Time Slips

Includes the 1901 Versailles incident reported by Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, the 1979 Bold Street, Liverpool reports, and other multi-witness accounts.

The best-known case remains the Versailles incident of 1901, published in 1911 as “An Adventure” by Moberly and Jourdain, who claimed to have walked into the grounds and witnessed scenes they took to belong to the era of Marie Antoinette. The Bold Street reports from Liverpool, in which passers-by describe streets and shopfronts apparently belonging to an earlier decade, are similar in shape and similarly anecdotal. Such accounts are difficult to test: they rest on memory and impression, are seldom corroborated at the time, and lend themselves to embellishment in the retelling. Conventional readings — misidentified surroundings, period dress or filming, the well-documented elaboration of “An Adventure” across its editions, and the suggestibility of an expectant observer — account for a good deal.

We catalogue what is reported, by whom, when, and where, and we cite the documentary trail behind every entry, including the publication history that complicates the famous cases. Where a mundane explanation fits the facts, we name it. Where a report resists explanation, we say that too, while holding it to the same standard of evidence as any other claim in this archive.