A “time slip” is a paranormal experience where a person accidentally travels through time. Generally the person has no idea how the time travel occurred and is not in control of where they go. Unlike “missing time”, a similar experience associated with alien abductions, a time slip can be forward or backward in time. Obviously since time travel is currently thought to be impossible, “time slips” aren’t thought to be real even though there are some pretty convincing individual reports of the phenomena.
For instance, people in Liverpool, England are reporting one particular location they say is a “hot spot” for time slips. In the city center, the Bold street area has been the location where many people have reported accidental time travel. One of the most credible reports comes from an off-duty policeman who was in the area shopping with his wife. Here is that report from the Liverpool Echo:
“One Saturday in July 1996, Frank and his wife Carol visited Liverpool to do some shopping.
At Central Station, the couple split up. Carol went to Dillons Bookshop in Bold Street to purchase a copy of Irvine Welsh’s book, Trainspotting, and Frank went to a record store in Ranelagh Street to look for a CD.
About 20 later he walked up the incline near the Lyceum which leads onto Bold Street, intending to meet up with his wife in the bookshop, when he noticed he had somehow entered a ‘dead spot’ of quietness.
Suddenly, a small boxvan that looked like something out the 1950s sped across his path, beeping its horn as it narrowly missed him. Frank noted that the van had the name ‘Caplan’s’ emblazoned on its side.
Frank crossed the road and saw that Dillons Bookshop was no longer there. In its place stood a store with the name ‘Cripps’ over its two entrances. The policeman was understandably confused.
He looked in the window of Cripps and saw no books on display, but women’s handbags and shoes. The policeman turned around and saw that the people on Bold Street were wearing clothes that would have been in vogue in the Forties and Fifties; the men wore trilbies and long overcoats and the women wore scarves, berets, pillbox and cartwheel hats and most of the ladies also wore gloves.
Then the possibility that he had somehow walked into the Bold Street of 40-odd years ago dawned on the policeman. Frank sighted a girl of about 20, dressed in the clothes of a mid-1990s girl; hipsters and a lime-coloured sleeveless top. The bag she carried had the name Miss Selfridges on it, which really reassured the policeman that he was still somehow partly in 1996. He smiled at the girl as she walked past him and entered Cripps.
As Frank followed her, the whole interior of the building changed in a flash to the interior of Dillons Bookshop. The policeman was back in his own time.
He grabbed the girl by the arm at the entrance of the bookshop and asked her: “Did you see that then?” and the girl calmly said, “Yeah. I thought it was a new shop that had just opened. I was going in to look at the clothes, and now it’s a bookshop.”
The girl just chuckled, shook her head, and walked out again. When Frank told his wife about the incident, she said that she had not noticed anything strange, but Frank was really adamant that he had not hallucinated the episode.
I gave an account of this strange timeslip on the Billy Butler show, and within minutes, people were ringing me and Billy to tell us that in the late 1950s and early 1960s there had been a store called Cripps in the exact location where Dillons (and later Waterstones) Bookshop now stands, and there had also been a firm called Caplan’s in existence around the same time.”
Obviously this story could be made up. People do play hoaxes on the media. But this isn’t the only report of a time slip in the Bold street area. A shoplifter running from a security guard also experienced a time slip in the area and was able to see that it was 1967 by looking at the newspapers for sale at a corner stand. The security guard in that story also remembers the strange event from his perspective, he remembers chasing the shoplifter and seeing him literally disappear into thin air. Another report comes from an Englishman who casually saw someone from another time period while riding his bike in the area:
“I was cycling down a canal, about 9.30am, when I saw a young guy sitting on the lock gate in what looked like Victorian working-class clothes. He was smoking a pipe and staring into the water – he didn’t look up as I went past.”
@reallifeghoststories time slips around the Bold street area, Liverpool #mysterious #timeslip #creepy #paranormal #reallifeghoststories #fyp
♬ Scary stories, horror footage, halloween sati – RYOpianoforte
So what’s with all these Bold street time slip stories?
It could be that the area has been densely trafficked by people for centuries, so there is a lot of overlapping energy in the space. Homes were built in the area in the 1780s when it was the district known for manufacturing rope. The area also has a dark history, it was named for Jonas Bold, a wealthy trader of enslaved people who became the mayor of Liverpool in 1802. The “bombed out church”, St Luke’s Church, began construction in 1811 and stands at the top of Bold street. It has not had a roof since the Blitz in 1942 but stands as a memorial to people who lost their lives in the war and is believed to be haunted.
If you’re in the Liverpool area, visit Bold street and let us know if you notice anything strange. Or, if you’ve found a time slip hot spot in your city. You can send time slip and missing time stories to hello [at] creepycatalog.com.
