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So, are we not sure of the day?
To the extent we're 'sure' of anything, the day was a Sunday.
We don't know the date - i.e., which Sunday in October 1957 was the day of the incident.
So, are we not sure of the day?
To the extent we're 'sure' of anything, the day was a Sunday.
We don't know the date - i.e., which Sunday in October 1957 was the day of the incident.
Well, they only noticed it was 'unnaturally silent and quiet with nobody about' before they drank. They sat and drank from the stream and then started to notice oddness about the village and went around peering in windows. Offhand, I can only really think of chloroflurocarbons, which can be waterborne and cause disorientation, but there could well be others, especially given the timeframe (autumn, pre-harvest pesticides may have been in run-off and in 1950's wouldn't have been subject to the stringent controls of today).
I see, (and INT21) I wasn't sure there if the day as well as the time had been surmised by the bells and their corresponding to a Sunday service.
EnolaGia, have you read the book? I'm wondering if we know which direction they went in after leaving the village.
They reported something strange had happened to their superior officers later that day.Remember this whole business came to light 30 years later, and then when one of them contacted the other and then McKenzie.
They reported something strange had happened to their superior officers later that day.
This is in the Mike Dash account, will post link tomorrow if required.
Do you mean that there's a separate contemporary account, or that the accounts given to McKenzie describe their giving a report to their supervisors on their return.
I'd read that they reported it on their return, but that whoever they reported it to laughed and confirmed they'd been to Kersey.
DP,
A link ! Please do.
INT21
As far as I can tell the boys (dressed for a long hike on a cold day) began to feel hot and thirsty as they entered the slip, and took off their jerseys and drank from the small stream when they reached it, only a few minutes after entering the village. If the water was polluted with some biochemical agent that might explain the unnatural behaviour of the ducks, but unless it was extremely fast-acting, it couldn't account for the invisibility of the church, nor the absence of people, points that would have been noted rapidly.That's a good point ...
It's unclear from the various accounts precisely when and where they took some water. Not all the retellings state they took water from the stream, and there was a public water pump in the central village area (though not on the main lane, so far as I can tell).
The main counterargument would concern the timeframe. There aren't many pollutants one could ingest in water that would put you in a notable biochemical / psychological funk in less than 20 - 30 minutes. If one accepts the relative sequence of events insinuated in the various accounts, they were already feeling something was 'off' by the time they were at the ford / splash area.
Can we rule it out? No.
Is this a viable explanation for their anomalous experience? I'd say 'not likely' if we're talking about water taken in the central village, but 'possible' if they'd drunk any stream water earlier during the circa 2-hour hike to the village.
Crowley mentioned that Kersey was their target, Laing didn't.I'm not aware there are any contemporary (1957) records of the exercise or what these 3 boys reported.
Yes - with varying degrees of detail, multiple accounts claim the boys related having run into weirdness and the key listeners concluding they'd been to Kersey village and satisfied the exercise's intended requirements.
The accounts differ, however, on what those intended requirements were. Some describe the Sunday jaunt as a navigational exercise, and that's all that's mentioned. Some state the boys were supposed to return in X (usually 5) hours and report all they'd observed. Some frame it as if Kersey were the specific objective they'd been assigned to visit.
1957 September. Asian Flu epidemic in the Establishment. At its peak 732 personnel were affected.
https://www.hmsgangesassoc.org/cmspage/9/hms-ganges-at-shotley
In September 1957, the establishment was subjected to an epidemic of Asian Flu, which at its peak, affected between 700 - 800 personnel.
https://books.google.com/books?id=m...e&q=September 1957 "asian flu" ganges&f=false
(Google Books edition of Before the Mast by Colin Lambird, 2010)
The first cases in the UK were in late June, with a serious outbreak in the general population occurring in August. From mid-September onwards the virus spread from the North, West, and Wales to the South, East, and Scotland. One GP recalled ‘we were amazed at the extraordinary infectivity of the disease, overawed by the suddenness of its outset and surprised at the protean nature of its symptomatology.’ It peaked the week ending 17 October with 600 deaths reported in major towns in England and Wales. There was some evidence of a limited return in the winter.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714797/
I'm not sure how this would have impacted on the experience. It might have meant their internal clock was a bit confused, but that in itself wouldn't trigger an apparent time slip (if it did, then why didn't the other 50 million people in Britain have them, or at least a significant proportion of them?).One reason I'd like to know which October 1957 Sunday is involved here is that there is one Sunday that month in which there was indeed a 'time slippage' that could have affected the boys' experience and / or the scene(s) they observed.
NPL's archive of British Summer Time transition dates:
http://www.npl.co.uk/educate-explore/what-is-time/archive-of-summer-time-dates#1950
... shows that October 6 was the date in 1957 when the clocks should have shifted back to GMT.
It might explain why there was nobody out and about, but not why the houses they looked in were empty of people and furnishings, nor the lack of aerials, telephone wires and poles, etc., to say nothing of the missing church tower. Or are you suggesting that the flu somehow affected the witnesses mentally?There's another environmental / contextual factor that may help explain some of the weirdness at Kersey - both in terms of the boys' own experience and the relative lack of human activity they reported from the village.
This would be the Asian flu pandemic of 1957.
Their school (HMS Ganges facility) was hit hard starting in September 1957 ...
Early autumn is when the pandemic spread in force into eastern Britain, and the nationwide malaise was peaking during the same month as the Kersey incident.
To expand on the point I think @EnolaGaia is making, it's not safe to assume either time or day on the basis of the bell-ringing. C of E services could start much earlier in the morning and, where practiced, change ringing is the precursor to the service. Ringing for evening services is also not unknown. But church bells can also be rung on different days for practise, weddings, striking competitions and even by bands of touring ringers.OK - I see ... The day's being a Sunday is specifically stated in all the accounts I've seen, so I don't believe the Sunday attribution was presumptively projected on the basis of the bell ringing.
On the other hand, the bell ringing (in turn ... ) seems to be the primary reason some accounts presume the boys' Kersey visit occurred circa 1100 - 1200 on whatever Sunday it was.
I'm not sure how this would have impacted on the experience. It might have meant their internal clock was a bit confused, but that in itself wouldn't trigger an apparent time slip (if it did, then why didn't the other 50 million people in Britain have them, or at least a significant proportion of them?).
To expand on the point I think @EnolaGaia is making, it's not safe to assume either time or day on the basis of the bell-ringing. C of E services could start much earlier in the morning and, where practiced, change ringing is the precursor to the service. Ringing for evening services is also not unknown. But church bells can also be rung on different days for practise, weddings, striking competitions and even by bands of touring ringers.
It might explain why there was nobody out and about, but not why the houses they looked in were empty of people and furnishings, nor the lack of aerials, telephone wires and poles, etc., to say nothing of the missing church tower. Or are you suggesting that the flu somehow affected the witnesses mentally?
Not sure what you don't accept. I'm just listing the key features of the report. Any explanation put forward has to account for all of the features, not just one or two!I don't accept your winnowing the possibilities down this way.
Yes - it could have affected either the villagers or the boys, in a variety of ways. You've cited two of the ways it could have influenced the setting - a lack of villagers out and about, and the possibility one or more of the boys was ill, becoming ill, or physically stressed from having recently been ill.
I don't accept your winnowing the possibilities down this way.
Yes - it could have affected either the villagers or the boys, in a variety of ways. You've cited two of the ways it could have influenced the setting - a lack of villagers out and about, and the possibility one or more of the boys was ill, becoming ill, or physically stressed from having recently been ill.
Bit of a stretch though isn't it? I mean, a time slip is obviously a bit of a stretch but you're suggesting that this was down to the clocks going back and everyone having the flu? ...