AIBU to believe FIL time slip experience?

[elsiesbonnet]

FIL was round yesterday evening for dinner with his wife. We were talking about the Uncanny podcast & recent TV episode then he told us of two experiences he'd had in the same place a number of years apart. After I went & did some research & asked a couple questions today, he's told us of another experience he had in the same place that was similar to one of the other experiences but that happened when he as a child.

I'm quite sceptical about paranormal type events I guess because I've never witnessed anything myself but am generally quite open minded. I don't believe FIL to be the type to make this sort of thing up & he was almost unwilling to tell us in case we thought he was crazy. He's never told anyone before.

AIBU to think what he experienced could've been real? In one of the instances he interacted with people in the past, his recall was quite genuine & he had some significant detail that you couldn't just make up. Has anyone else experienced a time slip or some other paranormal event they couldn't explain? I'm intrigued!

Yes of course but the wider point is that it is is human nature to lend a providential aura to a tale and that to think that life is not just a series of separate incidents and facts- obviously not for some!

I love hearing all kinds of experiences and also like horror films and books but can't find anything to do with dreams interesting. I think they are just ways your brain processes your experiences/worries etc. I don't dispute they can be scary or comforting but think they just reflect your mood/experiences. For all the potential scientific/parapsychological explanation of other phenomena, I can't think of a mechanism of how a house layout or a strangers face could be broadcast to a sleeping person's brain in advance and then remembered accurately for years. I obvs cannot say it is impossible but I do think it much more likely the memory of the dream (which will likely distort wildly over time) and the processing of the current situation become mixed in the brain, like deja vu - when your current experience is processed as a memory.

I am interested in inherited knowledge - maybe you knew the person/ village/place because a parent did. Like how birds instinctively know how to build nests and fly south without having to be told. And these inherited memories are processed in dreams.

Looks like I am interested in dreams after all!

No offence to those who do take comfort in them.

@elsiesbonnet I think you should share a bit more if possible - why start a thread and keep defending the story but refuse to share details? It's not going to out anyone if he's not told anyone.

Science is just the study of the universe. Science studies everything, from the mundane to the most fantastical. Science isn't relegated to the ordinary bit.

In my experience I think a lot of us have had some really weird experiences and we either slowly forget about them or just feel better not talking about them.

Mine was utterly terrifying and resulted in a couple of minor injuries - not the kind of thing you really want to talk about though.

What I find interesting is that it's possible that things exist that we can't imagine.

I've always loved this video of Carl Sagan explaining the 4th dimension. It's a great watch if you are interested in science and tricky concepts explained simply.

The fact that the 2D flat square can only see flat 2d things and can't visualise a 3d thing is fascinating. I feel like I understand the 4th dimension for about 2 seconds immediately afterwards and then its gone.

Its got to be at least possible there is stuff like this that our brain can't comprehend.

True!

I walk up and down bold street twice a day everyday and never had a time slip. I would love one though!

There's a film from 1960 showing passengers on what was then the newly launched 'Blue Pullman' train. Sadly it's no longer on YouTube because I wish I'd screenshotted it - there's a scene showing a business commuter at his table and it looks for all the world as if he's using a smartphone! Of course, it was obviously a calculator he was dabbing at but it's very funny to watch.

Interesting.
oh, there’s a few time slip threads on MN, if you wanted to check them out? Was a while ago, mind.

When I was about thirteen, accompanied by my granny and younger brother, we all saw a creature unlike any known creature . It was sort of hopping across the next field , near an old WW1 shooting range. It was larger than a human being and definitely not a human. We were all scared although my grandma tried to act calm. I’ve never been able to come up with a “rational” explanation.
i have had one or two other experiences like this too.
So I do believe things can occur which aren’t within The bounds of what we expect to happen.

This is fascinating. There is no past, preset or future everything is now. I’m still trying to get my head around it all. Time is a man made concept.

Maybe we don't yet know the 'scientific mechanism' that would make it possible, in the same way that even though they had not been discovered, scientists knew from the structure of the periodic table that elements were there, waiting to be found.

It's the height of arrogance to totally dismiss something because we don't yet have the 'scientific mechanism', your ancestors would have been the same with things we now take for granted.

If I sound patronising please forgive me but if you look at quantum physics and the double split experiment we have proven that things can exist in all realities all at once at the same time. That or we are in a Matrix.

This isn't a time slip but it's definitely heading in the direction of paranormal.

In February 2001 my then dh went out for a day's fun flying with three friends. His friend was an experienced pilot who needed to log his hours to keep his licence valid. He'd put some weight on and said he was going to go to the gym and start working out, so he tried his shorts on before he got dressed to go out, and they were too tight so he asked me to go out and buy him some that day. Just after lunch I went into town and went to M&S and found some shorts. As I was waiting to pay for them, I heard a voice behind me say very clearly "I don't know why you're doing that - he'll never wear them." I looked around immediately but there was nobody there.

As I walked home, I felt as if a black cloud was hanging over me and I kept getting images of wreckage in my head. He didn't come home for dinner and I kept telling myself they'd gone for a drink, but he had a mobile phone and I got no answer when I rang it. At 10pm the police turned up at my door to tell me that the plane had run into the only storm cell in the entire southeast of England that day and crashed, and all of them had died instantly.

It was a year later at the inquest when I found out that the time I was waiting in M&S was the exact time I heard the voice.

I can't explain it.

Sorry, OP - The 100% certainty that it's not real would be down to medical professionals diagnosing this as a form of "Episode". It could be a mental health illness, physical illness (think Neurological), trauma, early onset dementia, schizophrenia etc...

He needs to be assessed.

The question is, if the idea of time slips is real, why do only certain people experience them? Maybe because they are more open to suggestion? That, I think, is the answer. Our brains do odd sometimes hard to explain things don't they?
As for the Uncanny programme--I thought it was ludicrous. If they want us to think these are genuine experiences, drop all the spooky music and darkened rooms. Just silly. And, without wishing to be mean, some people will say anything to be on TV won't they?

Don't you mean "could"?

Oh goodness. I’m so sorry.

Am fascinated by the responses on this thread; some people (on both sides of the ‘woo vs science’ debate) seem really really insulted that not everyone thinks the same way as them…!

@BetterWithPockets - thank you. It was a long time ago and I remarried very happily. I loved and miss my first DH still though.

@JudgeJ "It's the height of arrogance to totally dismiss something because we don't yet have the 'scientific mechanism', your ancestors would have been the same with things we now take for granted."
There's a difference between not understanding why something happens yet and ascribing paranormal reasons for it. No, of course we don't know everything, but we do know some things. We are gradually explaining the world, and many of the things which might have been thought of as paranormal are being found to have perfectly scientific, rational explanations. So it's fine to say "I don't know what happened here." It's not fine to then say "So it must be paranormal." When I was young "orbs" were a big thing. They aren't any more because we know what makes them happen. Past lives always collapse under proper scrutiny. Same goes for telekinesis and mind reading and poltergeists. Sleep paralysis explains a lot of ghosts-we didn't know about that when I was a child. There's no reason to suppose that this gradual process of discovery won't continue. And that's really exciting.

I never had an experience in Bold St when I lived in Liverpool. But did have a time slip a few years ago when I "saw" the Oxford/Cambridge boat race happen an hour before it started.

When I was a child I used to get very clear visions of things that would happen and then they happened. My grandmother was psychic also. They have gone away as I have got older. The most weird thing that happened though is that I lost something dear to me and when I prayed really to get it back, it just fluttered down from somewhere and landed on my bed. I can’t explain that at all. I know it sounds untrue but it did happen. I haven’t had a time slip before, but I believe it could happen.

Funny. I'm sure they were all in the last hour or two.

Wait..!

1 in 10 EEGs (measuring brain waves) can show some kind of difference to the norm. You can also simulate all kind of feelings and ‘experiences’ from stimulating parts of the brain.
Just think of hallucinations when you’ve been ill. Or the odd smells and tastes people get with covid.