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Timeslip At Waterloo Station?

catseye said:
Ah, thank you Carl, this clarifies things a little more. So the 'couple' weren't actually known to each other prior to the event? But it does pose even more questions - why 'take' the distressed girl offsite, making her walk through London streets in an obviously upset condition, when there must have been more convenient coffee shops nearer to hand? Just because one of them 'knew a coffee shop'? Or even just sit her in the foyer with a takeaway coffee (which one of them could have fetched) if she just needed to calm down and talk to someone...

Edited to add: I'm not meaning to poke holes in someone's story, but I'm interested in the psychological angles of these things, and wondering why people act a certain way in certain situations. If the girl's evident distress made her more 'malleable' to some characters/situations, then perhaps she could have been influenced in some way by this 'couple' (who do have something of the feeling of 'volunteers from the audience' about them).
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Haven't been on here for a long time and surprised to see this has come up again. No the couple didn't appear to know each other. The guy came over and commented that we were both beautiful. The Regent Palace Hotel is in Piccadilly Circus, so right next to Soho. With an opening line like that I suspect he thought we were prostitutes, although I was too naive to realize that at the time. I've also had my suspicions that they were in fact together (they were of a similar appearance, olive-skinned, black hair) and scouting for runaways - which must have been exactly what I looked like sitting in a hotel lobby surrounded by carrier bags full of my stuff. But then that logic falters because she knew about the cafe that evidently didn't exist.

It did strike me as odd that she'd suggest a cafe in the tube station when there was a coffee shop right there in the hotel with windows onto the lobby, the perfect place to sit and watch for my boyfriend. I didn't like to point out that it would make more sense to sit in the coffee shop because this was an expensive hotel and my small town mentality thought it would be cheeky to reject the offer in what was presumably a cheap cafe and ask instead for coffee in an expensive coffee shop. I only had my fare to the coach station left so couldn't afford to buy coffee myself. I declined the offer at first because there was only a short time left before I had to leave for my coach and I didn't want to miss him if he came to collect his mail. It was the woman who suggested the obvious, leave him a note with reception saying where I was. I remember writing the note, it would have said "I'm in the cafe in Piccadilly Tube Station." So no confusion about the location at all, the Glasshouse St entrance to the tube being just metres across the road from the hotel's main entrance, so no leading me through streets while distressed. Outwardly I wouldn't have seemed distressed. I was just sitting quietly watching the main entrance when she approached me.

I did see someone on another thread ask was mine the one where I'd implied that what happened in the cafe was too frightening to talk about, in a rather derisive way, but as Carl said in that thread, I've never claimed anything frightening happened in the cafe, only that it was personal. It was underground, there were no windows but I did indeed "see" my boyfriend in the street above (as if on a tv screen in front of me, the street actually being behind me. It's not uncommon for me to perceive visual impressions about things as if on a tv screen), in the exact clothes he was in fact wearing. Simultaneously I had a very vivid impression (but didn't actually hear anything) of being told "He's here" and absolute certainty of his exact location to the inch, which was indeed where he was when I rounded the top of the steps, several meters down Glasshouse Street. I didn't feel comfortable elaborating on this and a couple of other details in my original post on Digital Spy at that time. It's one thing describing objective observations, it's another claiming you've "Had a vision" or "I was told..." Sounds cringingly attention getting to me and it was one of the more (comparatively minor!) personal details I didn't want to expand on, especially on a non-paranormal site like DS, that unfortunately got blown out of proportion for no other reason than I wasn't forthcoming about it. It was only necessary to mention that "Something happened..." at all to explain why I went from sitting drinking coffee to suddenly running out of the cafe and up the stairs to the street. The only frightening thing that happened in the cafe was the look of shock and fear on the couple's faces when I suddenly jumped up, leaned forward to grab my bags and shouted right in their faces "HE'S HERE! I'VE GOT TO GO!" I'd been monosyllabic in the cafe up until that point. They'd looked scared.

They'd followed me out and the woman approached us, the guy hanging back. She said she was relieved I'd found my boyfriend because she'd been worried about me. She commented on how strange it was that I'd known he was there and told him what had happened. Again this detail doesn't fit in with them possibly looking for runaways because surely they'd have steered clear once they saw I was with him.
 
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Oh I remember the underground story from Digital Spy. I enjoyed that post there but I thought some of the people posting on its coat tails were well dodgy, and there was one real attention seeker there who didn't like being called out by the couple of people with the temerity to say something sceptical.:wink2:

ETA: Can't recall if you were caught in the flak there, but if you were, it would be because your post seemed to bring some obvious dodgy ones out of the woodwork, in its wake. I found it credible but thought maybe the fact you were so cogent would play against you, there, in that sometimes a well written account looks more 'fictional' somehow. Especially on DS. If that makes sense.
 
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It was Tara who was bullied in part 1 of that thread, unjustly in my opinion. We shared several pms and she seemed ok to me, she wasn't making any outlandish claims, wasn't detailing anything that hadn't been reported by people who've had comparable experiences and didn't come across as someone whose motivation was attention seeking. The problem arose I think because some people had preconceived ideas about how something like that should be told and objected to her honesty that, especially as it hadn't happened to her personally, she was enjoying sharing what had happened in the house with people she'd assumed were like-minded.

AsamiYamazaki, have you made enquiries to find out if anyone was filming period scenes in Waterloo Station at the time? If you drew a blank with London Transport Angels Costumes incorporated Berman's in 1992 and would have been the main theatrical costumiers for film and tv. They'd have records of any productions and locations they'd worked on at that time.
 
i stayed at the regents palace (RIP) a bunch of times in the 90s, wasnt there an old school barbers halfway down the stairway entrance to piccadilly circus right by the hotel entrance ?

hotel by then was a pretty cheap joint, practically a dosshouse, bathrooms down the hall, phone reception to be escorted to the shower, popular with backpackers and stag doers, but i dug it ... used to have a cool horseshoe cocktail bar off reception to the left ... barflied that place many a night on expenses
 
I only remember the coffee shop and carvery, we used both several times. Don't recall ever seeing a barbers but haven't visited the area since the late 80's. Back in '81 The Regent Palace Hotel was the poshest place I'd ever been :)
 
I stayed at the Regent Palace in what I want to say was 1999? It was my second year at Uni studying for a degree in Drama. As part of the course we spent 10 days down in London watching shows (from French Neoclassicism pieces performed above a pub, to Kit Marlowe pieces in Islington, to Shakespeare at the Barbican and... something at The National).

Anyway to facilitate this we needed to house a whole department of drama students as cheaply as possible. So the Regent Palace it was!

And it was pretty beat up and run down by then. But cheap. So it fit the bill.

The Glasshouse Street entrance was the nearest entrance to the tube for us. I went backwards and forwards down those steps several times each day.

From what I recall there was a kiosk there which might have served coffee, but I don't recall there being enough room for an actual cafe. I certainly didn't see one. Sadly.

It is a most intriguing story nonetheless.

"there was a strange Heath Robinson contraption made of copper. "

Is the thing which grabbed my attention. What the heck would that be?
 
CuriousIdent said:
"there was a strange Heath Robinson contraption made of copper. "

Is the thing which grabbed my attention. What the heck would that be?
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Probably a water heater. Some of those old cafe water heaters are pretty elaborate.
 
CuriousIdent said:
I stayed at the Regent Palace in what I want to say was 1999? It was my second year at Uni studying for a degree in Drama. As part of the course we spent 10 days down in London watching shows (from French Neoclassicism pieces performed above a pub, to Kit Marlowe pieces in Islington, to Shakespeare at the Barbican and... something at The National).

Anyway to facilitate this we needed to house a whole department of drama students as cheaply as possible. So the Regent Palace it was!

And it was pretty beat up and run down by then. But cheap. So it fit the bill.

The Glasshouse Street entrance was the nearest entrance to the tube for us. I went backwards and forwards down those steps several times each day.

From what I recall there was a kiosk there which might have served coffee, but I don't recall there being enough room for an actual cafe. I certainly didn't see one. Sadly.

It is a most intriguing story nonetheless.

"there was a strange Heath Robinson contraption made of copper. "

Is the thing which grabbed my attention. What the heck would that be?
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Yes, the guard my friend stopped said there was only the kiosk, which was just a counter in the actual ticket hall. The copper/metal contraption is something that still puzzles me. It was several feet in length, it ran the entire length of the counter which curved into a mirrored wall so gave the appearance of being semi-oval. I honestly couldn't say for certain how long it and the counter were, the length is the one thing that swims away from me whenever I try to focus on it. But there seemed to be a lot of cylinders/tanks and pipework in copper, bronze, brass tones. My impression is that it was in excess of 6ft long. The front of the counter couldn't have been less than 6ft (allow a couple of feet for a half door with hinged counter that might or might not have been there) and then it curved.

Something I remembered after I originally posted was that it wasn't just the one room, as I'd thought, the waitress went through a door next to the counter and came out with our coffee. I don't remember there being any snacks at all on the counter or if there was a till, just the contraption, the tinted mirror tiles and the old woman stuck in my memory.

Mythopoeika said:
Probably a water heater. Some of those old cafe water heaters are pretty elaborate.
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It was way too elaborate to be a water heater. It was like an extensive still, and was out of place because there wasn't a hint of anything else even remotely steampunk in there. It was otherwise just a cheap little cafe with bog standard pine furniture and a bare floor.
 
Wow - 6 feet long? That's pretty unusual.
 
NumberNine said:
Yes, the guard my friend stopped said there was only the kiosk, which was just a counter in the actual ticket hall. The copper/metal contraption is something that still puzzles me. It was several feet in length, it ran the entire length of the counter which curved into a mirrored wall so gave the appearance of being semi-oval. I honestly couldn't say for certain how long it and the counter were, the length is the one thing that swims away from me whenever I try to focus on it. But there seemed to be a lot of cylinders/tanks and pipework in copper, bronze, brass tones. My impression is that it was in excess of 6ft long. The front of the counter couldn't have been less than 6ft (allow a couple of feet for a half door with hinged counter that might or might not have been there) and then it curved.

Something I remembered after I originally posted was that it wasn't just the one room, as I'd thought, the waitress went through a door next to the counter and came out with our coffee. I don't remember there being any snacks at all on the counter or if there was a till, just the contraption, the tinted mirror tiles and the old woman stuck in my memory.
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Makes me wonder if this wasn't some kind of impromptu setup in a boiler room, or some other kind of side room. It really is quite curious.

So you are 'Doll Feet' from the thread on Digital Spy? :) Carl Grove and I have been trying to gather together reports on all the many and multitudinous Time Slip accounts that have been shared on these boards in the Time or Dimensional Slips thread:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/time-or-dimensional-slips.13755/

over in General Forteana. Your experience was one which got mentioned last year.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Wow - 6 feet long? That's pretty unusual.
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That has to be minimum length. I find it odd that I can't focus on the length of that counter. I'm a very visual person and tend to remember detail, but that counter seems to shift in my memory from small to several feet in length, I can't pin it down.

CuriousIdent said:
Makes me wonder if this wasn't some kind of impromptu setup in a boiler room, or some other kind of side room. It really is quite curious.

So you are 'Doll Feet' from the thread on Digital Spy? :) Carl Grove and I have been trying to gather together reports on all the many and multitudinous Time Slip accounts that have been shared on these boards in the Time or Dimensional Slips thread:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/time-or-dimensional-slips.13755/

over in General Forteana. Your experience was one which got mentioned last year.
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Yes I'm Doll Feet. I've exchanged several pms with Carl, including details I wouldn't want made public at this time, for the record. I appreciated his serious and respectful approach, I'm not getting any younger and was happy for details to be queried while I'm still around to clarify. I've never thought of it as a timeslip though. It was difficult for me to add the detail recently of what happened in the cafe (the visual and auditory information of where my boyfriend was), and there is another detail I haven't discussed, because in an incident that stretches credibility to start with it's a detail that wouldn't help (and I can only apologise if that sounds like a carrot on a stick to garner "attention", IRL I'm a very private person who shuns attention) but it would indicate that there was a non-human (at the least non alive human) element that was very aware of the situation. Timeslip just isn't a term that fits for me. That this incident was overseen/stage managed by something fits for me. In cases of timeslips that I've read about I have wondered if the odd detail of money being accepted without comment would indicate that it wasn't the appropriate term for those either, whatever the outward appearance.

I've wondered if there is actually a room there with an entrance elsewhere, but the contraption looked to be (placed) on the counter rather than the counter being built around existing pipework. It looked well maintained. It crossed my mind that cleaning the thing wasn't a job I'd have relished.
 
Wasn't one of those little cafés which used to be a Victorian-era toilet was it?
The "Attendant" is one such conversion and retains copper piping, cisterns and porcelain as a trendy gimmick.
 
No nothing like that. At the time I was impressed by the novelty of a waitress being in period costume, I don't think semi-converted Victorian toilet cafes were a thing back in 1981.
 
Thanks for that Simon. The Regent Palace Hotel entrance was within a few feet to the right of that photo. I'm wondering what was behind those doors on Glasshouse st? The cafe would have been directly beneath it.

DRlPCsGUEAA6Hdw.jpg


Some great pics on that page!
 
someone needs to get some contemporary photos and work out orientation as you descend those stairs
 
NumberNine said:
Thanks for that Simon. The Regent Palace Hotel entrance was within a few feet to the right of that photo. I'm wondering what was behind those doors on Glasshouse st? The cafe would have been directly beneath it.
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Can't find much about that door - maybe it was a staff entrance for the Alliance Life Office? All the shops currently on that side of the street are listed as being on Regent Street, making the entrances on Glasshouse Street just rear entrances.

Glasshouse street has changed a bit - You'd think that door would be number 1, but the hotel was apparently called number 1. Which is now the Ugg store, and numbered 10 (which makes sense now, evens are on that side). The mystery door doesn't have a number in any of the street view pics. It may have been residential in the 1800s (also a publican listed at #1 in 1854).

Some history of the street (it's very old) :

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols31-2/pt2/pp57-67#h3-0002

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols31-2/pt2/pp57-67#anchorn98

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols31-2/pt2/pp85-100
 
It's interesting trying to view that area on Google Streetview.

As I posted in Time and Dimensional Slips thread the Regent Palace hotel exist only in frontage now, with a large commercial complex behind it. Parts of it are now shops others parts office space.

The building work was completed at some point on 2008, but if you try and progress through the area on Sreetview you'll switch between images from different years.

October 2008:

2008-1.png

2008-2.png


With construction work still underway. To August 2016:

2016-1.png

2016-2.png


In which we can see the UGG logo on the frontage of the former hotel.

And the other side of that archway (Regent Street side) September this year (2017):

2017-1.png


I suppose it depends on how good a set of images the Google Car picks up.

But one thing of note from those.

Check out the door NumberNine mentioned, between the 2008 and 2016 images. Not just different paint jobs. Those look like different doors. So it certainly looks like that door has seen some use in the decade. Hard to say if belongs to the luggage store next door or belongs to part of the underground network though.
 
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Simon said:
Keeping in with the London theme of the thread, I came across this via my twitter account:

https://portalsoflondon.com/
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That's really interesting but reads increasingly purple prose as it goes on.

I have an almost identical (and intact) Bellarmine jug. Made by one of the potters who makes repro stuff for living history people. They're readily available. We've often chucked out broken bits of "Delftware" or Bellarmine or some local medieval glaze or other pots when broken and have had a good laugh about the confused archaeologists of the future, who may be digging our backyard...
 
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escargot said:
I reckon it's pre-publicity for a TV or fillum project. A certain mod shrewdly suggests Gaiman's Neverwhere. Well-spotted, I say!
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Oh I hope so. I love Neverwhere.

ETA: Forgot to say.... Struck me last night - the original door there looks to be 'boarded over' by the newer door... That big window above it now covered over, but probably still there, as if someone at some point was making the building more secure.
 
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Simon said:
Keeping in with the London theme of the thread, I came across this via my twitter account:

https://portalsoflondon.com/
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Very entertaining Website that prompts further research to determine hoax/fiction from plausible.

Liked the Woolwich tunnel anomaly and Henderson's Door in particular.

Definitely a hint of Neverwhere or The Anubis Gates in there!
 
Fiction, I feel -- the narrative is too good to be a natural description. But I wonder about the motivation -- this is a very professional, slick site. Are they trying to accustom people to accept time anomalies, or merely promoting some new production? Interesting, though.
 
In regards to Timeslips where someone sees a shop from the past: Has anyone managed to purchase something or get something as evidence of the time trip before returning?
 
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