich’s lost churches might once have stood.

Archaeologists believed they would have been buried in what was once the churchyard of St Michael’s, a church which was known to have been demolished at the turn of the 12th century, but which has never been precisely located.
Tombland is a treasure trove of ghosts. There’s also the Grey Lady of Tombland and the cannibal child ghost of the street’s crooked house.
Thanks for posting.

Cars have changed distinctly since the mid-1990s, in part due to the relentless push for greater crash safety resulting in cars that are larger and taller. Look at a Mini from the mid-1990s and one from 2022 and there are distinct differences, most notably in size. Also, SUVs are a lot more prevalent now than they were in the mid-1990s. Yet the witness only reports that the cars were silent and not different.

Then you have the problem of the toilets being closed and demolished by 2020. Tombland is the name of a street/area and you can see the location of the old toilet block clearly on Google maps (there is a distinctive arch nearby). There is a prominent and modern estate agents across the road he mentions, no mention of that either. Unless the witness cares to come forward then I'm not especially convinced.
 
Last edited:
Most timeslips I have read about quite prominently feature descriptions of the people who the slipper saw on their trip. I noticed that Rev Fanthorpe doesn’t mention the chap reporting seeing any people or what they were wearing and, to me, that’s an interesting absence. In fact the man’s account (which we only hear secondhand through the Rev.) is frustratingly scant on detail as all he says is that things were “strangely different” and the cars he saw were almost silent. He doesn’t describe the differences or the cars or anything, really. As you rightly point out without hearing much more from the witness directly it’s difficult to draw a Fortean conclusion.

The other thing that springs to mind is that car engines these days are quieter than those in the past, even as recently as the 1990s, and I’m sure I’ve read accounts of time slips where there has been no sound or muffled sound.

Am I right in saying that time slips forward (i.e. to the future) are very much more rare than slips back to the past?
 
Most timeslips I have read about quite prominently feature descriptions of the people who the slipper saw on their trip. I noticed that Rev Fanthorpe doesn’t mention the chap reporting seeing any people or what they were wearing and, to me, that’s an interesting absence. In fact the man’s account (which we only hear secondhand through the Rev.) is frustratingly scant on detail as all he says is that things were “strangely different” and the cars he saw were almost silent. He doesn’t describe the differences or the cars or anything, really. As you rightly point out without hearing much more from the witness directly it’s difficult to draw a Fortean conclusion.

The other thing that springs to mind is that car engines these days are quieter than those in the past, even as recently as the 1990s, and I’m sure I’ve read accounts of time slips where there has been no sound or muffled sound.

Am I right in saying that time slips forward (i.e. to the future) are very much more rare than slips back to the past?
I think you are, I can't think of any forward time-slips off the top of my head (although you might argue UFO sightings are future time-slips, although I don't think so myself).
 
I think you are, I can't think of any forward time-slips off the top of my head (although you might argue UFO sightings are future time-slips, although I don't think so myself).
I remember a weird one from the Isle of Wight, one of Gay Baldwin's excellent Ghost Island series of books. A couple driving across the downs at night, IIRC ran into some weird cloaked people, then, driving on, the view opened up revealing the view of the island with many lights, as if it were a city. Most odd.
 
I remember a weird one from the Isle of Wight, one of Gay Baldwin's excellent Ghost Island series of books. A couple driving across the downs at night, IIRC ran into some weird cloaked people, then, driving on, the view opened up revealing the view of the island with many lights, as if it were a city. Most odd.
There as another one from IoW where a couple drove up onto a grassed picnic area on some downs and witnessed a Roman camp that then faded away. From the 1970s I seem to recall but cannot remember the source (possibly Peter Underwood)
 
My wife fancied trying Farnham today for a bit of Christmas shopping.
We split up - her heading towards the Elphicks department store and me towards Lidl to do some food shopping.
On the way, I passed a bus shelter with this poster stuck to it:

farnham.png
 
I think you are, I can't think of any forward time-slips off the top of my head (although you might argue UFO sightings are future time-slips, although I don't think so myself).
There was one reported about the Cavern in Mathew St, Liverpool. I can't remember the details, but a person said they saw people in vaguely futuristic clothes, a shopping arcade that shouldn't have been there and possibly a shop called Glass Onion.
 
My wife fancied trying Farnham today for a bit of Christmas shopping.
We split up - her heading towards the Elphicks department store and me towards Lidl to do some food shopping.
On the way, I passed a bus shelter with this poster stuck to it:

View attachment 61113

One thing I just realised is that the Farnham bus stop with the poster was virtually opposite Tanfield House - which featured in case 14 of Uncanny.
Nice case of Fortean synchronicity I thought!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013qtn
 
Here is the article from the Farnham Herald.
Wonder if Tom Sleman is looking at property prices in Farnham right now?


View attachment 61128
Lord preserve us from 'experimental theatre'. My daughter did a theatre studies degree and I've seen more 'experimental theatre' than any one human should have to experience.

Although this sounds rather fun, I have to say. At least they aren't painted blue, or pretending to be bicycles...
 
A Norwich toilet timeslip to the future (it was a notorious cottage though, and I'm sure there were ways for people to "disappear" should they need to)

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23147452.tombland-norwich-creepy-toilets-time-travel-tale/

Tombland Norwich: creepy toilets and a time-travel tale
It was a trip to the toilet that led to time travel into the future: and despite being in the centre of Norwich’s clubland, it didn’t involve any intoxication whatsoever.
This curious tale is courtesy of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, a retired British priest who has also worked as a journalist, teacher, TV presenter, author and lecturer and who was born in Dereham and taught in Norfolk from the 1950s to 1979.
It involves the incredibly creepy but now-demolished underground toilets at Tombland, which were built in the 1930s and demolished in 2020, and time travel into the future: not your standard visit to what even Norwich City Council described as “generally unwelcoming” public loos.
Tombland has been a market place, a centre for merchants, the home of a palace and a cathedral and a place which has witnessed revolts, great fires and medieval fairs.
Although its evocative name suggests a place where burials occurred, Tombland takes its name from an old English word derived from the Danish meaning ‘empty space’.
Rev Fanthorpe has spoken several times of something strange that happened in the sunken toilets, which until they were demolished were visible from street level due to a Cold War bunker-style ‘lid’ which announced them to the public.

The tale begins as Rev Fanthorpe and wife Patricia had returned from a walk around the Cathedral and to their car parked next to the underground toilets in Tombland (neither exist today, dating this experience to, we believe, before the mid-1990s)
In an interview with themalestrom.com he said: “…as we came out [of the Cathedral gate] a poor woman came running across to us, her car was parked pretty close to ours. She saw my dog collar and realised I was a priest and she said, ‘Father can you help me?’
“’I don’t know what’s happened to my husband. He went to the toilet and left me in the car and didn’t come back. I asked a traffic warden who went past if he’d be kind enough to take a look down there in case he’s had a heart attack or fallen on the stairs.’

The traffic warden had walked down the steps and into the toilet, checking the cubicles and the urinal, but there was no one there: the woman swore she could not have missed her partner leaving.
“She was getting more and more worried so I went and had a look down there myself and just as the traffic warden reported, the place was empty,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“Then, not long after, as Patricia and I were talking to her and trying to comfort her, to my utter astonishment, a man emerges from this toilet that I had seen empty with my own eyes, looking very bewildered.”
The man walked to his car to the delight of his worried wife. Ashen-faced, he told her he needed to recover for a moment before he could explain. Then he told a strange tale.

“He said he’d gone down to use the toilet, then come up again, only to find his car was not there, his wife was not there and everything looked strangely different,” said Rev Fanthorpe.
“The cars a little way ahead of where that toilet was located were going past on the road and he said they were almost silent, it sounded as though they had electric engines rather than the normal internal combustion engines we’re used to.
“He said: ‘I stood there and it was as if I’d gone into the future.’”
The man added: “I’ve read science fiction stories in which there are time slips and if you can get back to the right place again you might be able to slip back.”
Looking out over an unfamiliar view, the man stood staring for a few minutes and then went back down the stairs, rested for a moment and walked back up into what was, for him, the present day. His wife and the Fanthorpes were waiting.
Rev Fanthorpe said: “I tried to weigh up what might have happened and it seemed when he came up the stairs the first time there had been some sort of time slip, – you get time slips and time quakes just as you do earthquakes or faults in the electricity supply.
“I certainly couldn’t explain how or what had happened. I think time is very mysterious and he did exactly the right thing by going down again and when he came back up, he was in our time.”

The underground Tombland toilets were closed by Norwich City Council in 2012 due to maintenance costs and lots of plans were mooted as to what should happen to them.
City Hall’s feasibility study in 2018, noted: “The toilets are not easily accessible and were generally unwelcoming when they were open to the public, at times attracting antisocial behaviour.”
In November 2020, work began on the disused block as part of a shake-up to the area which saw bus stops moved and open space created for pedestrians.
As the work continued, a skull was unearthed followed by around a dozen skeletons.
Analysis of two of the skeletons suggested they could be brothers – one in his late teens, the other in his early 20s - who were executed, possibly during Kett’s Rebellion.
The other skeletons were far older, dating from between 772AD and 941AD and offered a tantalising insight into where one of Norwich’s lost churches might once have stood.

Archaeologists believed they would have been buried in what was once the churchyard of St Michael’s, a church which was known to have been demolished at the turn of the 12th century, but which has never been precisely located.
Tombland is a treasure trove of ghosts. There’s also the Grey Lady of Tombland and the cannibal child ghost of the street’s crooked house.
The feature of futuristic cars driving silently appears in a number of cases. Could certainly be a time slip, if not a clever hoax. The name Fanthorpe takes me back to my childhood, when he authored tons of weird stories (under several different names). He was also a martial arts expert at one stage.
 
Back
Top