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!

I am perfectly happy with the explanation of sleep paralysis because it's proven and makes sense. What's more likely - that a demon visited me in my sleep, paralysed me, sat on me and my bed and conjured up a magic fire in the room that disappeared as soon as I woke up properly.... or that the normal paralysis we have in sleep that stops us from sleepwalking and acting out dreams switched off a bit later than it was supposed to and my frightened, half-sleeping brain created a few sensations while it tried to orientate me?

It's not open minded or intelligent to reject the evidenced and reasoned explanation for the woo woo one. I can completely understand why people thought sleep paralysis was paranormal, but we now know that it isn't. We may not fully understand every brain mechanism that leads to it but we know it's not a visit from demons. Which is just as well because I've got enough problems.

And as for the frigging Scouse time portal, this is just about proving negatives again. Do I have to mention mice in teapots again? You can't prove those don't exist either. If you think there's a time portal on a Liverpool high street, you'll need some proper evidence before you can expect anyone to take it seriously.

Until then, the mice bid you good day and have closed their teapots.

I'm another one whose had premonitions.

The strangest one was having a feeling that I needed to go out of my flat when I was living abroad for a year to check if there was something in my post box. I lived on the 3rd floor of a student residence inhabited by probably 150-200 people.

At the time, in the late 90s, I didn't have a mobile phone so I used the pay phones next to the post boxes to phone friends and they would call me at arranged times or call me back etc.

Anyway I was by the post boxes and one of the pay phones rang so I answered it and it was one of my friends on the end of the line calling to try to get a message to me that a mutual friend had died.

The chances of me actually being there at that precise moment were incalculably slim, but there I was because I KNEW I had to be.

Strange.

I am very sorry about your friend.

But there was nothing unusual about you being in a spot you went to regularly, right by where you lived, especially when you went there frequently to pick up your post and phone calls. I realise you weren't expecting that phone call at that time, but the chances of you being there were not incalculably slim at all. They were pretty good.

You remember this time because it was when you got that horrible news. You will have been there lots of other times when nothing memorable happened.

Not quite a premonition but I couldn’t shake the fact that someone very close to me was going to die during the second lockdown. I thought it was going to be someone I saw a lot, maybe a good friend, and assumed it would be from covid. I was really uneasy and told quite a few people how worried I was.

The week we went into lockdown my dad died, completely out of the blue. It wasn’t entirely accurate as not a covid death but the uneasy feeling disappeared completely after that. I do think I should have had an inkling the last time I saw him though but I didn’t.

No I was barely ever there, about twice a week at most.

You didn't have to walk past it to leave the building.

So no your explanation is not the reality of the situation.

No doubt I remember it because it was horrible news but the chances of me being there at that exact moment when I was there at most 30 mins over 2 periods to make calls or pick up post in a week of 168 hours means the chances were definitely remote!

Incalculably small chance = 1 in 336.

Not a big chance, but a calculably small one.

King's Cross fire - I know other stories about this (and their probable explanations), but this one's about a premonition that wasn't.

I'd arranged to meet assorted friends for an after-work drink near King's Cross. I didn't usually get the bus, but did that evening because it happened to pass as I was running to my Tube station. The bus was diverted and then terminated, which was when I found out what was happening.

Naturally concerned about my friends, I rang everyone until we were all accounted for. Every single one had been delayed or had decided not to get the Tube for one reason and another.

Lucky? For us, yes. Miraculous? No. Any other evening, we wouldn't have discussed how each of us travelled to the bar or bothered about someone being late. Similar sets of circumstances must've happened all the time, minus the tragedy that made them significant that day.

Still, some of the friends felt there'd been some 'intervention' or they'd 'just known' it wasn't a good idea to get the Tube. You sometimes add these extra layers of meaning afterwards, perhaps because of your emotional connection to the tragedy or even a slight sense of survivor guilt.

Lol yes, I didn't realise a turn of phrase would be subject to such scrutiny! !

It still was a massive coincidence to be there at that precise point in time. Even more so because I had a feeling that I needed to be there, which is why I was there!

And if you talk about chances they can be calculated in different ways, looking at the 24 hour clock the phone rang a minute at most after I arrived at the post box otherwise I'd have seen there was no post and gone back so the chances of me being there at that precise minute could be calculated at 1 in 1440 which is actually more like how the odds of it happening felt.

I think the Lochness Monster might be a time-slip phenomenon to prehistoric times, and that is why there's no physical evidence.

Not quite a premonition but I couldn’t shake the fact that someone very close to me was going to die during the second lockdown. I thought it was going to be someone I saw a lot, maybe a good friend, and assumed it would be from covid. I was really uneasy and told quite a few people how worried I was

Thats just thinking of something highly likely though. It’s a pandemic so quite probable that a lot of people will die, including people you know and are close to. So it’s not woo when this happens. I’m sorry it was your dad, but it really was highly likely that someone close to us all was going to die. It was probably more of a shock if it didn’t happen tbh.

Yes I have. I was married with two children
I went outside to put rubbish in the bin.
some how I lost over half an hour. I felt myself wakeup still holding the rubbish in my hand. I felt like I had gone somewhere with people talking to me warning me. I was told in 12 months 10.30 am the date month I would be leaving this home
divorced. I couldn’t believe it.
i told my mother and she wrote it in a note book then I forgot about it
A year later Divorced living in a new home.
I visited my mom, we remembered the note book. The removal truck and I an kids left my home at 10.30 am on the day an month written in the little note book

@Trampley yes I believe that too. I once heard that our dreams don’t pan out in real time, that they all happen in a split second before we wake - whole complex stories.

Years ago I was sleeping and I had a dream that was culminating in me being put into a guillotine, and as it came down I heard a crash - my mirror had fallen off the wall and woke me, right as the guillotine came down. That made me believe that the brain is capable of coming up with a full story in a split second, as the mirror falling couldn’t possibly have coordinated itself with my dream.

I've had a couple of experiences.
Years ago at school aged 13/14 I had a vivid dream about someone, a boy with striking blue eyes and blonde curls, I didn't know anyone fitting this description.
Next day at school I was in our communal area and this boy from my dream was there, looking exactly how I'd dreamt, he was new to the school that day.

A few years back I had one of those dreams that wakes you up trembling and sweating. I had dreamt I was at a funeral and was really upset.
Later that day MIL died. She hadn't been ill and it wasn't expected, she was early 60's and had a massive stroke.
🤷‍♀️

@MammaYamada given that the Earth was on the other side of the galaxy when dinosaurs roamed, that would require time, and significant space, travel.

I'm not sure that a "time slip to prehistoric times" is actually more probable than "a giant beast still living". And both are less probable than "humans tell themselves stories and make shit up all the time."

Well that's that then.

What you'd really need is all the times something bad happened and you didn't happen to be doing something at the time that you'd later come to see as a premonition. Then do the maths.

I would expect things to coincide occasionally. It would be weird if they didn't. How many times, for example, did you dream about a black haired person and not meet a new one the next day? Is it really so astounding that on one occasion you did? I've had those sorts of dreams, dream of a red dress and then saw someone wearing one. Never saw it as a premonition. We dream about lots of everyday things, then we see lots of everyday things. It's inevitable that they'll sometimes match up.

I'm already starting to see a bias towards noting bad things rather than happy ones, too. Why aren't there so many premonitions around someone announcing an unexpected engagement or pregnancy?

Oh I've done that too.

But that's much easier to 'predict' logically isn't it, because of the age of the person and the point they are at in their life?

My son ALWAYS got the sex right when he was a toddler/ young child. 50/50 chance I know but that was over several pregnancies.

As a 50:50 chance, getting it right each time was no more or less likely than any other combination of correct/incorrect guesses.

The confirmation bias is very clear.

Well, he was known as the baby sex predictor in our family. The eldest of 10 future grandchildren, too young to predict the first but the next 9 were right!

And he was right about friends babies etc.

He also had an imaginary friend when he was younger who told him things that he wouldn't have otherwise known at his age, of course he was most probably getting the information from elsewhere but it he was a very interesting young child in what he seemed to know.

Someone approached me in a play centre and said of him too, 'that one's been here before'. Most peculiar.

He doesn't have any of it now from what I can tell, although he's 17 and doesn't speak to me that much being a teenager, more grunts than anything!

Oh and when she said 'oh that one's been here before' she didn't mean at the play centre!!!

Well, he was known as the baby sex predictor in our family.

Yes of course he was. It doesn't change the fact that when there are only two possible outcomes, all combinations of guesses are equally likely. Of course you're going to remember and note the fully successful streak but it's no less likely than any other specific combination.

That's why we also get psychic pigs and octopi predicting the outcomes of football games.

I know, but goodness me you are a kill joy aren't you?

There wasn't a wrong prediction, it was always right. Shame it didn't transfer to lottery tickets!

Coincidence and logic/ probability and neurology explains most 'woo' stuff but if some people believe in religion then that is no different in my mind from people believing in woo stuff.

Why did my brain tell me to go to where the phone was ringing at the precise moment I did to receive the call I received about my friend, I'll never know. But it did. Her's was a sudden tragic young death so there was no message I could have been obviously subconsciously receiving, but there I was.

My logic tells me it was simple coincidence but these fluke coincidences are interesting which is why there is such a market for ghost stories, time slip stories (best one I've read is 11.22.63 - by Stephen King) and things like the marvel multiverses.

Another coincidence I experienced in the same year in France about 3 months after this friends death was that I was called back to the UK to be witness in a criminal trial so I boarded a flight back to the UK to attend it.

My dad was supposed to be picking me up from the airport but he died that morning suddenly from a heart attack, he was 44.

At least I didn't have to take another phone call / be at the call box at the right time!

That was a shit year which is probably why my brain wants to think about the coincidences but the fact I was flying home that day was also improbable. A simple coincidence.

goodness me you are a kill joy aren't you?

This really does say everything, I think, about why people cling to this stuff so desperately.

I object, though. I love the idea of mice in teapots.

Shame it didn't transfer to lottery tickets!

I wonder why!

But no doubt someone out there used a significant date or feeling and won, so they must be the psychic ones.