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

dream_decoder said:
As much as I enjoy watching the 'investigation' here unfold, I see a much more mundane explanation for what the cadets experienced.
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What would the mundane explanation be?
 
dream_decoder said:
Here's the reason I find Time slips unrealistic - to go back in time surely we'd have to go back in space - we'd have to go back to 'when' and 'where' the event occurred within the universe.
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For this reason I tend to view them as a kind of 'fully immersive haunting experience'. Someone seeing a ghost doesn't claim they have seen a time traveller, they try to explain it as a kind of recording. Supposing the mechanism for this happening can at times record and playback the entire landscape.

Some of these accounts mention interaction with people from the past and of course this theory doesn't explain them, or the ones involving futuristic settings.

And I know I'm just swapping apples for oranges - ghosts or time slips - which is more likely?
 
INT21 said:
..The church dates back to the 12th century...

Which would suggest the a time prior to that period.

INT21
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Or after the plague when the tower was incomplete? That would explain the absence of bells and people.

Ghosts and other phenomena are traditionally associated with traumatic events and the plague would be pretty traumatic.

I assert nothing about the 'truth', merely that it might be an explanation for some elements of the account.
 
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If it was while the plague was active (and there must have been people around at some point to have hung the meat, it wasn't rotten enough to have fallen off the hooks), there would be bodies in the streets. Not every corpse had someone to bury it, and fear of catching it meant many were left to rot where they fell, sadly.

I'm actually playing devil's advocate here. I don't think they saw anything more unusual than an isolated village where most people were in church. They didn't 'notice' the church because anyone used to walking around the countryside doesn't really 'notice' those things. Like 'noticing' cows in the fields or trees growing. They've had an experience that, looking back, was weirder than it was when it happened, if you see what I mean.
 
catseye said:
They've had an experience that, looking back, was weirder than it was when it happened, if you see what I mean.
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I take your main point, that people tend not to notice mundane sights, but the words of yours that I am quoting seem quite typical of many an IHTM, in that while it was happening, the witness isn't really aware of the oddness. It only seems to strike people after the event, whatever it happened to be, just how strange was whatever it was that they had experienced. From that point of view, and again to play devil's advocate, the fact that the cadets had that "hang on a minute" feeling after the event might actually suggest that something odd had indeed happened.
 
Cochise said:
Or after the plague when the tower was incomplete? That would explain the absence of bells and people. ...
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The problem with this interpretation concerns the Bridge House - the building Laing (?) identified as the place where the apparent butcher's shop was encountered. The Bridge House's origin is ascribed to either the 15th or 16th century. This means the current Bridge House may not have even existed until up to a century after the plague had run its course and the church tower was completed.

There's also uncertainty whether the ascribed date of the earliest bell still in the tower (1576?) represents the earliest timeframe for any bell(s) the tower (or, for that matter, the church in general ... ) ever had.
 
Krepostnoi said:
... the fact that the cadets had that "hang on a minute" feeling after the event might actually suggest that something odd had indeed happened.
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The problem in this particular case is that there was no unanimity (among the 3 witnesses) on the details of the oddness, nor even on the basic allegation anything out of the ordinary was observed.
 
dream_decoder said:
Here's the reason I find Time slips unrealistic - to go back in time surely we'd have to go back in space - we'd have to go back to 'when' and 'where' the event occurred within the universe. As much as I enjoy watching the 'investigation' here unfold, I see a much more mundane explanation for what the cadets experienced.
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The interesting thing is that time slips are localised in terms of human geography -- in particular towns, streets, even houses or shops. Even in particular rooms.
Einstein, as you know, argued that there was no such thing as events happening simultaneously, hence there was no absolute time or space (as in Newtonian physics). So there is no "absolute point in space" that time slips have to relate to. Everything is relative, and in the case of time slips, they operate relative to specific points on our planet.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The problem with this interpretation concerns the Bridge House - the building Laing (?) identified as the place where the apparent butcher's shop was encountered. The Bridge House's origin is ascribed to either the 15th or 16th century. This means the current Bridge House may not have even existed until up to a century after the plague had run its course and the church tower was completed.

There's also uncertainty whether the ascribed date of the earliest bell still in the tower (1576?) represents the earliest timeframe for any bell(s) the tower (or, for that matter, the church in general ... ) ever had.
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MacKenzie decided, taking all these factors into account, and the time that greenish window glass was introduced, that early 15thC is likely.
 
catseye said:
If it was while the plague was active (and there must have been people around at some point to have hung the meat, it wasn't rotten enough to have fallen off the hooks), there would be bodies in the streets. Not every corpse had someone to bury it, and fear of catching it meant many were left to rot where they fell, sadly.

I'm actually playing devil's advocate here. I don't think they saw anything more unusual than an isolated village where most people were in church. They didn't 'notice' the church because anyone used to walking around the countryside doesn't really 'notice' those things. Like 'noticing' cows in the fields or trees growing. They've had an experience that, looking back, was weirder than it was when it happened, if you see what I mean.
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I agree, the plague theory doesn't add up. But there were certainly more unusual features than "an isolated village with all the people in church." The witnesses looked in the windows of several houses and none of them showed any sign of occupation. They noticed the lack of modern (1957) features. One of them just assumed this was normal for country life; a second that it might be an abandoned village; the third, Laing, was clearly a good observer who thought about what he was seeing and noted many odd features at the time of observation.
 
Carl Grove said:
MacKenzie decided, taking all these factors into account, and the time that greenish window glass was introduced, that early 15thC is likely.
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This reminds me of an issue I've been wanting to bring up ...

If it was indeed the Bridge House (or any other building with old greenish glass windows) where the boys reported seeing the carcasses hung in a decayed condition (most commonly cited as involving a greenish color or tinge ... ), why has no one questioned whether the greenish hue they took as a sign of decay was simply a result of viewing the carcass through greenish glass?
 
Good point. I don't think the colour of the glass in the butchers was mentioned specifically, but if it was greenish that must have influenced the witnesses' visual perception of the carcasses. This, of course, implies that they were in a time slip back to a period where windows did have a green tinge, and that the rules of optics applied during that slip (as one assumes it would).
 
David Plankton said:
For this reason I tend to view them as a kind of 'fully immersive haunting experience'. Someone seeing a ghost doesn't claim they have seen a time traveller, they try to explain it as a kind of recording. Supposing the mechanism for this happening can at times record and playback the entire landscape.

Some of these accounts mention interaction with people from the past and of course this theory doesn't explain them, or the ones involving futuristic settings.

And I know I'm just swapping apples for oranges - ghosts or time slips - which is more likely?
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When I first got seriously interested in time slips, my money would have been on the stone tape kind of theory, but the large number of cases involving interaction with the time ostensibly visited, and with people there, changed my mind. I think the least impressive cases (which I term Type 1) could be stone tape, retrocognition, reincarnation memories etc., but as you go up the scale the recording hypothesis gets strained.
 
Mythopoeika said:
What would the mundane explanation be?
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Either they were mistaken and genuinely thought they'd witnessed something - or they told a white lie - we'll probably never know - and with the passing of time they may no longer actually remember which is the case...
 
And there is the saying that 'the river I bath in today is not the same river I will bath in tomorrow'.

Water moves on. Are we to assume that the water in the stream is old or new ?

INT21
 
dream_decoder.

So it either true or a hoax.

That much has been clear from the start.

Problem is you can apply that to all uncorroborated sightings etc.

Do you think it is true or a hoax ?

INT21
 
INT21 said:
dream_decoder.

So it either true or a hoax.

That much has been clear from the start.

Problem is you can apply that to all uncorroborated sightings etc.

Do you think it is true or a hoax ?

INT21
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If they believe it's true then it is to them.
I don't know their motivation but I don't think they went back in time; I could be wrong but such things seem unlikely to me.
These stories make interesting reads but there's never anything substantial behind them; no matter how deeply we look. Maybe 'the Universe' plays games or perhaps our minds do; I guess we ARE a manifestation of the Universe after all.
I would love to find some 'magic' at work but I haven't seen any yet...
 
Carl Grove said:
... Everything is relative, and in the case of time slips, they operate relative to specific points on our planet.
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Carl:

I've been meaning to ask you something, owing to the fact you've reviewed so many of these time slip cases ...

How often - if at all - is there a report of time compression or dilation during the time slip itself?

In other words ... If a time slip observer 'slips' at 1200 and spends 1 hour 'here but at a different time', do the accounts consistently have them slipping back into their 'original timeframe' at 1300?

Phrased yet another way ... Are there any / many time slip reports in which the elapsed time 'elsewhen' is notably longer or shorter than the gap in elapsed time relative to the original / 'real' timeframe?

I've read of cases where the amount of subjective / elapsed time 'elsewhen' is ambiguous or ill-specified.

I don't recall reading of any cases in which details strongly indicated the 'elsewhen' elapsed time didn't match the apparent gap back in 'real' time.
 
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From memory, it seems rare for witnesses to report a disparity between the time spent in the time visited and the time elapsed in the present, but that may be because most slips are fairly brief, only a few minutes, and unless they thought to check their watches during the experience and again afterwards any mismatch would be unnoticed. In that Australian time slip where the witness, waiting for his girl friend, wandered off to look around a small wood, and when he left it at a different place looked across and saw himself entering it, one wonders what happened to his watch! (A lot of these doppelganger cases seem to be time slips, often unrecognised.) The most extreme case, and obviously one of the most controversial, the slip back several thousand years reported by Jimmy Two Hats, lasted several months, he estimated, but he seemed to have been returned to the present (in the same location) just after his departure.
 
How did he know that there was a doppelganger involved ? did his girl friend turn up ?

INT21
 
As I recall it, he waited until the doppelganger had vanished into the wood, went to collect his girl friend, who claimed he had only just left her, and they departed. I'll see if I can locate the full account.
 
Just to say, I can't really continue with this discussion at the moment as my computer is on its very, very, last legs. All I can see is a little minimilised slit.
 
oldrover said:
Just to say, I can't really continue with this discussion at the moment as my computer is on its very, very, last legs. All I can see is a little minimilised slit.
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Make sure to backup everything!
 
oldrover said:
Just to say, I can't really continue with this discussion at the moment as my computer is on its very, very, last legs. All I can see is a little minimilised slit.
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Perhaps it needs the kiss of life.
 
Carl Grove said:
From memory, it seems rare for witnesses to report a disparity between the time spent in the time visited and the time elapsed in the present, but that may be because most slips are fairly brief, only a few minutes, and unless they thought to check their watches during the experience and again afterwards any mismatch would be unnoticed. ...
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Thanks ... I'd been wondering about this issue for some time ...
 
Oldrover,

Have you tried plugging in a different monitor ?

The computer itself may be ok.

INT21
 
It's decided to work today for some reason.
INT21 said:
Oldrover,

Have you tried plugging in a different monitor ?

The computer itself may be ok.

INT21
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No, it's the box itself. Everything freezes and all manner of evils if I try to click on the wrong thing. I'm replacing it next week, fair play though it's 12 years old and has had a hammering.

Mythopoeika said:
Make sure to backup everything!
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Nothing is backed up, but it's going into the repair place to have everything transferred in the week. I daren't do it myself, lots of my tiger stuff is irreplaceable.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The whole Kersey story - perhaps more than most time slip stories - hinges on the apprehensive feelings one or two out of three observers reported. Anything that rendered the observers and / or the village 'off' (abnormal; affected) on whichever October Sunday morning it was could well have exacerbated, if not initiated, such feelings.
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Agreed, for me these is a two part story, firstly though not most importantly, is what caused the boys to feel there was something amiss back in 1957. And that could have been anything, absolutely anything. Then we have a very naive reliance on the clarity of their account given 30 years later.


catseye said:
I'm actually playing devil's advocate here. I don't think they saw anything more unusual than an isolated village where most people were in church. They didn't 'notice' the church because anyone used to walking around the countryside doesn't really 'notice' those things. Like 'noticing' cows in the fields or trees growing. They've had an experience that, looking back, was weirder than it was when it happened, if you see what I mean.
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And not only that, they may have just simply failed to recall the church 30 years later. 30 years later, that's where this whole thing falls flat on its arse. It's the biggest factor and can account for any number of discrepancies and anomalies in this story.
 
oldrover said:
Agreed, for me these is a two part story, firstly though not most importantly, is what caused the boys to feel there was something amiss back in 1957. And that could have been anything, absolutely anything. Then we have a very naive reliance on the clarity of their account given 30 years later ...
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It would do a lot toward substantiating the original observation event if a third (OK - fourth ... ) party could confirm that Laing, Crowley, and Baker reported strangeness when they returned from their exercise jaunt. The more elaborate retellings claim the boys mentioned something odd in the village they visited, only to have their listener(s) shrug or laugh it off and agree they'd been to Kersey.

Any confirmation of having reported strangeness at the time (October 1957) wouldn't prove a time slip had occurred, but it would solidify the claim something struck them as odd back then.
 
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