Timeslip At Waterloo Station?

[queenofwands]

I don't think the couple who took her to the cafe were trying to prevent Doll Feet from having a relationship with her boyfriend. If she hadn't reunited with him that day , she would have just gone home on the bus , disappointed , but would , no doubt , have written to him , and they would have made arrangements to get together from there. The two of them were in love and the intervention of the cafe couple , could not have prevented them from having a relationship they were determined to have.

What is more likely, in my opinion , is the cafe couple were trying to prevent Doll Feet from getting together with her boyfriend on THAT DAY , because they went on to stay in a hotel in Soho , which was set on fire my a lunatic in the room below theirs. Doll Feet and her BF were in danger of dying in that fire .

Another thing to consider is that the couple actually led her to a (non existant) place from which she had a premonition that her BF was upstairs on the street above . If she had not been approached by the ' helpful' female , Doll Feet would have remained in the hotel lobby, until she had to leave to catch her bus. Would she still have had that premonition if she had remained in the lobby? Or did the cafe couple somehow bring about that premonition? It could be they were actually leading her TO the BF . Doll Feet did hint at another phenomena taking place , at the time she ' saw' her BF. She would't say exactly what it was , but hinted that she heard some sort of voice , telling her the BF was there , in the street above. Were there more 'people ' involved than just visible ones?
It's a very strange tale , but I do believe her and am just sorry things ended so badly for her . Poor girl .

 

[Carl Grove]

I don't think the couple who took her to the cafe were trying to prevent Doll Feet from having a relationship with her boyfriend. If she hadn't reunited with him that day , she would have just gone home on the bus , disappointed , but would , no doubt , have written to him , and they would have made arrangements to get together from there. The two of them were in love and the intervention of the cafe couple , could not have prevented them from having a relationship they were determined to have.

What is more likely, in my opinion , is the cafe couple were trying to prevent Doll Feet from getting together with her boyfriend on THAT DAY , because they went on to stay in a hotel in Soho , which was set on fire my a lunatic in the room below theirs. Doll Feet and her BF were in danger of dying in that fire .

But after that frightening incident came others, notably the crazy drive to the North of England, and subsequently his interest in satanism. You may be right that the cafe scheme, had it worked, might have failed in its aim, who can say?

 

[Spookdaddy]

I love this thread.

A couple of random things that struck me in going back and rereading the original post.

Although in theory they would offer a place of relative security, Underground stations associated with mainline overground rail terminals would likely be the least attractive option in an air raid - because, whereas the majority of Tube stations would be somewhat lost in the urban mass below a bomb aimer’s gaze, overground stations can cover several acres, are - well - overground, and were specific and theoretically legitimate targets. Also, it strikes me that proximity to the Thames – an obvious navigational aid to airborne navigators – might have made Waterloo and it's environs especially locatable.

I mean, beggars can't be choosers - and you took your chances where you could, I'm sure - but I dare say my stress levels would be a lot higher underneath Waterloo Station than they would be at, say Golder's Green or Chalk Farm.

And a genuine question. The witness states that the nervous individuals she and her partner encountered were actually riding the train: Obviously, the London Underground functioned during the war, but did it actually keep running trains during air raids that took place within normal operational hours? Would people have been on a moving Underground train during an air raid? I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s never struck me to wonder.

I think the apparently too slow movement of rubbish in the breeze is not actually unusual (or wasn’t once - the system seems a lot more trash free now than it was in the 80’s and 90’s). Aside from the obvious surge of air when a train is heading towards a platform there is, maybe more marked in some stations than others, a low level breeze, the gentleness of which is somewhat countered by a seemingly unwavering constancy, so that debris caught in its path will not blow around manically, but slowly surf the gentle wave of air. I think these days this is more noticeable with rubbish in the track area, where a dropped leaflet can appear to be sliding almost surreptitiously along the surface as if pushed by an invisible hand.

I'd also agree with some comments that the makeshift camp sounds like it could be a displaced memory of the old Carboard City - which took over the underpasses under the Bullring roundabout; close enough to Waterloo - and maybe similar enough in environment to the tunnels servicing the Underground - to possibly be merged in the memory at a later date.

Although there's a whole lot of history there, I have to say that I don't find Waterloo the most atmospheric of the London stations. If you were of the mind to expect odd things to happen, maybe it's not one you'd particularly expect something odd to happen in - which actually might make the story more convincing. That said, I suppose this is really an Underground tale - and the Tube is it's own world of oddness. And thinking about it, although I find the overground station itself fairly anodyne, the direct surroundings used to be pretty offputting - a lot of the arches have been repurposed, but back in the 90's I seem to recall it all being a bit of a wilderness; Mepham Street might be the one place still most redolent of those days.

 

[Spookdaddy]

...And thinking about it, although I find the overground station itself fairly anodyne, the direct surroundings used to be pretty offputting - a lot of the arches have been repurposed, but back in the 90's I seem to recall it all being a bit of a wilderness; Mepham Street might be the one place still most redolent of those days.

That's literally just reminded me of an incident from my time in London in the 1990's.

I was pulling an overnighter on a construction job in the West End when one of the metalworkers asked me to accompany him back to a temporary storage facility they had near Waterloo (it may well have been on the Mepham Street mentioned above, but my memory can't place it specifically after all these years). I found it slightly odd because I knew the parts he was after would fit in a modestly sized box, and he wouldn't need any help lifting.

When we got to the arch, he did an odd thing. He unlocked the door, then banged it a few times, then took a step back and stood in the road for a few seconds. Then he went in, turned on the lights, and signalled me in. I was even more bemused when it turned out that the entire process of finding the parts, putting them in a box and getting them out of the door took less than a minute.

On the journey back he was kind of quiet, but at some point he obviously felt the need to explain - something along the lines of: I didn't really mind when we could just smell his pipe smoke - but now we've started seeing the fucker.

The fact that this was all the information I ever got somehow made it all the more striking an incident.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

I didn't really mind when we could just smell his pipe smoke - but now we've started seeing the fucker.

Ghost - or antagonistic vagrant/rough sleeper?

 

[Spookdaddy]

Ghost - or antagonistic vagrant/rough sleeper?

Definitely (allegedly) the former.

Believe me, the guy in question - and his business partner - would not have been perturbed by a rough sleeper (or any flesh and blood human being, for that matter).

 

[Carl Grove]

I love this thread.

A couple of random things that struck me in going back and rereading the original post.

Although in theory they would offer a place of relative security, Underground stations associated with mainline overground rail terminals would likely be the least attractive option in an air raid - because, whereas the majority of Tube stations would be somewhat lost in the urban mass below a bomb aimer’s gaze, overground stations can cover several acres, are - well - overground, and were specific and theoretically legitimate targets. Also, it strikes me that proximity to the Thames – an obvious navigational aid to airborne navigators – might have made Waterloo and it's environs especially locatable.

I mean, beggars can't be choosers - and you took your chances where you could, I'm sure - but I dare say my stress levels would be a lot higher underneath Waterloo Station than they would be at, say Golder's Green or Chalk Farm.

And a genuine question. The witness states that the nervous individuals she and her partner encountered were actually riding the train: Obviously, the London Underground functioned during the war, but did it actually keep running trains during air raids that took place within normal operational hours? Would people have been on a moving Underground train during an air raid? I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s never struck me to wonder.

I think the apparently too slow movement of rubbish in the breeze is not actually unusual (or wasn’t once - the system seems a lot more trash free now than it was in the 80’s and 90’s). Aside from the obvious surge of air when a train is heading towards a platform there is, maybe more marked in some stations than others, a low level breeze, the gentleness of which is somewhat countered by a seemingly unwavering constancy, so that debris caught in its path will not blow around manically, but slowly surf the gentle wave of air. I think these days this is more noticeable with rubbish in the track area, where a dropped leaflet can appear to be sliding almost surreptitiously along the surface as if pushed by an invisible hand.

I'd also agree with some comments that the makeshift camp sounds like it could be a displaced memory of the old Carboard City - which took over the underpasses under the Bullring roundabout; close enough to Waterloo - and maybe similar enough in environment to the tunnels servicing the Underground - to possibly be merged in the memory at a later date.

Although there's a whole lot of history there, I have to say that I don't find Waterloo the most atmospheric of the London stations. If you were of the mind to expect odd things to happen, maybe it's not one you'd particularly expect something odd to happen in - which actually might make the story more convincing. That said, I suppose this is really an Underground tale - and the Tube is it's own world of oddness. And thinking about it, although I find the overground station itself fairly anodyne, the direct surroundings used to be pretty offputting - a lot of the arches have been repurposed, but back in the 90's I seem to recall it all being a bit of a wilderness; Mepham Street might be the one place still most redolent of those days.

In my experience, when you have a high strangeness event happen to you, it sears the details into your mind and makes the "memory confusion later on" less likely, and this is certainly a high strangeness case!

 

[Spookdaddy]

In my experience, when you have a high strangeness event happen to you, it sears the details into your mind and makes the "memory confusion later on" less likely, and this is certainly a high strangeness case!

I'm not sure about this. A few years ago, I'd have said the same, because it seems logical that at times of heightened emotions our senses would also be heightened. Unfortunately, we aren't logical machines, and there's now a whole plethora of research on the negative effects of heightened levels of stress on long-term memory retrieval*. It's actually a really interesting subject in its own right.

*Edit: From what I recall, and in very basic terms: Stress + Memory = short term good + long term bad.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

The Un

I love this thread.

A couple of random things that struck me in going back and rereading the original post.

Although in theory they would offer a place of relative security, Underground stations associated with mainline overground rail terminals would likely be the least attractive option in an air raid - because, whereas the majority of Tube stations would be somewhat lost in the urban mass below a bomb aimer’s gaze, overground stations can cover several acres, are - well - overground, and were specific and theoretically legitimate targets. Also, it strikes me that proximity to the Thames – an obvious navigational aid to airborne navigators – might have made Waterloo and it's environs especially locatable.

I mean, beggars can't be choosers - and you took your chances where you could, I'm sure - but I dare say my stress levels would be a lot higher underneath Waterloo Station than they would be at, say Golder's Green or Chalk Farm.

And a genuine question. The witness states that the nervous individuals she and her partner encountered were actually riding the train: Obviously, the London Underground functioned during the war, but did it actually keep running trains during air raids that took place within normal operational hours? Would people have been on a moving Underground train during an air raid? I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s never struck me to wonder.

I think the apparently too slow movement of rubbish in the breeze is not actually unusual (or wasn’t once - the system seems a lot more trash free now than it was in the 80’s and 90’s). Aside from the obvious surge of air when a train is heading towards a platform there is, maybe more marked in some stations than others, a low level breeze, the gentleness of which is somewhat countered by a seemingly unwavering constancy, so that debris caught in its path will not blow around manically, but slowly surf the gentle wave of air. I think these days this is more noticeable with rubbish in the track area, where a dropped leaflet can appear to be sliding almost surreptitiously along the surface as if pushed by an invisible hand.

I'd also agree with some comments that the makeshift camp sounds like it could be a displaced memory of the old Carboard City - which took over the underpasses under the Bullring roundabout; close enough to Waterloo - and maybe similar enough in environment to the tunnels servicing the Underground - to possibly be merged in the memory at a later date.

Although there's a whole lot of history there, I have to say that I don't find Waterloo the most atmospheric of the London stations. If you were of the mind to expect odd things to happen, maybe it's not one you'd particularly expect something odd to happen in - which actually might make the story more convincing. That said, I suppose this is really an Underground tale - and the Tube is it's own world of oddness. And thinking about it, although I find the overground station itself fairly anodyne, the direct surroundings used to be pretty offputting - a lot of the arches have been repurposed, but back in the 90's I seem to recall it all being a bit of a wilderness; Mepham Street might be the one place still most redolent of those days.

The Underground trains kept running as it seems were never timetabled to run late into the night back then, much like many railway lines didn't have a trains service after 6-7pm back then. From what I understand people would stay overnight if they had to change trains after this time and even rural branch line stations had an Inn with rooms or even a 'station hotel'

Much more detail here, I believe the tube trains stopped around 9pm:

https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2019/11/06/the-blitz-and-the-london-underground/

 

[Spookdaddy]

...The Underground trains kept running as it seems were never timetabled to run late into the night back then, much like many railway lines didn't have a trains service after 6-7pm back then. From what I understand people would stay overnight if they had to change trains after this time and even rural branch line stations had an Inn with rooms or even a 'station hotel'

Much more detail here, I believe the tube trains stopped around 9pm...

Yes, the classic photographs of people sheltering generally seem to have been taken outside normal operational hours.

But I was really wondering more about the daylight raids, when trains would actually be scheduled to be running - and whether they continued, or were stopped for the duration of the bombing.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Yes, the classic photographs of people sheltering seem to have been generally taken outside normal operational hours.

But I was really wondering more about the daylight raids, when trains would actually be scheduled to be running - and whether they continued, or were stopped for the duration of the bombing.

Kept running:

"So with eighty or so London tube stations crowded with thousands of people – was the Underground system able to continue? The answer is yes – that with true Blitz spirit, both shelterers and Tube travellers were able to co-exist."

https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2019/11/06/the-blitz-and-the-london-underground/

 

[catseye]

I'm not sure about this. A few years ago, I'd have said the same, because it seems logical that at times of heightened emotions our senses would also be heightened. Unfortunately, we aren't logical machines, and there's now a whole plethora of research on the negative effects of heightened levels of stress on long-term memory retrieval*. It's actually a really interesting subject in its own right.

*Edit: From what I recall, and in very basic terms: Stress + Memory = short term good + long term bad.

Likewise, I would expect memories formed at times of heightened emotions to be MORE likely to be mutable, because emotional input can scramble our ability to process memory. People who say they can remember every detail of a stressful situation may think that they can, but how can they know?

 

[Carl Grove]

I'm not sure about this. A few years ago, I'd have said the same, because it seems logical that at times of heightened emotions our senses would also be heightened. Unfortunately, we aren't logical machines, and there's now a whole plethora of research on the negative effects of heightened levels of stress on long-term memory retrieval*. It's actually a really interesting subject in its own right.

*Edit: From what I recall, and in very basic terms: Stress + Memory = short term good + long term bad.

I agree that stress doesn't aid long term memory retention but in the relatively short term (in this case only 12 years) I don't think it would play a big role. (Coincidentally I did my doctoral research many decades ago on memory and retrieval!) I also think it very significant that the couple saw other people on the train looking terrified and nervous.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I agree that stress doesn't aid long term memory retention but in the relatively short term (in this case only 12 years) I don't think it would play a big role. (Coincidentally I did my doctoral research many decades ago on memory and retrieval!) I also think it very significant that the couple saw other people on the train looking terrified and nervous.

I am surprised that, in the context of memory recall, 12 years could be considered relatively short term. The studies I've found online seem to define short term as somewhere closer to the immediate recall end of the spectrum. That said, I can't claim to having done exhaustive research, and I never came across an absolute clinical definition of either term - I suppose it varies depending on context.

I'm not questioning your expertise on this matter, I should add - I am just genuinely surprised.

 

[Carl Grove]

I am surprised that, in the context of memory recall, 12 years could be considered relatively short term. The studies I've found online seem to define short term as somewhere closer to the immediate recall end of the spectrum. That said, I can't claim to having done exhaustive research, and I never came across an absolute clinical definition of either term - I suppose it varies depending on context.

I'm not questioning your expertise on this matter, I should add - I am just genuinely surprised.

I'm sure my expertise in this area is well out of date, but as I say it is a case that could generate further witnesses if we could put a lot of resources into it, and that would render the memory weakness theory less plausible. However as we know from many other cases, people typically react in three ways to odd experiences: either (1) they continue to recall the incident; (2) they completely forget it; or (3) they refuse even to talk about it! Sometimes, as in the Leeds sisters' case, one will discuss it at first then stop replying!