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!

But they're all (the ones I've read, i admittedly haven't read every post) reporting things that happened years ago and relating a narrative that at that time they thought it was extraordinary. When we have no idea that was true.

As years have elapsed for false memories and narratives to have occurred. Which would have been influenced by other people, other events, other 'research' that they conducted online, things they saw on TV etc.

So the same principle applies.

It’s a completely different principle!

The Mandela effect is about retrospectively coming up with a narrative. By definition, the Mandela effect can only occur when inaccurately recalling a past event.

By contrast, the events people are describing are, by and large, things that struck them as strange at the time - that’s why they’ve remembered them!

For example, with the weird ‘losing the campsite story’, the PP remembers it because it seemed so extraordinary. (That’s not to say there isn’t a rational explanation of what happened at the time.) If it were an example of the Mandela effect, it would, what, be more a case of people random getting lost, not thinking it was anything strange and then randomly deciding to pick that non-memory from years ago to reconstruct as a time slip experience?! Doesn’t make any sense!

The whole point about the Mandela effect is that the initial thing (eg Mandela’s first “death”, the change of crisp packets) didn’t happen at all, not that people have misremembered details of the event.

Even if you’re a total sceptic, please tell me you can see how the experiences on this thread are a completely separate phenomenon from the Mandela effect!

But we don't know it really stuck with them at the time though?

They're retrospectively saying it did. Everyone here is retrospectively saying they felt it was weird at the time. But we don't know what they thought or said at the time because they didn't post about it. Their memories or opinions are clouded by time and other information.

Like all the people that met or knew someone who later gets arrested for violent and/or sexual offences and comes out of the woodwork to say "I always had a bad feeling about them".

Most of them didn't, but they create this narrative based on the present which they project onto the past. They only 'remembered' they'd had a bad feeling about them when they were arrested and/or convicted.

And aaaaaalll the people who apparently have a memory of encountering a serial killer, but only after (years often) that serial killer has been put in prison and/or died. I've personally had about 20 people tell me that Fred West either tried to pick them up or actually gave them a lift home. And there are hundreds if not 1000s who claim that on social media. Mention Fred West anywhere on the Internet and those tales with happen. A very witty MNetter in response to yet another MN poster who said Fred West gave them a lift home commented "you'd think he was a bus driver, not a builder given the amount of people he was allegedly driving around".

The whole Mandela effect idea was that when he was realesed from prison, there was a huge amount of publicity around it. Which doesn't normally occur for people being released from prison but does occur when people die.

So when he did die, lots of people remembered that coverage, hadn't paid a massive amount of attention to it at the time, or the repeated coverage they saw as adults when they'd been kids, and thought "wait, didn't he die and there was a whole thing about it in the media"

And lot's of people think that someone that gave them a lift or looked at them funny 30/40 years ago was Fred West.

And lots of people who had a very mildly confusing experience years ago think that it was a time slip and not just something really explainable related to real life and neurology.

I don't think that humans on earth know everything or that things outside of our current paradigm of thinking can't happen but the proposed 'evidence' of the paranormal, multiverses, time slips, clairvoyance, tarot etc is so weak and so obviously driven by people who want it to be true, who are often making money from it, that it can't be taken seriously by most people.

P.S. I'm not a sceptic. A sceptic is someone disinclined to agree with accepted opinions. So that would be someone denying the reality of covid for instance, which is backed up by clinical research, global deaths, the WHO etc.

It's impossible to be a sceptic for the paranormal, time slips, multiverses etc because none of those things are accepted opinions within most cultures and have zero evidence behind them. It would be like saying 'you're a sceptic about unicorns'. There's no such thing. They don't exist. Even if some people claim they do.

@Yellowishstone

Most of them didn't, but they create this narrative based on the present which they project onto the past. They only 'remembered' they'd had a bad feeling about them when they were arrested and/or convicted.

But this is the bit missing from the stories on this thread! No one has said “Oh, you remember that time you got lost on the way back from the campsite/other weird incident on this thread” causing the person to reinterpret the incident! The Mandela effect is sparked by a collective prompt (eg the actual death of Mandela, or the arrest of the serial killer). There simply is no such prompt in these cases. The only reason they are cited is because of their original weirdness. That’s why they’re not like the Mandela effect.

It's impossible to be a sceptic for the paranormal, time slips, multiverses etc because none of those things are accepted opinions within most cultures and have zero evidence behind them. It would be like saying 'you're a sceptic about unicorns'. There's no such thing. They don't exist. Even if some people claim they do.

Yes, yes. We know how much more scientific you are than people who’ve had a strange experience. I’m simply trying to illustrate how the Mandela effect is not the principle at play here.

But actually many scientists do believe that there may be a multiverse, in fact I’m pretty sure quantum mechanics was the first to identify the possibility.

in the history of mankind the amount of people who don’t believe in some kind of paranormal world is vanishingly small, tge sceptics are the anomaly in mankind.

I always find it peculiar when people are so certain that there is nothing more than the physical they can currently “rationally” explain. And there are quite aggressive comments often made about the people who do believe/experience something paranormal.

I often wonder what leads them to act like that, I do think some people are often fearful of there being something more.

But you ignore very logical, scientifically based reasons for why your interpretation of your 'senses' may not be what actually happened.

Why is that? Why would you want to ignore logic, science and evidence to choose to believe something fantastical?

I used to think it wasn't that harmful for people to believe in ghosts, or spirits or demons, or the paranormal or time slips.

But it's the thin edge of the wedge which really effects many people and can lead to exploitation, abuse and murder.

I'm not massively inclined to entertain your ideas about your completely unreal and invalid experiences that you think you had, anymore than I'm in inclined to entertain clairvoyants or people who think demons exist, who feel that their child or neighbour is possesed and that a possessed person should be killed or whatever else.

I'm not massively inclined to entertain your ideas about your completely unreal and invalid experiences that you think you had

Which would those be? I haven’t mentioned any experiences of my own.

But you ignore very logical, scientifically based reasons for why your interpretation of your 'senses' may not be what actually happened

Again, I haven’t cited any particular experiences or instances where I’ve ‘ignored’ logic, have I?

I am just against the wholesale rejection of other people’s experiences. I find it irritating. Especially when the rejection is so casual and offhand, as if the person who experienced the phenomenon hasn’t run through all those explanations already.

When do you trust your own senses? I mean, even if you’re in a lab recording data, at some point you do have to trust your eyes and ears.

@Yellowishstone "in the history of mankind the amount of people who don’t believe in some kind of paranormal world is vanishingly small.

But the number of believers in the paranormal declines as knowledge increases.There are many mysteries that have been explained in my lifetime!

So you don't even believe in ghosts?

I don't understand why you imagine I am changing anything. This is what happened:-

It was the next to last day of our holiday. The shops were along the straight path so we had done the same journey more than once before (ie several times) to buy groceries. This day we walked to the shops, bought a few basics and began walking back along the straight path.

We noticed a frog and a minute or so later saw a dried-up pond and remarked on it being a long way from water. The walk back seemed to be taking much longer than usual. Eventually we saw a woman with a sheepdog turning into a lane (the first turning we had come to) and asked directions.

She was astonished that we had managed to miss the caravan park and told us to turn back along the straight path. So we did...and this time we came to the ornamental pond outside the caravan park.

I don't know if this experience was a time slip, some ancestral memory or even a shared hallucination (neither of us has ever done drugs, however), or anything else. What I do know is that it really, really scared me, which is why I still remember it.

Someone mentioned why I hadn't posted about this experience when it happened. Well, it was well over 20 years ago when the internet was in its infancy and not many people owned computers. I didn't. Even in my workplace they were hardly used.

I really don't know how to explain it to you any more clearly so perhaps it's best to pass my last word on the subject over to someone else:

"There are more things on heaven and earth, Hortatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet: William Shakespeare)

This is an interesting book about the limitations of perception and the many scientific studies and theories about how our brains can ignore what's right in front of our eyes:

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/overview.html

You should read the book.

As all of this evidence suggests a very rational explanation of what happened to you, I would be intrigued how anyone would think that a time slip was a more likely explanation - or what a timeslip even is...

Everyday illusions trick us into thinking that we see -and know more- than we really do, and that we can predict the future when we can't. The Invisible Gorilla teaches us exactly why, and it does so in an incredibly engaging way. Chabris and Simons provide terrific tips on how to cast off our illusions and get things right. Whether you're a driver wanting to steer clear of oncoming motorcycles, a radiologist hoping to spot every tumor, or just an average person curious about how your mind really works, this is a must-read.
Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, University of California-Irvine, and author of Memory and Eyewitness Testimony

I don't understand why you imagine I am changing anything.

Because you very clearly are (not intentionally, I'm very sure, it's just the nature of these things), and it's right there in the posts.

In story 1, you are clear that you might have done the journey only once. In story 2, you have definitely done it several times all week and now it's physically impossible for you to have made a mistake on the route. And now the walk back must have been longer than usual (did you time them all?) and so on. Even the presence of the frog, which is actually evidence that you were near water, keeps being brought up as proof that you weren't. We get frogs in our garden; we are near water but if you don't know the area, you wouldn't know that.

It seems really strange to me that you tell this story and truly think you entered a time slip rather than just made a mistake in an area you don't know very well. Obviously I can't persuade you otherwise but the whole idea that time travel more likely than you taking a wrong turn somewhere...

And I'm familiar with the quote, thanks, but it...isn't proof of time slips!

Yes, for the love of Jesus, will the credulous and hard of thinking please stop (usually mis-) quoting that line of Hamlet because they appear to think it proves something?

This is from the character who reacts to the appearance of his father’s spirit from purgatory by pretending to be mad, decides to try to crack a possible murder by putting on a play, randomly stabs someone behind a tapestry without checking who it is, and has a huge complex about his mother having a sex life.

Yes, for the love of Jesus, will the credulous and hard of thinking please stop (usually mis-) quoting that line of Hamlet because they appear to think it proves something?

I dont think anyone thinks it proves anything. It's just a neat and beautifully expressed way of saying that there are lots of thing in the world that any individual human knows about or can even dream of.

and on any view, history bears this out. No one in 1066 would have thought a telephone was possible and that you could hear in live time a person not just a 100 miles away in England but on the other side of the world. Yet the basic physics that makes a telephone possible were in existance in 1066 just the same as in 1876.

Same is true of many other things include past recording of live action.

You're talking about un-conceived technology, not claims of the supernatural. The fact that people in 1066 couldn't conceive of a phone doesn't mean they were hearing the voice of their Aunt Gertrude 200 miles away because of the paranormal.

In fact, so far, everything people in the past thought was supernatural has turned out demonstrably not to be. Epilepsy is not demonic possession. Sleep paralysis isn't a visit from demons. As a PP said a while ago, paranormal experiences seem to have fashions depending on the society they're in. Time travel is a modern fascination and now people are doing that instead of just getting lost while on holiday.

The universe is indeed a wondrous place as it is, which is why we don't need to make stuff up or refuse to look where all the evidence points. The psychology of false memories, brain tricks and so on (@MasterBeth has posted some very interesting links) is so very interesting and fascinating that it's hard to see why anyone with a curious, inquiring and open mind wouldn't want to learn more about it.

You're talking about un-conceived technology, not claims of the supernatural. The fact that people in 1066 couldn't conceive of a phone doesn't mean they were hearing the voice of their Aunt Gertrude 200 miles away because of the paranormal.

I didn't say that it did. I was just responding to the point that the Hamlet quote is not used as a "proof" but Shakespeare's elegant summary of a basic point that as you say "The universe is indeed a wondrous place as it is,"

The quote is frequently used in these discussions in exactly the way the poster intended it: as "proof" of something like time slips. Which it isn't.

I think we're being extremely restrained in not commenting on the fact that she thought we needed to be told where it came from and who wrote Hamlet.

Ah but who did write Hamlet?
I'm a Baconite myself!😄

Maybe he claimed credit after entering a time slip!

Too obvious! I propose one of the wondrously unlikely candidates like Mary Queen of Scots or Cardinal Wolsey.

Oh gosh no, surely, it can't have been a woman.

Old spearshaker definitely.

Hmm. What about the works of Shakespeare being a group effort by Oscar Wilde, Pinter, Alan Bennett and Caryl Churchill, all via timeslip…?

Well I'd go for it if we could add Russell T Davies.