“It was only brief, but I swear by what happened. Most people don’t believe me, but I know it was a time slip.”
It was an average sunny Monday afternoon when Grace Edwards experienced what many refer to as a time slip into the past. But these short-lived moments slipping back in time appear to be more common than you would think. Join us as we take a walk down memory lane, quite literally, and explore the notion of time travel. Welcome to Bold Street, where time itself likes to blur the lines between past and present.
Meet 24-year-old Grace Edwards, who has lived in Liverpool for almost five years. Back in 2023, she was out on her own buying a last minute birthday present for a friend when she experienced a moment that would stay with her for years to come – a time slip. Grace was walking down the top of Bold Street next to St Luke’s Church when “everything went quiet”, she recalls. “All the people walking past me a few seconds ago literally just disappeared, and the only person I could see was this weird man walking quite far ahead of me.” She pauses, searching for the right words to recall the vivid details of his “slow movements and weird cane he was leaning on to walk with.” She remembers feeling “completely freaked out at how he was now the only person on the street that was bustling just a few seconds before.” Grace admits that she initially felt apprehensive of the experience, dismissing it as a strange hallucination or trick of the eye. But this disbelief soon turned into a lingering curiosity to understand the strange figure of the man and the altered environment she now found herself in. The man wore a big black top hat with a long black tailcoat, and was abnormally tall, “like freakishly large”, she adds. Her surroundings were distorted. “Everywhere looked a lot dustier, like it was under a weird yellow-tinted filter.” Grace recollects how she couldn’t make out what the shop signs said, their lettering too faded to decipher, and how “they appeared old and dirty”. Her experience lasted around 10 seconds, then before she had enough time to fully process what had happened to her, she blinked, and everything returned back to normal. “All the passersby returned, the ghostly figure of the man in black had vanished, and it was like nothing had ever happened.”
For Grace, this singular experience defines her years living in Liverpool, as she claims to have never seen anything like a time slip since. However, this story fits into an eerie pattern of narratives that suggest there is potentially more to this world than meets the eye. But is this actually physically possible? Let’s hear from Rob Cowen, a physicist from Manchester, who provides some insight into whether such a phenomenon as a time slip is scientifically possible.
He explains that while a time slip is a fascinating concept, most physicists would agree that it is simply not possible. “Time is not a constant, uniform thing that we all share,” he says. “Einstein set out two theories which explain how perception of time can vary between individuals: special and general relativity.” However, Rob is quick to point out that despite the fact that time can stretch or compress under certain conditions, neither of those theories can explain travelling back in time, as it violates the principle of causality. “This means that the cause of an event must precede the event”, he says. “Backwards time travel messes this up.”
Physicist Rob suggests that the explanation for time slips is more likely to fall within the realm of psychology. “Physicists are often fascinated by the other sciences”, he adds, “so I bet they’d love to find out what leads someone to believe they’ve briefly gone back in time while out shopping.” He proposes that possible triggers could be a form of psychological trauma response, so to investigate this, I spoke to Fiona C Davis-Grant, an integrative psychotherapist specialising in trauma, MBACP accredited.
Fiona presents a different understanding of how our minds can distort our own perception of reality. “I’m old enough to think there are things that we can’t explain by our mere average senses”, she says. “When someone is subjected to trauma, their natural coping mechanisms can become overloaded.” Fiona explains how this in turn can affect your ability to live in the present, and feelings such as panic and despair are triggered. “From the angle of an individual who is traumatised, I would use an eight-stage EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) evidence-based therapy.” This helps to treat the distress from it, allowing an individual to process unpleasant memories. Ultimately, Fiona agrees that there can be no real explanation on time slips, but still finds these cases interesting. “I love a bit of the unexplained.”
Whether the truth lies in physics, psychology, or even something beyond human comprehension, Bold Street remains a place where the past and present seem to coexist, even if only for fleeting moments. As Physicist Rob puts it plainly, “we all like to think of ourselves as rational beings, immune to suggestion, but in fact, we are constantly being guided through life by our unconscious.”
It goes without saying that sceptics may argue such experiences could stem from other factors such as vivid imagination, dreams, or misinterpreting external factors. To fully understand the lore surrounding Bold Street, I headed down there myself to hear first-hand what people had to say. Upon my visit to Liverpool, I deduced that there were two categories of people when asked about the infamous time slips: open and interested, or concerned and reluctant. The first category of people were fascinated, and spoke freely about their knowledge on the topic. The second category were hesitant to say too much, worried that saying the wrong thing could potentially invite misfortune. The latter requested to remain anonymous.
Bethany Ellis, worker at ‘Oxfam’ – In the corner when you come into the shop, there’s a back wall and it’s full of vintage clothes. We have a customer who comes in and says that sometimes he thinks there’s a portal that comes through there behind the vintage dresses. I think it depends how much you’re into the supernatural and spirituality and things like that. I believe in it myself, it’s really cool and interesting, and I think with Liverpool as well there’s just so much going on here. There’s so much history and so many ghost stories.
Anonymous Tip – I know that underneath Bold Street there’s all the tunnels and passageways that they used to transport slaves through, which I actually think is really unnerving to think about. I’m not too sure, but maybe it’s some kind of haunted being from underground that people sometimes get glimpses of when they’re walking down the street going about their day. It could be that, or maybe people are just making it up I don’t know, but what I do know for definite is that the passageways are still there now. I’ve never been down there though, it freaks me out.
Paul Finn, worker at ‘69A’ – Well I think the time slips on Bold Street are a load of rubbish. It’s just people with too much of a vivid imagination.
Anonymous Tip – I had a man come into the shop once saying he’d just seen people walking down the street dressed in really old fashioned clothes, like top hats and canes and all that stuff. He seemed pretty calm about it though, and when I asked him if he knew about time slips he just smiled and said yeah. That was it really. But then again I only know what I’ve read online, and some people have never heard of it so I’m not too sure. He might have just been a nut case, we’ll never know.
William Gavin, pedestrian – I lived there with my mates for three years at uni, and never ever saw anything weird. Yeah, we heard about stuff obviously, but nothing ever actually happened to us. Seemed like a bunch of nonsense if I’m completely honest.
Spontaneous time travel may seem to be a feature of dystopian novels, however, numerous accounts from this street in Liverpool suggest otherwise. Perhaps there is more than one explanation for the time slips of Bold Street, but for now, the answer remains as elusive as time itself.
Ask yourself this: what would you do if a simple stroll down your local high street turned into a journey into the past?
