Timeslips

One of the best-known, and earliest, examples of a time slip was reported by two English women, Charlotte Anne Moberly (16 September 1846 - 7 May 1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924), the principal and vice-principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, who believed they slipped back in time in the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles from the summer of 1901 to the period of the French Revolution.

On August 10, 1901 Moberly and Jourdain were visiting the Palace of Versailles. They decided to go in search of the Petit Trianon. While walking through the grounds they both were impressed by a feeling of oppressive gloom. They claimed to have encountered, and interacted with, a number of people in old fashioned attire whom they later assumed to have been members of the court of Marie Antoinette and to have seen a figure that may have been Marie Antoinette herself on the day in 1792 when she learned that the mob had stormed the Tuileries Palace.

In subsequent research they found that the day they had visited Versailles was the anniversary of this event, and they believed that they had stumbled onto a memory that had 'impressed itself' on the location. In fact, at the time of the storming of the Tuileries, Marie Antoinette was not at Versailles and it has been suggested that the two witnesses had confused this event with the March on Versailles on October 5, 1789.

Both were highly respected educators, working for reputable scholastic institutions, and news of a 'paranormal' experience would most likely not have been advantageous to either their career or personal reputation at the time. Furthermore, they did not broadcast their experience until many years after the event, when they published a book under assumed names. (Their real identity was revealed only after the death of Ms. Jourdain, in 1924). Both women declared to the end of their lives that what they had experienced was real. However, when they first began to discuss the events with each other, Annie Moberly claimed to have seen people and details in the scene that Eleanor Jourdain had not, although their stories were, in general, consistent. It still remains a mystery as to whether it happened at all, and if it did, what it means to paranormal research.

Their experiences were published in a book under the title An Adventure in 1911, under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont, with a foreword by J. W. Dunne. In 1981, the account of their experience was turned into a film, Miss Morison's Ghosts, directed by John Bruce and starring Wendy Hiller and Hannah Gordon.