4 Time Travel Stories That Will Make You Question Reality | Unveiled

4 Time Travel Stories That Will Make You Question Reality

We’re all time travellers, in some respect. We all move forwards from one moment to the next, to the next. But time travel like you see in the movies just doesn’t happen every day… or does it?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring four time travel stories that will make you question reality.

Do you believe that time travel is possible? It’s one of the most hotly debated concepts in all of science, as well as one of the most wished-for hypothetical technologies on the planet. Given the chance, would you go forward or back in time? It’s another deep-rooted question that has us all deeply divided. So, whenever there’s even a sniff of a real-life time travel story, it usually attracts a lot of attention. And, in this video, we’re going to look at four of the most compelling temporal tales, from four different corners of the world map.

First, and arguably the most famous time travel story of modern times… John Titor. An alleged American soldier sent back from the year 2036, he posted on a spate of internet forums in the early 2000s - originally under the name of TimeTravel_0. At the time, Titor’s messages caused a stir because they appeared to place him across three separate generations. According to him, he was first sent back to the year 1975… to regain an early IBM 5100 computer. The retro machine was apparently needed to prevent computing problems in the future, a reference that some of Titor’s audience took as relating to the Year 2038 Problem - a predicted Y2K-style computer glitch, scheduled to happen two years after Titor’s original time.

The seeming time traveller explained his appearance at the turn of the century, though, as him simply stopping off on his way home. In his posts, Titor made various references to an imminent civil war in America (between the years 2004 and 2015) and even to the outbreak of World War Three shortly afterwards. Today, we know that that didn’t happen… but believers claim there’s a readymade explanation at hand. Crucially, Titor also advocated the Many Worlds Theory of Reality as being the correct one. It was something which he suggested was common knowledge by 2036. And it’s an important part to the story because it effectively means that any predictions Titor made that didn’t come true could be explained away by it. So the theory goes, his reappearance in 2000 could have caused a split in the timeline and, fortunately for us, that split meant that war in this world was avoided. So, what do you think? Did John Titor save the world, or was it all just an elaborate hoax?

For our second and perhaps even stranger time travel claim, we’re heading across the Atlantic to Europe, and France. What’s come to be known as the Moberly-Jourdain Incident also took place almost exactly 100 years before John Titor took to his keyboard… and it does what all good time travel stories should do, by adding ghosts into the fray as well!

In 1901, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were two academics visiting Paris, shortly before they began working together at Oxford University. As part of their trip, they took in the Palace of Versailles where, while exploring the gardens, they took a wrong turn and became lost. And right about now was when it got… weird. Both remembered walking along the outskirts of a wood, when they alleged that the world around them subtly changed. The trees reportedly took on an unreal quality, and they came across a variety of unusual characters dressed in old fashioned clothing. One in particular caught the attention of Moberly; a woman in traditional dress, stood on an open lawn apparently sketching the landscape.

Eventually, Moberly and Jourdain found their way back to the Palace and, a week later, traded notes on what they both suspected had been a paranormal experience. The main idea was that wherever they had stumbled upon had been haunted… but, also, that in being there they had travelled back in time. They would spend the next ten years gathering more research before publishing (under pseudonyms) an account of their experience in the 1911 book, “An Adventure”. Among the most noteworthy claims they made in it were that they believed that they had travelled back to the late 1700s… and also that the sketching woman had been Marie Antoinette!

In the time since, the Moberly-Jourdain Incident has been explained away by others as a number of things - including a shared delusion, and an unknowing encounter with a period costume party. But, what’s your verdict? Could there really be some kind of portal in the Palace of Versailles grounds, or were these Oxford academics simply mistaken?

From Paris to Rome, and more specifically the Vatican City… where there are some serious claims that the Church has a secret (and ongoing) history of dabbling with time travel, too. The Chronovisor is probably one of the craziest machines ever said to have existed anywhere, anytime! According to those who claim it to be real, it’s a bizarre, cabinet-like contraption packed with buttons, gadgets and gizmos - all designed to totally reconstruct our experience of time. A Chronovisor user is said to be able to view any past event through the machine, thanks to some spectacular technology that can somehow convert electromagnetic radiation into effective backwards time travel. Or, at least, convert it into a window through which you can revisit actual history.

Records mostly come from one Father François Brune, a Catholic priest who wrote about the Chronovisor in his 2002 book, “The New Mystery of the Vatican”. Broadly speaking, Brune claims that the device was built by another priest named Pellegrino Ernetti, and allegedly with the help of many of the world’s leading scientists in the twentieth century - including Enrico Fermi, today famed for the Fermi Paradox. Father Ernetti is then said to have used the Chronovisor to go back in time to observe the actual crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And while Ernetti’s claims have been continually challenged, and even he himself reportedly admitted making them up, proponents to the Chronovisor’s existence insist that it’s real. And that, now, after Ernetti was allegedly forced into casting doubt over it, the machine is today used in secret by a global elite to control world governments.

Of course, if it does exist, then it’s something unlike anything else ever built on Earth. Would it surprise you if there were a machine like this, used by a select few to pull the strings of society? Our last time travel story is perhaps a little more grounded, but strange all the same. And, this time, we’re heading for the UK!

The city of Liverpool is famous for many things. The Cavern Club, the Beatles, Anfield… but did you know there’s also a real life time warp there? Allegedly. Most of the reported stories centre around Bold Street - an area full of shops and shoppers. And while most of the time you can stroll around this part of town and stay firmly in the here and now, there have been some occasions when people have reported suddenly being transported back to a bygone era.

The most famous case involves a former policeman, who was out shopping in the year 1996. His wife went to a nearby bookstore while he went to pass time elsewhere. But then, when he went back to meet up with his wife again, he was confused to find that the bookstore wasn’t there. In its place was a clothes shop, and it didn’t turn back into a bookstore until he stepped through the door. Thankfully, husband and wife were swiftly reunited, and nobody was lost in time forever… but when the former policeman came to realise that the same building had been a clothes shop decades beforehand, in the 1960s, that’s when this particular tale took on a whole new meaning. It was as though he had been briefly transported back in time and given a glimpse of history, in a similar way to how Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain had felt after their experience in Paris.

Both Liverpool and Paris are fine European cities, granted. But could they also have something truly incredible in common with one another? If these stories are to be believed, then they both offer the unsuspecting visitor the possibility that they might suddenly be plunged back into the past. Failing that, you could always visit the Vatican to try to unearth the Chronovisor and at least be given the opportunity to observe times gone by. Or else you can keep regular tabs on the internet’s time travel forums, in the hope that one John Titor might make another appearance soon! Because those are four time travel stories to make you question reality.