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

Why The 'Case of Kersey Village' Was An Impressive Time-Slip (Suffolk 1957)

That one on the right looks more like 1900 than 1950.
 
catseye said:
Oh I don't think it was a time slip. I just don't buy the entire village running away at the sight of uniforms. To you young whipper snappers, 1957 was a primitive time but, although I'm not quite old enough to remember it, it wasn't quite as primitive as everyone being alerted by the church bells. A lot would have had televisions and radios and would have listened to those for an alert of any kind of invasion.
Click to expand...

Well I am old enough to remember life in Suffolk villlages in 1957 and I fully agree with you Catseye! Unless there was a bunch of real eccentrics living in Kersey I very much doubt they would have a system of alerting by churchbells! Not only that but amongst the ordinary everyday sort of people there wasn't a great deal of 'cold war' paranoia. We left that sort of thing to 'the chattering classses' lol. If some sort of warning system was deemed necessary it's most likely that the sirens from WW2. would have been used.

Sollywos x
 
Sollywos said:
Well I am old enough to remember life in Suffolk villlages in 1957 and I fully agree with you Catseye! Unless there was a bunch of real eccentrics living in Kersey I very much doubt they would have a system of alerting by churchbells! Not only that but amongst the ordinary everyday sort of people there wasn't a great deal of 'cold war' paranoia. We left that sort of thing to 'the chattering classses' lol. If some sort of warning system was deemed necessary it's most likely that the sirens from WW2. would have been used.

Sollywos x
Click to expand...
Would a small run down village have had an air raid siren during the war?
 
Souleater said:
... Has anyone considered that the village they were directed to wasn't in fact Kersey? The farm labourer could have sent them to any village/hamlet in the area, just to get rid of them as he was 'suspicious' of them, and when they 'returned' to Kersey 30 years later it was in fact the first time they had actually been there ...
Click to expand...

Yes - that's a possibility. After all, they had been trucked out into a rural area for an overnight stay and a navigation / reconnoitering exercise. Maybe they didn't really visit their intended destination. According to the usual accounts they were deemed to have been in Kersey largely because they reported the village was weird.

Because it's never been clear from which direction they approached the village, they might have visited any other village within a circa 5 mile radius of their starting point. Unfortunately, we don't know where the starting point was located.

Their recollections of Kersey aren't very specific, so there aren't many clues to the village's identity. The primary such clue is the stream and 'splash' (ford) in the middle of the settlement.

If there's another village within (let's say) 5 miles of Kersey with a similar stream / ford located within it one might make a case that the cadets had visited that place instead.

However ...

Changing the location (village) they actually visited that day doesn't resolve the differences experienced in that location during their visit. On the other hand, the layout of another village might better explain the reported anomalies.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Yes - that's a possibility. After all, they had been trucked out into a rural area for an overnight stay and a navigation / reconnoitering exercise. Maybe they didn't really visit their intended destination. According to the usual accounts they were deemed to have been in Kersey largely because they reported the village was weird.

Because it's never been clear from which direction they approached the village, they might have visited any other village within a circa 5 mile radius of their starting point. Unfortunately, we don't know where the starting point was located.

Their recollections of Kersey aren't very specific, so there aren't many clues to the village's identity. The primary such clue is the stream and 'splash' (ford) in the middle of the settlement.

If there's another village within (let's say) 5 miles of Kersey with a similar stream / ford located within it one might make a case that the cadets had visited that place instead.

However ...

Changing the location (village) they actually visited that day doesn't resolve the differences experienced in that location during their visit. On the other hand, the layout of another village might better explain the reported anomalies.
Click to expand...
It may explain the fact tjey heard a church bell but saw no tower the ( church actually being in Kersey nearby and close enough to hear the bells), and the fact they dont remember seeing the pub(s) that were there when they 'returned' 30 years later, aswell as the mysterious butchers, which could well still be a butchers in a nearby village but not in Kersey.
 
If Kersey had been their assigned objective, and they'd surveyed the village so as to satisfy their mission, why did they exit the scene into the fields to the west? Was this the direction from which they'd come?
 
Souleater said:
Would a small run down village have had an air raid siren during the war?
Click to expand...

Probably not but those sirens sound for miles across the fields the reason I know is because the one in our nearby town was still being used to call out the part time firemen from the surrounding villages. :)
David Plankton said:
If they did, would they bother using it if three teenagers turned up unarmed?

Not going with this aspect, Souleater. I think if anything, they would have been challenged by the locals if they were thought to be Russian invaders.
Click to expand...

No!

Oh the locals would have made it their business to keep an eye on them!

Still Souleater is just playing around with ideas,and all angles need to be considered. :)

Sollywos x
 
EnolaGaia said:
Yes - that's a possibility. After all, they had been trucked out into a rural area for an overnight stay and a navigation / reconnoitering exercise. Maybe they didn't really visit their intended destination. According to the usual accounts they were deemed to have been in Kersey largely because they reported the village was weird.

Because it's never been clear from which direction they approached the village, they might have visited any other village within a circa 5 mile radius of their starting point. Unfortunately, we don't know where the starting point was located.

Their recollections of Kersey aren't very specific, so there aren't many clues to the village's identity. The primary such clue is the stream and 'splash' (ford) in the middle of the settlement.

If there's another village within (let's say) 5 miles of Kersey with a similar stream / ford located within it one might make a case that the cadets had visited that place instead.

However ...

Changing the location (village) they actually visited that day doesn't resolve the differences experienced in that location during their visit. On the other hand, the layout of another village might better explain the reported anomalies.
Click to expand...
It's a new theory, but it really doesn't hold water. The main witness William Laing was able to identify the butchers shop from a picture postcard sent to him by Andrew MacKenzie and when he returned to the UK (he had emigrated to Australia in 1968) he recognised several other specific buildings that he recalled from the experience, but noted that the pub definitely had not been there when the cadets entered the village. He was able to retrace with MacKenzie the route that the cadets had taken and identify the point where they left the village. He was in no doubt that Kersey was the right place. In fact, Kersey is well known largely because of its unique architecture and I don't think there are many similar villages today in the UK as a whole, never mind within 5 miles of it. But one really unequivocal point of identification is the unusual water splash feature right in the centre. It now has concrete and other modern fixtures, and the houses have been gentrified, but the layout is the same. In fact the only major difference between Kersey as they saw it during the experience and how it looks now is the church.
 
Been mulling over this and other cases and I'm now not sure that it was a "simple" time slip. Some features that don't gell with this theory are the lack of local people, the rotting carcass, the oppressive atmosphere, and the strange appearance of the ducks. It came to me that there is a similarity here to the Leeds "One thing Leeds to another" case, where the two sisters entered a busy shop, one of them passed right through a customer near the door, and then found that the shop was cold, grey, and empty. I had assumed that maybe it was a time slip to an early morning when no customers were around, but the surviving sister (now maybe not surviving) felt it was a "non-place." Now my major theory about time slips is that they are evidence for a simulated reality, and if that is the case, then maybe both of these cases might be explained in this way: in a computer game the background and the people are generated separately. If something went awry and the characters weren't being generated, you would just be left with the relatively static background (which in the case of Kersey might involve some ducks splashing around rather unconvincingly.) Maybe in both cases the operators saw some imprending danger to the witnesses (this is what the Leeds lady believed) and shunted them into a background (or a "set") that effectively removed them from it?
 
Nosmo King said:
Glass was a rare and expensive comodity in medievel times and not routinely used in the construction residential buildings until 1700's, so the 'time slip' would be after this time as they described 'looking through windows'.
Click to expand...
This seems to conclusively disprove the timeslip hypothesis- if they went back to before the church was built, there would have been no glass suitable to look through, and if they went back to a time when there was glass, there would have been a church. It is an inconsistency that demonstrates that the event did not occur as described.
 
eburacum said:
This seems to conclusively disprove the timeslip hypothesis- if they went back to before the church was built, there would have been no glass suitable to look through, and if they went back to a time when there was glass, there would have been a church. It is an inconsistency that demonstrates that the event did not occur as described.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. If you check my recent post you will see that I now question the time slip theory. The alternative answer might be more controversial, but then a lot of people view time slips themselves as controversial.
 
I'm a big fan of alternate worlds/ many worlds theories, and that theory might also fit the bill; but travel between alternate realities is probably very difficult (more difficult even than interstellar travel).

A glitch in the matrix might explain the phenomenon - but if such glitches did occur, one might expect that the 'operators' could erase the witnesses' memories fairly easily. Tweaking people's memories is an ability that is almost indispensable in any simulation theory.
 
Carl Grove said:
Been mulling over this and other cases and I'm now not sure that it was a "simple" time slip. ... Now my major theory about time slips is that they are evidence for a simulated reality, and if that is the case, then maybe both of these cases might be explained in this way: in a computer game the background and the people are generated separately. If something went awry and the characters weren't being generated, you would just be left with the relatively static background (which in the case of Kersey might involve some ducks splashing around rather unconvincingly.) Maybe in both cases the operators saw some imprending danger to the witnesses (this is what the Leeds lady believed) and shunted them into a background (or a "set") that effectively removed them from it?
Click to expand...

Carl:

I don't want to foster a tangent here in the Kersey thread, but ... Couldn't you similarly explain these cases in terms of side-slipping into an alternative version of this reality / world / universe without having to add in the deliberate agency of "operators" overseeing a simulation? It seems to me you're leaning really hard on the simulation / game analogy - hard enough to be introducing some elements that aren't clearly reflected in the case stories.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Carl:

I don't want to foster a tangent here in the Kersey thread, but ... Couldn't you similarly explain these cases in terms of side-slipping into an alternative version of this reality / world / universe without having to add in the deliberate agency of "operators" overseeing a simulation? It seems to me you're leaning really hard on the simulation / game analogy - hard enough to be introducing some elements that aren't clearly reflected in the case stories.
Click to expand...
It seems to me that in a small but significant number of cases there are indications of some kind of intervention, and if we are going to take the simulation theory seriously then we should take that possibility seriously. Offhand I can think of the weird West Country case where the two sisters were trapped in some bizarre alternate reality and were eventually helped to get back to their reality by an old man in a cottage -- and later they found no evidence that a cottage had ever been in that place. In a couple of US cases drivers seemed to be trapped in the wrong time and were told how to get back to it by helpful people. And of course the Piccadilly Circus case. The simulation idea is actually very ancient even though it might in the past have been expressed in mystico-religious terminology.

In the Kersey case I was always fascinated by the strange behaviour of the ducks, which were after all the only living inhabitants of Kersey that the witnesses saw.
 
Carl Grove said:
Been mulling over this and other cases and I'm now not sure that it was a "simple" time slip. Some features that don't gell with this theory are the lack of local people, the rotting carcass, the oppressive atmosphere, and the strange appearance of the ducks. It came to me that there is a similarity here to the Leeds "One thing Leeds to another" case, where the two sisters entered a busy shop, one of them passed right through a customer near the door, and then found that the shop was cold, grey, and empty. I had assumed that maybe it was a time slip to an early morning when no customers were around, but the surviving sister (now maybe not surviving) felt it was a "non-place." Now my major theory about time slips is that they are evidence for a simulated reality, and if that is the case, then maybe both of these cases might be explained in this way: in a computer game the background and the people are generated separately. If something went awry and the characters weren't being generated, you would just be left with the relatively static background (which in the case of Kersey might involve some ducks splashing around rather unconvincingly.) Maybe in both cases the operators saw some imprending danger to the witnesses (this is what the Leeds lady believed) and shunted them into a background (or a "set") that effectively removed them from it?
Click to expand...
Carl, is there any connection to this theory and the one in Rougham (in the house on Gypsy lane), where half the room was in darkness and when Mrs Rose put her hand into it she couldn't see it?
 
I have some half-formed theories about multiple universes intersecting, and sometimes we can see through into others that might 'cut through' our own. It would explain so many things; ghosts (figures moving in their own universe), fairies, time slips (stepping through into an alternate universe where things are 'similar but not identical'), doppelgangers, vardogers...

It wouldn't explain them well, or even probably, but it would go some of the way.
 
Floyd1 said:
Carl, is there any connection to this theory and the one in Rougham (in the house on Gypsy lane), where half the room was in darkness and when Mrs Rose put her hand into it she couldn't see it?
Click to expand...
Actually I hadn't thought of that, but that would make sense -- if we are in a simulation, as I am now pretty sure that we are!
 
catseye said:
I have some half-formed theories about multiple universes intersecting, and sometimes we can see through into others that might 'cut through' our own. It would explain so many things; ghosts (figures moving in their own universe), fairies, time slips (stepping through into an alternate universe where things are 'similar but not identical'), doppelgangers, vardogers...

It wouldn't explain them well, or even probably, but it would go some of the way.
Click to expand...
Yes, could be! It could go some way to explaining UFOs and other odd stuff. It looks as if there are some places where the walls between two realities/universes are a bit thin (Skinwalker especially) and then all sorts of weird things can get through.
 
Some really interesting thoughts on what has to be my favourite Fortean phenomenon.

Genuine time-slips are of course frustratingly rare and that makes their study difficult to say the least. Forum member Ruth Roper-Wylde uncovered quite a recent case from the North of England that involved a mother driving at night and her son as a passenger, so a precious multiple witness account to begin with. For me the most intriguing aspect ofd the time-slip or glitch was that the light of the moon, carriageway lights and car headlights each became very defined and arced towards the ground in a manner akin to a rainbow, which for me is highly suggestive of a gravitational force at work.

[just having a look to see which of Ruth's books this appeared in...]
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Some really interesting thoughts on what has to be my favourite Fortean phenomenon.

Genuine time-slips are of course frustratingly rare and that makes their study difficult to say the least. Forum member Ruth Roper-Wylde uncovered quite a recent case from the North of England that involved a mother driving at night and her son as a passenger, so a precious multiple witness account to begin with. For me the most intriguing aspect ofd the time-slip or glitch was that the light of the moon, carriageway lights and car headlights each became very defined and arced towards the ground in a manner akin to a rainbow, which for me is highly suggestive of a gravitational force at work.

[just having a look to see which of Ruth's books this appeared in...]
Click to expand...
I must have around 500 time slip cases on my files but organising them is a nightmare. This case is certainly unusual, I can't think of anything similar except in the context of UFO sightings, which of course raises even more issues. Tiny arcs of light appeared in a field in Rougham (between the village centre and the church), plus balls of light. If you can get the exact location of that case that might offer a few clues.
 
Carl Grove said:
I must have around 500 time slip cases on my files but organising them is a nightmare. This case is certainly unusual, I can't think of anything similar except in the context of UFO sightings, which of course raises even more issues. Tiny arcs of light appeared in a field in Rougham (between the village centre and the church), plus balls of light. If you can get the exact location of that case that might offer a few clues.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Kindle search is getting me nowhere (I have four books by Ruth) so will listen to the podcast again
 
Carl Grove said:
Yes, could be! It could go some way to explaining UFOs and other odd stuff. It looks as if there are some places where the walls between two realities/universes are a bit thin (Skinwalker especially) and then all sorts of weird things can get through.
Click to expand...
We may be perceiving as 'monsters' creatures which are natural to their own universe. In my vision, things aren't actually 'coming through' so much as we are temporarily able to perceive them in their own universe. Although this doesn't explain physical things such as Bigfoot footprints...
 
eburacum said:
My guess is that the three lads wandered into someone's shed or outhouse, and found a carcase or two hanging up; they mistook their location, which is why they couldn't see the church. Incidentally, my wife has made an interesting suggestion- back in the Fifties, health inspectors would often use green dye to mark meat that was not for human consumption- that might explain the 'mouldy' appearance of the carcases. Or they may have been game animals, hanging up to mature.

Note that there is no actual proof that the church was ever obscured by trees, and this seems quite unlikely - contrary to most people's imaginings, there were fewer mature trees in the old days, because they were generally grown for commercial reasons and the growth was harvested before reaching full height. We have many more mature trees in the UK nowadays than have existed here for many, many centuries, because they are no longer harvested in this way.
Click to expand...

Interesting thread. I feel eburacum made some good points as regards the carcasses, I know that deer carcasses being hung can look distinctly mouldy and could they really identify 'oxen' from deer?
 
Nosmo King said:
It may explain the fact tjey heard a church bell but saw no tower the ( church actually being in Kersey nearby and close enough to hear the bells), and the fact they dont remember seeing the pub(s) that were there when they 'returned' 30 years later, aswell as the mysterious butchers, which could well still be a butchers in a nearby village but not in Kersey.
Click to expand...
Good shout, and as eburacum argued was it actually a butcher's shop? After all they didn't have a name for the shop and the only reason they concluded it was a butchers shop was that there were "oxen" carcasses on view. It might equally have been someone hanging meat in their own property, especially considering their appeared to be none of the signing and fixtures and fittings even a Victorian butchers shop.would boast.

Then there was the fact it was a Sunday morning in August, a time of the year in rural Suffolk that revolved around the harvest and church and so perhaps not surprising that any small village would have been quiet. But the biggest red flag for me is that once they had retreated from the village they:

"... saw the smoke rising from chimneys, none of the chimneys was smoking when we were in the village"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...led-to-medieval-england-or-did-they-35698485/

Given it was August in the 1950s, would they have had their fires lit anyway...? Seems very unlikely and even if they were cooking Sunday lunch then there was electricity even in rural Suffolk in the 1950s. It would have made more sense to see smoke rising from chimneys whilst 'in the past' rather than back in 1957 outside the village.

I am something of a believer in the high strangeness, often fleeting, time-slips but struggle somewhat with the extended cases,. Like the 1979 Gisby/Simpson case this one was not considered paranormal by the witnesses at the time it took place but rather at a later date and this is a bit of a red flag for me.
 
Last edited:
Paul_Exeter said:
Good shout, and as eburacum argued was it actually a butcher's shop? After all they didn't have a name for the shop and the only reason they concluded it was a butchers shop was that there were "oxen" carcasses on view. It might equally have been someone hanging meat in their own property, especially considering their appeared to be none of the signing and fixtures and fittings even a Victorian butchers shop.would boast.

Then there was the fact it was a Sunday morning in August, a time of the year in rural Suffolk that revolved around the harvest and church and so perhaps not surprising that any small village would have been quiet. But the biggest red flag for me is that once they had retreated from the village they:

"... saw the smoke rising from chimneys, none of the chimneys was smoking when we were in the village"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...led-to-medieval-england-or-did-they-35698485/

Given it was August in the 1950s, would they have had their fires lit anyway...? Seems very unlikely and even if they were cooking Sunday lunch then there was electricity even in rural Suffolk in the 1950s. It would have made more sense to see smoke rising from chimneys whilst 'in the past' rather than back in 1957 outside the village.

I am something of a believer in the high strangeness, often fleeting, time-slips but struggle somewhat with the extended cases,. Like the 1979 Gisby/Simpson case this one was not considered paranormal by the witnesses at the time it took place but rather at a later date and this is a bit of a red flag for me.
Click to expand...
From my memories of the 50s, you would light a coal fire if it was a chilly day, regardless of what month it was! Houses, especially old ones, had none of the insulation that we are used to today. But the key point is that in regard to weather, outside the village it was cool, wheras once inside it was sunny and warm, more like spring than autumn. Outside they could hear church bells, inside they couldn't even see the church. There were distinct borders between the two realities. Inside there were no signs of people (and on a Sunday that would have been very unusual), the pub that exists today wasn't visible, and the key point about the building with the rotting carcass was that later on it was found that that had, indeed, once been a butcher's. So on balance I think this was a genuine event, but whether it was a simple time slip is in doubt. The unreal appearance of the ducks is a red flag.

The issue regarding the length of time slips is interesting. Some are indeed fleeting but many carry on long enough for the witnesses to have conversations with people there, have meals at long-shut restaurants, and so on. Very long ones are rare, Jimmy Two Hat's experience that he said lasted several months holds the record.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top