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Head of School of Human and Social Sciences and Psychologist at BNU Dr °ä¾±²¹°ùá²Ô O’Keeffe spoke with journalists at the Daily Mail about the plausibility of time slips, providing four scientific explanations for these unsettling experiences. 

°ä¾±²¹°ùá²Ô was featured both in print and online in the Daily Mail.

When I was a Masters student in ­Liverpool in 1996, I deliberately walked the long way into the city centre from university every day. It wasn’t superstition or paranoia. It was because I longed to experience the infamous Bold Street Time Slip. A handful of people claim to have been strolling down this gently sloping thoroughfare only to be suddenly transported back to the 1950s. The Tarmac beneath their feet becomes cobbles, trainers and jeans are replaced with period clothing and the shop fronts become antiquated. 

This is one of the most notorious time slip legends, not least because so many people claim to have experienced it. But as the extraordinary letters from Mail readers show, time slips can seemingly happen anywhere and at any time. After reader Jeanette Kelly wrote in some weeks ago describing a time slip that she had experienced decades earlier, when a suburban London street suddenly morphed into an expanse of forest, the paper was inundated with readers sharing their own all-too-similar experiences. 

So what is really going on when, in the blink of an eye, you find you’re no longer in the same decade, or even the same century? As a psychologist specialising in the paranormal — and someone who has spent more than three decades studying the subject — I have a few theories which might help decode the spooky stories detailed across these pages. The archetypal time slip is when an individual perceives that they have ‘slipped’ into a different time period — essentially like involuntary time travel. I’m going to propose four possible theories all rooted in scientific research and let you decide which best fits the mysterious cases you see before you. 

My first explanation rests on how fragile human perception really is. Half a century of research into ‘perceptual psychology’ proves that perception is deeply affected by factors such as tiredness, hunger, fear, excitement — and even alcohol and prescription drugs. Could time slips simply be hallucinations brought on by these factors? We all know that when you’re extremely tired, even sleep deprived, it becomes difficult to concentrate, listen, measure distances or recognise faces and places. Perhaps time slips are exaggerated examples of the same sensation. Remember, our perception is easily distorted — and never to be fully trusted. 

My second theory is that time slips are caused by cognitive errors such as confirmation bias. In other words, when the brain convinces itself of whatever it wants to believe. If you’re walking down the street, ‘see’ a lady in period clothing and perhaps subconsciously want to believe you’re in a time slip, the brain is very accomplished at filling out that picture for you. That first visual stimulus — in this case the lady in period clothing — is what we call the ‘anchor’ upon which the greater illusion is constructed. 

The third theory regards ‘altered states of consciousness’ (ASC). These typically occur naturally just as you’re falling asleep or waking up — when you are both dreaming and semi-conscious. The brain can quickly become confused and conflate dreams with reality. It might not apply while walking down the street but if you’re lying in bed in that liminal moment between waking and sleeping, you can actually see your dreams play out in front of you as hallucinations. This isn’t exclusive to sleep either, but can occur when doing mundane tasks such as driving or ironing. When the mind begins to daydream, imagination can mix with reality. 

Finally, time slips might be explained by electromagnetic fields. Research from Canadian academics shows that such energy fields can produce hallucinations by toying with signals in the brain. Bold Street in Liverpool happens to be right above the centre of the city’s underground rail network. Perhaps the electronic signals from the railway are inducing hallucinations in the people walking above it? Some people will tell you all my theories are wrong and insist that time slips are proof of time travel. If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi film Interstellar — or even know your Einstein — you’ll be aware that time is not necessarily linear… and jumping between time periods can be achieved if only we can break out of our three-dimensional experience. As an academic and a scientist, I’m sceptical of some of this. But I’m not a cynic. Some say humanity is nowhere close to truly understanding the secrets of the universe, the power of the mind or the nature of our existence. And what’s more, I’m sure no rational explanation will ever suffice for someone who’s experienced the terrifying sensation of slipping backwards in time.