In Liverpool in 1996, a journalist deliberately walked every day from the university to the city center because he wanted to experience the infamous “Bold Street Time Slip”.
A handful of people claim to have walked down this gently sloping street only to be suddenly transported back to the 1950s.
The asphalt beneath their feet becomes pavement, sneakers and jeans are replaced by vintage clothing, and storefronts become outdated.
This is one of the most famous legends about time travel, not least because so many people claim to have experienced it.
But as the extraordinary letters received from DailyMail readers show, it seems that time slips can happen anywhere and at any time. After reader Jeanette Kelly wrote a few weeks ago describing a time slip she experienced decades ago, when a suburban London street suddenly turned into a forest, the paper was inundated with readers who they shared their own all too similar experiences.
So what really happens when, in the blink of an eye, you find yourself no longer in the same decade or even the same century? As a psychologist specializing in the paranormal – and someone who has spent more than three decades studying the subject – Ciaran O`Keeffe has a few theories that might help decipher the chilling tales detailed in these pages.
The archetype of time travel is when an individual perceives that a “slipped” in another time period — essentially like involuntary time travel.
He proposed four possible theories, all anchored in scientific research. His first explanation is based on how fragile human perception really is.
Half a century of research in the field of the “psychology of perception” demonstrates that perception is profoundly affected by factors such as fatigue, hunger, fear, emotion – and even alcohol and prescription drugs.
Could the time slips simply be hallucinations caused by these factors?
We all know that when you are extremely tired, even sleep deprived, it becomes difficult to focus, listen, measure distances or recognize faces and places. Perhaps time slips are exaggerated examples of the same sensation. Remember that our perception is easily distorted – and that we should never fully trust it.
My second theory is that time lapses are caused by cognitive errors such as confirmation bias. In other words, when the brain convinces itself of what it wants to believe.
If you're walking down the street, you “see” a lady in period clothes, and maybe you subconsciously want to think you're in a time slip, the brain is very good at filling in this picture for you.
That first visual stimulus—in this case, the lady in period clothing—is what we call the “anchor” upon which the larger illusion is built.
The third theory concerns “altered states of consciousness” (ASC). They usually occur naturally just as you are falling asleep or waking up – when you are both dreaming and semi-conscious. The brain can quickly become confused and confuse dreams with reality.
It might not apply while you're walking down the street, but if you're lying in bed, in that liminal moment between waking and sleeping, you can see your dreams unfold before you in the form of hallucinations.
This is not exclusive to sleep either, but can also happen when doing mundane tasks like driving or ironing. When the mind begins to daydream, imagination can mix with reality.
Finally, the time slips could be explained by electromagnetic fields. Research by Canadian academics shows that such energy fields can produce hallucinations by playing with signals in the brain.
Bold Street in Liverpool happens to be right above the center of the city's tube network. Maybe the electronic signals from the railway are hallucinating the people walking on top of it?
Some people will tell you that all my theories are wrong and insist that the time slips are proof of time travel. If you've seen Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film Interstellar – or even if you know Einstein – you know that time isn't necessarily linear… and that jumping between time periods can be achieved if we can step out of our three-dimensional experience.
Some say that humanity is nowhere close to truly understanding the secrets of the universe, the power of the mind, or the nature of our existence.
And furthermore, I'm sure no rational explanation will suffice for someone who has experienced the terrifying sensation of slipping back in time.
