Vanishing houses and time slips

a reply to: AdAstra

Yes, I've read a couple of Lethbridge's books, but they are getting harder to find now. Wilson's summary of his findings is a good introduction though.

a reply to: lostgirl

Thanks for your appreciation. Several people have suggested I make a book out of it, but as it stands it's only about a third of a decent book length, and I wouldn't want to pad it out. It is also such a specialised area that I doubt any mainstream publisher would go for it. What I have been thinking of is a catalogue of time slips, but as it looks that it would run to well over 300 cases, I don't know whether I will manage it.

Your friend's experience is certainly a pointer to the dimensional/parallel universe/matrix type of phenomenon,and I can't recall another exactly like it. Obviously sooner or later someone will have to start researching this more general phenomenon seriously. Unfortunately the most vocal proponents of the virtual reality/matrix approach are more concerned with pushing their own theories than doing the basic work.

Excellent work (so far- still reading the PDF)... fascinating subject and I'm glad you are approaching it as rationally as is likely possible with our current knowledge.

A friend had an experience in Westchester NY, USA... near Sleepy Hollow and the Queen's old property, the Macy Mansion, which also has a "ghost dog" that is (or was) well known in the area and a constant phenomena... kids were frequently "chased" from the Macy property by the sounds of a large, unfriendly, invisible dog... which could also be heard baying sometimes and would part the grass as if physical.

My friend's tale, however, involves a disappearing house, or shack, really, seemingly from the 1600's, that would appear sometimes in the woods near the Macy Mansion in the 1970's. There were people in it, dressed accordingly and who once threatened the kids (she was there with friends) with a blunderbuss. She reported that the people seemed startled to see the them (the modern kids).

The shack would always be gone when they returned in a few days... only to reappear a few months or years later... unfortunately I don't have exact dates or times.

So... good work. I, personally, have no clue as to the causes of this phenomena, but many half-arsed guesses. And I'd think Fortean Times would be happy to publish this!

a reply to: CarlGrove

I have had a problem with buildings showing up, not disappearing. For a while we would take usual routes that we took most days or at least a few times a week, and there is some old building that is weathered, maybe sagging and has obviously been there for ages, except that it wasn't there yesterday. This happened six times within about a three weeks last year. I would say something to my husband and he would insist whatever building it was had always been there or that I had probably just noticed it. I am pretty observant and very sensitive to changes in my usual environment. All of these buildings are still there and I won't get within yards of them. There is no bad vibe or anything per se, it just weirds me out that they suddenly showed up. Like I shifted through to a slightly different version of the reality that I knew.

Maybe this isn't what you are talking about though. This is an interesting thread, but I am mostly just confused. I must say that for the most part I am just going "What in the heck are you people talking about?!" I guess I'm out of this metaphysical loop.

a reply to: Baddogma

Thanks for the comments and the very interesting information. The disappearing shack sounds like a genuine Type 4, if the witnesses were actually threatened like that. Just as well the people didn't shoot. I only know of one case where a witness received a physical injury during a time slip, and that was minor. But you never know...

a reply to: CarlGrove

I second that you make it into a book, with some of the other cases additionally. If you know of 300 cases, you could make it a few books. Your ability to detail every aspect is commendable. Specialized? Any non-fiction paranormal would draw interest.

a reply to: redhorse

Thanks for the information regarding your appearing buildings. It does sound like what people now call a dimensional slip, or change in your timeline, or glitch in the matrix. I didn't know anything about these ideas until I started this research, but they do tie in the idea of virtual reality, which is really a computer age way of saying that the world that we detect with our senses is a clever illusion, which is a very ancient concept.

Going back to some previous posts where Tom Lethbridge's name came up, here is a quote from him which says the same sort of thing in pre-PC jargon:

..."Everything is really in the mind. Another part of you looks at a series of events in the same way that we seem to look at a television picture... I have realised long ago that life is not so serious as people believe it to be. I think it may be in reality an extremely well organised film from which it is hoped by the producer that you will extract some benefit." (The Power of the Pendulum, 1976)

a reply to: UnBreakable

Maybe next year when I finally retire, if I still have the energy!

a reply to: CarlGrove

I agree ...

her report is valid and unchanging over the few decades I've known her, and her childhood in that area (specifically the Briarcliff Manor subdivision in Westchester) was relatively full of high strangeness... making the geographic/physics relational aspect a fairly good guess.

Seemingly intelligently controlled red orbs, missing time-displacement episodes... the usual... of which the 'sometimes shack' (and the ghost dog) was just the most constant... said it happened at least three times over a five year period ...that they saw, anyway, being in a more remote part of the local woods.

*Oh and I agree with Lethbrige's quote regarding this life as less ...er serious, or 'real'... and hope to keep my sentience (or approximation of it) when the 'film' is over. I enjoyed his book and mind, too.

a reply to: Baddogma

Sounds like an interesting sort of area, I wonder if any energy dowsers have worked there. I'm trying to find out about the energy lines said to be present in Versailles at the moment.

There are a lot of glitch in the matrix type stories all over the net at the moment, and a not uncommon response to having that type of experience is to get the feeling that it's all just a dream, which some people find very disturbing. Like yourself and Lethbridge, I don't feel that way about it (maybe because so much of my early life was like a nightmare!)

originally posted by: UnBreakable
a reply to: CarlGrove

I second that you make it into a book, with some of the other cases additionally. If you know of 300 cases, you could make it a few books. Your ability to detail every aspect is commendable. Specialized? Any non-fiction paranormal would draw interest.

It already IS a book. Just because the author is kind enough to let us have it freely it doesn't mean it isn't a legit book.
Length-wise, it certainly qualifies (it's longer than many books I've read), and it certainly is more substantial than most books on this topic I've read so far.

Yes, it is a book, but I'm still unable to shake off the idea myself that a real book is made of paper rather than a file on a computer!

At least writing it on a word processor you don't have a copy editor breathing down your neck and correcting your English...

a reply to: CarlGrove

I get that. ;-) But the point is, you already have all the material arranged and edited. All you have to do is publish it, perhaps jazzing up the title a little: The Rougham Mirage and other stories. ;-)
Or (we had actually been discussing a good title for your book, enthusiastic as we are about it) you are free to borrow the title from the Rougham entry in our blog - it would make a catchy title - and The Rougham Mirage (or: Mystery) as a subtitle.

Anyway, you already have a book, a fine one, and should have no difficulty in finding a publisher.
Failing that, you can always publish it yourself - and get to keep all the earnings.

Best of luck, Carl.

Excellent work, I'm still reading, but I find it fascinating. Whilst I have been somewhat sceptical on other threads here relating to timeslips etc, particularly when people post ludicrous claims about switching timelines, where people who were dead are suddenly alive, or that they woke up to discover their hair had gotten much longer and they had lost 30 pounds, and treating timeline shifts as if you can jump seamlessly from one life to another, I am still intrigued by the more authentic accounts of strange, un-explainable events.

In fact, I experienced a strange event myself a couple of years ago. I live just yards from the town centre, and as such, often go to the high street to get shopping etc and am very familiar with all of the shops, businesses and layout of the town. One day, I had a few things to get, with one item being a birthday card for one of my nieces, so after having gone to the post office, I decided to go to CardLand as you can pick up very cheap cards in there (yes, I am stingy and think paying £3 for a card is ridiculous)

So I went to cross the road as Cardland was on the opposite side from the post office..but it just wasn't there! I walked up and down the street, thinking "Eh wait a minute, where did CardLand go?" As I had been in the town the day before and the shop had been there, I was really puzzled. I walked quite far along either side of where the shop had been, thinking perhaps I'd had some sort of brain fail and the shop was not actually located where I thought it was, but nope, no sign of CardLand at all. At this point I decided that perhaps the shop had closed, though there were no empty shops on that part of the High Street, but I just resigned myself to walking down the town and going to Clintons card shop, and paying an extortionate amount of money for the card.

A couple of days later I was back in the town and as I walked onto the High Street from the alleyway that leads to my house, there was CardLand...where I had remembered it being, complete with signage about the door and no evidence of it having been shut or anything like that...I was totally weirded out because I knew I had scoured that part of the High Street looking for the shop, and it just was not there at all!

Nothing else had changed though, it wasn't like there was a new shop I didn't recognise, or an empty shop in its place, CardLand was just not there, I thought I was going mad

a reply to: AdAstra

I think I explained to Myosotis that being semi retired, and now in the pension/pension credit/benefit cycle, any earnings I did get from the possible book would be immediately negated and I would have the hassle of filling in even more forms than I do now to get to that stage! So,from a financial viewpoint, not a good idea. It would also be too much of an ego trip, so all in all I'll leave it as it is. I appreciate your thoughts though.

a reply to: destination now

Lovely story, and it could be a time slip -- it all depends whether you could recall what shop must have been in place of the missing Cardland (I agree about spending Clintons' prices on cards--here in Bury we have a Card Factory to go to), and whether it is one that used to be there. Can you mention (1) the name of the town; (2) any idea of a more exact date? (3) Can you recall which shops stand each side of Cardland? (4) A long shot -- any old directories, old pictures of the town, etc.? (5) Friends and neighbours who might know any of the answers? Local historian? Library?

Also,did you notice anything out of the ordinary about the people and activity around e.g. fashions, cars, that might suggest a previous time period?

On the other hand, it could be some kind of dimensional change (glitch in the matrix, parallel universe, or even the dreaded timeline effect), but how a shop could just disappear without disrupting the overall organisation of the street, I can't imagine! I have had a few disappearing objects experiences, but nothing like that.

a reply to: CarlGrove

Thanks for the response Carl, I'll try to answer the questions as best as I can. Firstly, the town is Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland, the town has been established for over 800 years and has a fair bit of history attached to it (William Wallace, Rabbie Burns etc and there are some very old buildings, such as the Tam O Shanter Inn as well as modern additions such as The Kyle Centre which are quite literally on opposite sides of the High Street. My anomaly took place on the Kyle centre side of the road, with the shop in question being a few yards further down from the Kyle Centre.

Here is the Google Street View showing the alleyway that I emerged from (where the white transit van is) and a view along the High Street. You can just about see the blue signage for Card Land, further up the road on the right hand side. I had initially walked along the left hand side of the road to the WH Smith shop, which has a post office and as such, when I came out of there, I would have been almost opposite where Card Land is situated. The other shops are a Thornton's, and Mountain warehouse



Weirdly enough, nothing seemed to be in its place, and it would have looked something like this (Thanks to my wonderful daughter and her photoshop skills)



I'm still not sure exactly when this happened, though, I think that perhaps it was not a card for my niece, but a congratulations card for my daughter for completing the first year of her graphic design course and therefore would have been late May, early June 2013

I didn't notice anything else particularly strange, just that Card land was not there. I was not paying much attention to what else was going on around me, as I was so puzzled by the missing shop. If I was not such a regular user of the High Street, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought and would just have assumed that the shop had changed or whatever, but as I was so used to seeing it, its disappearance was really strange and of course when I went back to the High Street a couple of days later, there it was, back where it had always been!

The event has stayed in my mind ever since and although I have always chalked it down to "one of those things" reading your e-book and this thread made me decide to revisit the event and write it down, so I hope it's useful.

originally posted by: CarlGrove
a reply to: AdAstra

I think I explained to Myosotis that being semi retired, and now in the pension/pension credit/benefit cycle, any earnings I did get from the possible book would be immediately negated and I would have the hassle of filling in even more forms than I do now to get to that stage! So,from a financial viewpoint, not a good idea. It would also be too much of an ego trip, so all in all I'll leave it as it is. I appreciate your thoughts though.

Oh, I didn't know that.
Sorry for having been such a pest.
I do hope you'll continue researching, though. Researchers of the "paranormal" endowed with genuine critical thinking are rare, sad to say.

a reply to: CarlGrove

Thanks for taking the time to write your article and for uploading it. I downloaded it the other day and haven't gotten around to reading it all yet. In one of your posts, I noticed you mentioning a further 300 cases of these 'time-slips' and might have one you aren't aware of.

A man called Dave Sadler was once the leader of the Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association. They are/did operated in the Wirral/Chester area. He did an interview with Canadian film producer and anomalist, Paul Kimball a few years ago. I've uploaded a copy of the interview here because it's no longer available.

In the interview, Sadler mentions going to a church where his daughter ran off to circle the building. He describes how she basically appeared on one side as soon as she'd gone around the corner. In her perspective, nothing happened; in his perspective, she'd somehow covered too much ground in too little time - a time slip?


I seem to recall reading instances of 'time-slips' in an old book by Gurney called Phantasms of the Living Vol1 and Andrew Lang's 'Making of Religion.' Both are available on archive.org as searchable pdfs. The Phantasms book is a dense tome with numerous fascinating accounts and some that are quite chilling and atmospheric.

Quite a long time ago, I wrote about an intriguing 'time-slip' which you have probably already heard of.

a reply to: destination now

Thanks for all the information. From what you say it seems that Cardland's site had itself disappeared and the whole street closed up, concertina-style! I suppose the parallel universe notion and the virtual reality theory are about the only contenders--unless you are, as you initially thought, crazy -- and I can tell from your lucid description that you aren't. Time slip doesn't seem a likelihood. As you know, many of the Liverpool cases involve shops reverting to their ownership of years past, but I don't know of a case of an established shop disappearing like that. (Few cases of shops or garages or houses being seen and never appearing again, but that's a bit different.) I wonder what might have happened if you'd asked someone to direct you to Cardland?

The most important fact is that you were on your own High Street, in totally familiar territory, so there's no way I could "explain" it as a simple mistake. Thanks so much for sharing this experience.

When I very naively thought I would investigate a local mystery involving two or three disappearing house cases, I never guessed I would be coming on evidence that would call into question the nature of reality itself.