• 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)

It's really a matter of detail. Would a witness who reported a time slip in a city centre, as at Liverpool, impress you if someone could find CCTV footage showing him vanishing from view at the location he or she specified? Or would there be some artifact that he could bring back from another time? Or a report from the time visited describing a man appearing and disappearing, maybe also on CCTV? Or independent testimony from other witnesses (something that comes close in two cases known to me)?

I'd certainly find it interesting Carl, and if you do have instances like these I'd certainly be very keen to hear about them.
 
... Going back to a point discussed earlier, whether the alleged greenish colouration of the ox carcasses could be due to the green window glass -- I wonder whether any of the houses in the village would have had the original green glass windows in the 1950s? It seems unlikely, as I would have imagined that when better glass had been developed, most people would have switched to that.

I've wondered that myself. The problem is that Kersey contained a lot of buildings that were centuries old, and some may have still had glass of who-knows-what vintage as of 1957.

Owing to the evidence that Kersey was a backwater until the recent decades' gentrification / upgrading got rolling in the postwar era, my best guess is that there were specimens of very old glass still in place as of 1957.

One must also bear in mind that the residents back then were generally of limited or modest means, and I wouldn't have expected them to be upgrading their dwellings (at least not the ones who owned their dwellings) with each new innovation or fashion.

Even back in 1957, the key feature of Kersey was how little it had changed.

That's what attracted all the newcomers who've been changing it ever since ... :roll:
 
A minor point, if the detail of the frost is accurate, there's a chance that this points to the date being the 20th. Met office reports indicate a widespread frost on that date, obviously this isn't exactly concrete. Also noted there is that in that October average temperatures were both above and below the expected averages, particularly in suthern England.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/mohippo/pdf/n/oct1957.pdf
 
One must also bear in mind that the residents back then were generally of limited or modest means, and I wouldn't have expected them to be upgrading their dwellings (at least not the ones who owned their dwellings) with each new innovation or fashion.

Although in one source, I think it's a description of it for its listed building status, the 'shop' extension is listed as 19th C. So they may well have altered it.

Another point though is that what makes the sight of hanging carcasses a butcher's shop. Given there's some suggestion (can't find the link) that many of the buildings may have been abandoned isn't it possible that meat may have hung there for storage.

Although the idea of using 30 year old testimony for fine detail is something I find completely inexplicable.
 
I'd certainly find it interesting Carl, and if you do have instances like these I'd certainly be very keen to hear about them.
I have mentioned both on other threads here, and here are brief summaries:

Oklahoma City, Spring 2008: A young man posting on ATS as Jedite was walking home from his job at Walmart at 1am when an elderly couple offered him a lift. They were returning from an American football match, and had on a radio replay of a 1997 game featuring the local team. They dropped him off at his home. A few days later, he met the couple in town, but they seemed a lot older -- and they claimed he hadn't aged at all since they met in 1997.

At a later date he met the couple at Walmart and they talked about it. The husband seemed uninterested but his wife had the opinion that had he carried on walking that night, something terrible might have happened to him, and this had been God's way of keeping him safe.

I contacted him later on ATS and he said he would let me know if he met the couple again. I asked if he could get a written statement from them -- but no luck so far.

Leeds, 1998: Two sisters on their way to work, one posting as Mandy on a now defunct site, Timeslip8888, were entering a newsagents shop on Roundhay Road. Mandy, following her sister, noticed that she was about to collide with a woman looking at a magazine display next to the doorway and called a warning. Her sister passed through the woman by the door, who faded away. The shop was now cold and dark, with nobody there. After a short period they went out again. Then they opened the door again, and now the shop was brightly lit and full of customers. In confusion, they went to the counter to get some cigarettes, only for the shop assistant to back away from them in terror. She handed them their cigarettes and they left.

I managed after several years to contact "Mandy," whose sister had since died. She confirmed the story, and gave me sufficient info to identify the shop, Taheris newsagents. I sent a note to the current shop asking if they could possibly pass a note on to Mr Taheris, whose wife, Mandy thinks, may have been the shop assistant who reacted to them so badly. Mandy agreed that the shop assistant must have seen her sister enter the shop, pass through the customer, and then vanish -- hence her reaction when the two sisters appeared again and approached her. Clearly, if we could contact that lady, that would be independent confirmation of the slip. Oddly enough, as in the Jedite case, the sisters had felt that the slip had the function of saving them from a possible tragedy connected in some way with the bus stop nearby.

Now Mandy has ceased responding, and I fear the worst! But maybe someone resident in Leeds could do some checking into the Taheris and help to get the lady's story. (Nobody else contacted me after the local paper ran my appeal for information on the case.)

I also hope that researchers in Liverpool might start some serious checking into the many cases reported there. Some of the slips describe detailed interactions with people in the past and it is not impossible that we might identify and locate some of these in the hope that they can recall what happened.

With the increasing numbers of CCTV cameras on public streets it is also possible that some slips might be captured on video -- although checking video footage, such as might have survived, would be a huge job.
 
Carl, I really do appreciate you taking the time to type that, so thank you.

Let me put my position into context. I research the historical record of the thylacine, now this animal has been extinct since 1936, and I have very good reason to be very confident of this. But, I frequently, really very frequently, hear from, or about people who claim to have seen one. Most are nonsense and obviously so, some are really shocking though because they really do seem to describe a genuine encounter with this animal. You couldn't ask for a better witness in one case, and I will always believe that he saw a thylacine, but not that there was one there.

Just recently I watched a very long standing question answered, this involved seemingly undeniable photographic evidence, and believe me when I say it convinced people from the hardest to convince demographic you could want, or at least who you'd think that would be. But it was a hoax, and the most obvious explanation turned out to be the right one. Despite expert opinion to the contrary. How this hoax came to be, how the hoaxer ever got his hands on the photos, and how they found their way into the hands of the mark that passed them on, and how the person he passed them on to missed the joke is something that seems so implausible to happen you'd just about dismiss it. Yet it's now been proved 100% that this is what happened.

And it's not just that people lie to me all the time, they literally change their story every time they repeat it. One lady is relentless in this, she will not stop. I know she's lying, I assume she knows that I do, yet still she carries on.

Add to that I have the reliable sources from the historical era. And that's where the real difficulty starts. The lies, the inaccuracies, the errors, you wouldn't believe.

So this is why I have to say that I can't be persuaded by eye witness testimony alone. Both our subject matters attract flakes, and the genuine ones are just as untrustworthy as far as detail is concerned. So believe me when I say, I really do appreciate you writing that and I'm not trying to be confrontational or dismissive, but to me it's still eye witness testimony only. And are, so far as the examples above go, uncorroborated.

I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm saying that there's not enough there to form an opinion about.
 
Carl, I really do appreciate you taking the time to type that, so thank you.

Let me put my position into context. I research the historical record of the thylacine, now this animal has been extinct since 1936, and I have very good reason to be very confident of this. But, I frequently, really very frequently, hear from, or about people who claim to have seen one. Most are nonsense and obviously so, some are really shocking though because they really do seem to describe a genuine encounter with this animal. You couldn't ask for a better witness in one case, and I will always believe that he saw a thylacine, but not that there was one there.

Just recently I watched a very long standing question answered, this involved seemingly undeniable photographic evidence, and believe me when I say it convinced people from the hardest to convince demographic you could want, or at least who you'd think that would be. But it was a hoax, and the most obvious explanation turned out to be the right one. Despite expert opinion to the contrary. How this hoax came to be, how the hoaxer ever got his hands on the photos, and how they found their way into the hands of the mark that passed them on, and how the person he passed them on to missed the joke is something that seems so implausible to happen you'd just about dismiss it. Yet it's now been proved 100% that this is what happened.

And it's not just that people lie to me all the time, they literally change their story every time they repeat it. One lady is relentless in this, she will not stop. I know she's lying, I assume she knows that I do, yet still she carries on.

Add to that I have the reliable sources from the historical era. And that's where the real difficulty starts. The lies, the inaccuracies, the errors, you wouldn't believe.

So this is why I have to say that I can't be persuaded by eye witness testimony alone. Both our subject matters attract flakes, and the genuine ones are just as untrustworthy as far as detail is concerned. So believe me when I say, I really do appreciate you writing that and I'm not trying to be confrontational or dismissive, but to me it's still eye witness testimony only. And are, so far as the examples above go, uncorroborated.

I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm saying that there's not enough there to form an opinion about.
To be honest, I don't recall ever hearing of the thylacine, and I am amazed that you spend your time assessing all these strange hoaxes and alleged sightings of it! It explains why you have such a suspicious attitude towards eye witness testimony.

I don't believe what witnesses say automatically, but I do look for certain clues and indications that might point to deceit or fakery. In some areas of research, e.g. UFOs and especially alleged abductions, witnesses may be lying, or fantasising, or even the victims of mind control experiments or applications. That is a horribly complex and convoluted area. Time slips, at this point in time, are not in the same category. As far as the mass media are concerned, time slips don't exist, and for accounts to make it into the newspapers or TV news is something almost unknown. Very few cases even make it as far as magazines or You Tube, and these a tiny minority of the cases. There is very little incentive for people to hoax time slips. In fact, public awareness of time slips, a century or more since the Versailles case, is I suspect, still in single percentage figures. This means that the great majority of potential witnesses are unaware of the phenomenon and that what they are experiencing is not some unique, bizarre oddity, but a phenomenon that has some distinctive features and a quality of repeatability. Moreover, the handful of cases that are mentioned on some sites, or on You Tube, are only a small and often unrepresentative sample.

This is not a bad thing insofar that persons who do feel inclined to claim to be time slip witnesses often include in their stories some of the elements in those cases, elements that I now consider to be quite rare (e.g. strong subjective feelings of certain kinds), and this raises a red flag in those instances. I'm sure you must do your thylacine research in similar fashion.

Obviously if the real name of a witness is supplied, this gives a way of checking on the basic reliability of a 2nd hand report. Usually on the net, people use aliases or user names, and this makes things tougher.

Obviously the ideal is to make personal contact, and if I can do that and ask direct questions (whether by email, phone, or face to face) I can usually tell if people are being truthful or the reverse. In the Rougham study it was interesting to me that some of the witnesses really felt it was important to tell their stories, even when this impacted badly on their personal lives, and when there were certainly no obvious advantages to be taken in this regard. On the net, many seem relieved, often amazed, that other people have experienced something similar. Some seem almost pathetically grateful that someone is at last taking them seriously.

As for "reliable sources" from history, I have learned to take such sources with a pinch of salt. Often history is not what happened, not even what some people think important, but what someone wants other people to believe. I got a bit of stick from some people for referring, for example, to various German wartime experiments that could bear on time slips. There seems almost to be a conspiracy to deny that major advances were made by Nazi researchers (e.g. the atom bomb research). More recently we have a lot of evidence put forward that Hitler escaped from Berlin in the closing stages of the war, faking his own death, and that the scenario put forward by Hugh Trevor Roper (based upon interviews with Hitler's closest staff) was sheer disinformation. But he made a best selling book out of it, and it has now become part of accepted history.

As far as time slips go, I don't have strong beliefs about them -- I have a working hypothesis that some of them (my Type 4s) could be physical time travel, but if some alternative answer comes up I shall look at that.
 
... Another point though is that what makes the sight of hanging carcasses a butcher's shop. Given there's some suggestion (can't find the link) that many of the buildings may have been abandoned isn't it possible that meat may have hung there for storage. ...

I've been wondering about the carcasses sighting, too. Some of the specific points (other than the greenish glass / greenish reported pallor issue already mentioned) include:

- First and foremost, how certain is it that these 3 boys were sufficiently familiar with a hanging beef carcass to positively ID one? I don't buy the assumption that the two boys from rural backgrounds (Laing and Crowley) necessarily had any experience with such things. If anything, I'd have guessed the 'townie' (Baker) might have been more likely to have seen a butchered beef carcass.

- From which follows ... I can't help but wonder if the boys saw butchered pig carcasses, which could well have been observed in the village's shop(s) that handled pork and poultry.

- Even further out on the limb ... If it was a run-down building and the observed items weren't close to the windows, could the boys have mistaken some other objects as hanging beef carcasses?

- Could the oddly colored and presumably rotten meat seen that day have actually been hams that had been prepped (smeared with spices, etc.) and left hanging to cure? Ham preparation was known to have been performed in Kersey, and late October would be a reasonable timeframe for that typically seasonal exercise.

I hadn't considered the 'simply transient storage' angle, but I suppose it's possible. The primary store in Kersey (Stiff's) operated a full butcher shop (with beef) a very few miles away in Hadleigh. It's conceivable Stiff's in Kersey brought over full beef carcasses from their Hadleigh operation and chopped them up locally for retail sales.

I suppose it's also conceivable that Stiff's might have pre-positioned a few entire carcasses locally in preparation for handling a special order or some special occasion.

My understanding from available reminiscences, etc., is that the Stiffs owned a number of the smaller buildings in the offset 'The Green' area of the village, just off the main street / lane. My point is that the operators of the main grocery source controlled a number of other buildings they could have used for transient storage.
 
To be honest, I don't recall ever hearing of the thylacine, and I am amazed that you spend your time assessing all these strange hoaxes and alleged sightings of it! It explains why you have such a suspicious attitude towards eye witness testimony.

Just to clarify, I don't deliberately get involved in the area of modern sightings, it's just something that you come across constantly in that subject, an intrusive annoyance. I only deal with the kills or captures of animals I've got a purchase date for. It's a good filter. The hoax would have been agame changer, so wasn't really something you could ignore, plus it was a good lesson in relying on expert input.

Anyway, I certainly do wish you good luck in your research, I've no doubt that it may produce some interesting results.
 
I've been wondering about the carcasses sighting, too. Some of the specific points (other than the greenish glass / greenish reported pallor issue already mentioned) include:

- First and foremost, how certain is it that these 3 boys were sufficiently familiar with a hanging beef carcass to positively ID one? I don't buy the assumption that the two boys from rural backgrounds (Laing and Crowley) necessarily had any experience with such things. If anything, I'd have guessed the 'townie' (Baker) might have been more likely to have seen a butchered beef carcass.

- From which follows ... I can't help but wonder if the boys saw butchered pig carcasses, which could well have been observed in the village's shop(s) that handled pork and poultry.

- Even further out on the limb ... If it was a run-down building and the observed items weren't close to the windows, could the boys have mistaken some other objects as hanging beef carcasses?

- Could the oddly colored and presumably rotten meat seen that day have actually been hams that had been prepped (smeared with spices, etc.) and left hanging to cure? Ham preparation was known to have been performed in Kersey, and late October would be a reasonable timeframe for that typically seasonal exercise.

I hadn't considered the 'simply transient storage' angle, but I suppose it's possible. The primary store in Kersey (Stiff's) operated a full butcher shop (with beef) a very few miles away in Hadleigh. It's conceivable Stiff's in Kersey brought over full beef carcasses from their Hadleigh operation and chopped them up locally for retail sales.

I suppose it's also conceivable that Stiff's might have pre-positioned a few entire carcasses locally in preparation for handling a special order or some special occasion.

My understanding from available reminiscences, etc., is that the Stiffs owned a number of the smaller buildings in the offset 'The Green' area of the village, just off the main street / lane. My point is that the operators of the main grocery source controlled a number of other buildings they could have used for transient storage.
My impression is that Laing was the most country-aware of the three, and here are some possibly relevant quotes from his testimony:

... I was acutely aware of the silence, perhaps more so than the others. Whenever I'm in the countryside, I'm always on the lookout for birds and animals, being a keen birdwatcher, but there were no calls from either a rook or a blackbird. Nothing, not even a dog to check us out. We were looking for people to greet and give information but there were none. This section of the lane was tree-lined, with greenish-tinged light, but there were feww houses. [They reached the stream.] We squatted or sat here for about ten minutes, drank from the stream and looked around. There was no sign of a church. I would certainly have seen it as I had a field of observation of 360deg. Silent ducks sat beside the stream... a few yards from the little bridge.. there was a butcher's shop, the only commercial building we saw in the village. All three members of the party saw it. There were no tables or counters, just two or three whole oxen carcasses which had been skinned and in places were quite green with age. There was a green painted door and windows with smallish glass panes, one at the front and one at the side, rather dirty looking. I remember that as we three looked through that window in disbelief at the streaked and mouldy green carcasses I had a strong feeling of unreality, the dirty room, cobwebs etc., and there was one comment I do recall when someone (it may have been me) said, "What a waste." The general feeling was certainly one of disbelief and unreality. The green sheen on the carcasses was almost an iridescent green, perhaps a trick of the light, as it was a brilliant sunny day in 1957.... it could not have been... a phantom building as we would have been leaning against the window frame as we peered in. (THey had) all the appearance of theatrical props but of course they were not. Who would believe in 1957 that the health authorities would allow such conditions... There was certainly no smell, and on a still day one might think strong smells might issue from under the door. The window was closed, and to all appearances the owner had shut up shop weeks before, leaving the carcasses to rot.

... I am a Highlander, grew up in the wilds of Perthshire, very close to the land. I have always lived close to nature and have seen quiet days, but never a still quiet such as at Kersey. I would have to notice the strange silence. I wouldn't miss the sounds of nature; my whole being was programmed to them. I was a very fine poacher... as a boy and one had to be aware of sounds and the presence of people around...

So it seems that Laing was very aware of country life and if he felt something wrong about Kersey it was perhaps with good reason. I'm sure he could have easily distinguished between ox carcasses and hams or other meats, anyway.
 
- First and foremost, how certain is it that these 3 boys were sufficiently familiar with a hanging beef carcass to positively ID one? I don't buy the assumption that the two boys from rural backgrounds (Laing and Crowley) necessarily had any experience with such things. If anything, I'd have guessed the 'townie' (Baker) might have been more likely to have seen a butchered beef carcass.

This too has occured to me. I can't say how familiar either background would be with hanging carcasses but I'm not convinced they'd accurately recall which species it was they saw hanging. In fact I'm very doubtful they would.

- From which follows ... I can't help but wonder if the boys saw butchered pig carcasses, which could well have been observed in the village's shop(s) that handled pork and poultry.

- Even further out on the limb ... If it was a run-down building and the observed items weren't close to the windows, could the boys have mistaken some other objects as hanging beef carcasses?

- Could the oddly colored and presumably rotten meat seen that day have actually been hams that had been prepped (smeared with spices, etc.) and left hanging to cure? Ham preparation was known to have been performed in Kersey, and late October would be a reasonable timeframe for that typically seasonal exercise.

They could have been, or they could have been beef, either way a greenish discolouration on the surface wouldn't have been strange. Beef is hung for weeks to mature, the surface will discolour. That the men recall, or imagine they recall, this as a strange detail then it does suggest, as per your point above, that they weren't necessarily familiar with butchery and meat storage.

I hadn't considered the 'simply transient storage' angle, but I suppose it's possible. The primary store in Kersey (Stiff's) operated a full butcher shop (with beef) a very few miles away in Hadleigh. It's conceivable Stiff's in Kersey brought over full beef carcasses from their Hadleigh operation and chopped them up locally for retail sales.

I suppose it's also conceivable that Stiff's might have pre-positioned a few entire carcasses locally in preparation for handling a special order or some special occasion.

My understanding from available reminiscences, etc., is that the Stiffs owned a number of the smaller buildings in the offset 'The Green' area of the village, just off the main street / lane. My point is that the operators of the main grocery source controlled a number of other buildings they could have used for transient storage.

I can't find the link to the recollections of the village, could you post one? Am I right in reading the above as Stiff's owned other property around Kersey? If so using some of them as storage, especially as they had a few shops sounds more plausible, or at least reasonable. But again, I've got to add the caveat that they we're looking at a 30 year old recollecyion and the details ardn't reliable. Still though, do we actuslly know whether the supposed site of the phantom butcher's shop, the Bridge House, was even occupied in 1957, or if it was, would the owner have had any reason to hang meat in their house?
 
Is there an element of nominative determinsim at work here in a butcher's called 'Stiff's'?
 
... I can't find the link to the recollections of the village, could you post one?

Sorry for the delay - I somehow missed the fact you'd posted these questions ...

There's a collection of Kersey memories in the book Kersey within Living Memory, by Anne Maltby. The book's contents can be accessed on this blog:

https://kerseymemories.wordpress.com

(I'm not sure whether the blog version contains the entire contents of the published book.)

I thought this set of village reminiscences (and / or others) had been cited earlier in this thread, but I can't seem to locate proof of that.

I've also seen villager / resident recollections posted online in forums, but I didn't record their locations.
 
Am I right in reading the above as Stiff's owned other property around Kersey? If so using some of them as storage, especially as they had a few shops sounds more plausible, or at least reasonable.

Yes - the Stiff family owned and / or managed multiple properties in the village besides their store. As I understand it, their local pork / poultry operations were based in one or more buildings in the area known as 'The Green' (the side lanes branching westward off the main street in the village center).

I suspect some of the recollections (e.g., the unpaved lane; the decrepit buildings) resulted from the boys' observations within The Green rather than the main street.

This area also abuts the fields to the west, so it's a reasonable candidate location for their exit point (if one focuses on the claim they exited into the fields in that direction).
 
Still though, do we actuslly know whether the supposed site of the phantom butcher's shop, the Bridge House, was even occupied in 1957, or if it was, would the owner have had any reason to hang meat in their house?

As far as I can tell, the answer is 'No' on both issues.

Similarly, I can't find any account that indicates whether the hanging meat sighting involved the main Bridge House (nearest the stream) or the later addition on its north end that at least sometimes served as a separate shop. It was this addition that provided a bay window on the front.

There's also an alley / walkway along the Bridge House's north side with at least two windows through which a pedestrian could peer into that section's 'back room(s)'.
 
To take the discussion in a slightly different direction: On p.28 MacKenzie's book contains the following (slightly abridged) comment:

"On my first visit to Bridge House.. Mrs Finch and Miss Gladys King said there was a deeply unhappy feeling in the village marked by the fact that there had been 14 suicides there in the last 60 years."

Early on in my Rougham research Phil Sage told me that the suicide rate in Rougham was unusually high. At that time, before I had got a copy of MacKenzie, I didn't see any significance in this, maybe putting it down to the power lines crossing the area (which do have an effect on suicides).

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, official statistics don't break suicide figures down by town or village, so it would be very difficult to confirm these assertions or to compare them with national averages.
 
The church dominates all the photos that include it, which suggests that if the witnesses couldn't see it when they visited, they definitely weren't in 1957!
Or that the two witnesses who gave an account did not notice it. I still fail to see any corroboration from Baker at all; he might have seen the church, which the other two missed.
MacKenzie argues that since the building of the tower was delayed by the Black Death in 1349, with the work only reaching between 8 and 15ft high, and work was not restarted until the 15th C and completed in 1481, then the period visited was some time early in the 15th C -- before that time, window glass with a green hue (as seen by the witnesses) was not available. After that time, the church tower would have been visible to them.
Domestic window glass was very, very rare in the early 15th century, so these two apparently 'observant' witnesses should have observed that most of the cottages and hovels had no window glass at all - most of the windows would have held horn plates or cloth screens, which were commonplace even in large houses at that time. If there was a time slip, they probably went back to some period when window glass was not unusual, but the church was screened by trees. We have no evidence that the church has ever been screened by trees, of course.
 
Or that the two witnesses who gave an account did not notice it. I still fail to see any corroboration from Baker at all; he might have seen the church, which the other two missed.

Domestic window glass was very, very rare in the early 15th century, so these two apparently 'observant' witnesses should have observed that most of the cottages and hovels had no window glass at all - most of the windows would have held horn plates or cloth screens, which were commonplace even in large houses at that time. If there was a time slip, they probably went back to some period when window glass was not unusual, but the church was screened by trees. We have no evidence that the church has ever been screened by trees, of course.
I think you only have to look at some of the photos of Kersey to conclude that anyone present in the area of the stream and bridge would have found it impossible to miss the church tower -- it dominates the view. Baker seems to have been a rather unobservant individual, so whether he did, or would have, seen the church while the others didn't, is impossible to say. There seems to be no clear agreement upon whether the majority of houses would or would not have had window glass in the period ostensibly visited, nor what trees would have been present in which location.
 
There seems to be no clear agreement upon whether the majority of houses would or would not have had window glass in the period ostensibly visited, nor what trees would have been present in which location.
It's clear enough to me - most or all of these houses would not have had glass in the early 15th century, so if they went back in time, they did not go to that period.
 
Sorry for the delay - I somehow missed the fact you'd posted these questions ...

There's a collection of Kersey memories in the book Kersey within Living Memory, by Anne Maltby. The book's contents can be accessed on this blog:

https://kerseymemories.wordpress.com

(I'm not sure whether the blog version contains the entire contents of the published book.)

I thought this set of village reminiscences (and / or others) had been cited earlier in this thread, but I can't seem to locate proof of that.

I've also seen villager / resident recollections posted online in forums, but I didn't record their locations.
Back on post 164 on page 6 of this thread.
Worth a read, it paints a vivid picture of how decrepit Kersey was and hence why the boys could think it odd.
 
I've written a few tme travel stories over the years, including one based loosely on this case. One thing people often miss is how different the deep past was. It is fairly plausible for someone to slip back to Victorian times and to only notice a few differences-. the village in 1857 would be very similar to the village in 1957. To be honest there would be much more difference between 1957 and 2018, since the ownership and demographic of these highly desirable properties has changed considerably in the intervening years. My granduncle lived in a cottage in Suffolk in 1957, and the photo I have of him at that time, standing at the door of his cottage, could easily have been taken in 1857.

But in 1457 the village would have looked completely different. The big 16th/17th century houses wouldn't be there, the hovels would have shutters instead of windows, while the larger houses would have strips of horn, oiled muslin or tiny panes of nearly opaque glass. In 1457 chimney technology was almost completely absent- most houses had a smoke hole and an open hearth.

--------------------
But let's consider the consequences if timeslips were possible - time travel would be the most significant capability an advanced civilisation could possess. If timeslips could be understood and controlled, then a civilisation or faction could go back in time and defeat their enemies by preventing them from existing in the first place. And of course two or more factions might wage a backwards conflict in time, repeatedly eliminating each other from the universe by going ever further backwards. Such a conflict would cause the universe to become a multi-threaded chaos of conflicting intentions, as the antagonists reach back closer and closer to the Big Bang.

Weaponisation of these apparently inconsequential and mildly amusing anomalies could be far more dangerous than any other phenomenon, and allow the destruction of countless potential histories and their inhabitants.
 
If the meat had reached the stage of turning green then one would suspected that the area would be infested with flies. Also if it was sides of beef than why would anyone who had removed all the other things from the building leave them behind ? Meat was valuable back then.

INT21


Wasn't going to dip my toe in this thread put here goes.

https://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/high-meat-gone-green/

So it's very possible that hung meat was still used even if it had turned green. Having grown up in a place where pheasants and rabbits was hung up for days I can quite understand people's revulsion at seeing it if they're not used to it.

Also this is 1957 just 3 years after total rationing had stopped and things like cheese was still hard to get.

I'm don't think folk would have just starting dumping meat because it looked a bit shitty if they felt they could still use it.

Also wasn't it Suffolk? That is one weird county by all accounts.
 
So it's very possible that hung meat was still used even if it had turned green. Having grown up in a place where pheasants and rabbits was hung up for days I can quite understand people's revulsion at seeing it if they're not used to it.

A few years ago I bought a brace of pheasants from Fenwick's Food Hall in Newcastle for Christmas dinner. I asked the man on the counter if they would still be alright to eat on Christmas day and he replied that they would taste even better on New Years day.
On Christmas morning I had a really bad hangover and had to prepare lunch. When I unwrapped them, they absolutely stunk and were tinged with blue and green patches. It was a tricky morning but I pulled it off and they were delicious.


(I cut the crown off each bird, removed the innards and then chopped the back part up. These I browned before adding wine, stock, butter and flour to create a sauce. The crowns themselves were browned in another pan before going in the oven. Served with pureed parsnips, sprouts fried with lardons and roast potatoes.)
 
--------------------
But let's consider the consequences if timeslips were possible - time travel would be the most significant capability an advanced civilisation could possess. If timeslips could be understood and controlled, then a civilisation or faction could go back in time and defeat their enemies by preventing them from existing in the first place. And of course two or more factions might wage a backwards conflict in time, repeatedly eliminating each other from the universe by going ever further backwards. Such a conflict would cause the universe to become a multi-threaded chaos of conflicting intentions, as the antagonists reach back closer and closer to the Big Bang.

Weaponisation of these apparently inconsequential and mildly amusing anomalies could be far more dangerous than any other phenomenon, and allow the destruction of countless potential histories and their inhabitants.

Such is the premise of Simon Hawke's Time Wars Series which was being published from the, miid-Eighties to the early Nineties. The Time Commandos, under the guidance of the The Temporal Intelligence Agency get involved in all kinds of time travelling shenanigans involving both real and fictionalised hoistorical events.

The one I've got is `The Argonaut Affair` (Headline, 1987) which reworks the Jason and the Argonaut myth. It's rather good in terms of ideas content, but the writing is rather too basic to really draw me in.
 
I've been interested in this, and other, time-slip cases for a long time. It's good to hear others' points of view on it all. With this one, I do wonder how they didn't notice The Bell Inn if it was built around 1379? Was it originally used as something other than an inn/pub?
 
I've been interested in this, and other, time-slip cases for a long time. It's good to hear others' points of view on it all. With this one, I do wonder how they didn't notice The Bell Inn if it was built around 1379? Was it originally used as something other than an inn/pub?
Could be. It is not uncommon for inns to change their function over the centuries. I believe the oldest existing inn in continuous use is Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans.
 
fascinating , simply fascinating . time - slips are without a doubt my FAVORITE paranormal subject :twothumbs:
Mine too, at least the only subject I have seriously researched. But I increasingly think that time slips are a special case of the more general glitch phenomenon. That seems to be the only way of explaining them, at least in outline.
 
Back
Top