A Crack in the Slab

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Time, for most of us, feels like the one true constant, a steady progression from past to future.

Yet throughout history, people have reported moments where time and perhaps even reality seems to falter.

Some claim to have been pulled into the past or thrust briefly into the future.

Others describe slipping into worlds that look almost like our own, but with subtle, unsettling differences.

In most cases, these experiences are fleeting glimpses across eras.

In others, they resemble accidental detours into entirely separate dimensions.

Unlike stories of time machines or interdimensional travel, these events, often called time slips or interdimensional rifts, are completely beyond the experiencer's control.

And in rare cases, they leave lasting and sometimes even tragic consequences.

The idea of time being more than a one-way street is nothing nothing new.

Some of the world's oldest thinkers had suspicions that time has never been exactly what it seems.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato described time as a moving image of eternity.

To him, it wasn't a force or a line, but more akin to the circular motion of the stars and planets.

This concept that time and possibly even reality might not be fixed appears again and again in myths, religions and ancient texts from around the world.

Countless stories feature characters who vanish, visit another realm or return home from a seemingly normal journey to discover that decades or even centuries have passed.

Could these be tales of time slips and dimensional crossovers viewed through an ancient lens?

The evidence is compelling.

In Hindu cosmology, time is a cycle rather than a straight line, with the entire universe repeating itself in 4 billion billion year long ages called yugas.

In one famous tale, King Khikudmi travels to the heavens to find a husband for his daughter, only to return to find that many lifetimes have passed back on earth.

In the Hebrew book of Enoch, the prophet of the same name is taken to the heavens and shown great secrets.

He spends 60 days in heaven, but when he returns, he finds that hundreds of years have passed on earth.

Yet he retains the knowledge of everything he learned and is able to share it to enrich his tribe.

Hundreds of years later and thousands of miles away we find the Irish tale of Oshin who visited the magical land of Tirnan Og, only to return to Ireland to discover that it's now centuries in the future.

Unlike Enoch, the moment Ashein touches the ground he ages hundreds of years and dies.

It's almost as if the overarching message is that time, and by extension reality, cannot be fully trusted.

Now, compare the elements in these tales to famous instances of time slips from more recent history.

Perhaps the most infamous account is that of Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, two English women who visited the gardens of Versailles in 1901.

As they walked around the sprawling estate, they suddenly began to encounter people dressed in 18th century clothing.

At first, they thought it was part of some presentation for visitors, but Eleanor later said she felt the world around them had become unnatural and unpleasant, describing it as if they were walking through a painting.

A tall dark-eyed man eventually led them back to the Petit Trianon where they rejoined a tour group.

In the aftermath, the pair stated that they had visited the area several times since, but could never locate the strange route again.

Both women died convinced they had walked through another time or even another world.

Even this story pales in comparison to Bold Street and Liverpool.

Over the years, dozens of people have claimed they suddenly found themselves in a different era whilst walking through the Bold Street neighbourhood.

Witnesses describe entering shops that no longer exist, seeing people in outdated garb, and feeling a strange sense of disconnection before suddenly returning to the present.

These events are brief but vivid, and they seem to occur irrespective of age, background or a pre-existing belief in the paranormal.

Such experiences are by no means limited to the past either.

In the 1930s, a decorated Royal Air Force officer named Sir Victor Goddard claimed to have flown over a run-down airfield, only to see it fully restored and filled with unfamiliar yellow aircraft.

He described the vision as almost dreamlike, as if he'd seen a mirage from the air.

But four years later, the base was rebuilt exactly as he had seen it, yellow aircraft and all.

The modern and ancient stories all seem to point to the same unsettling idea that time and space may occasionally and unpredictably bend, and for a small number of people, that distortion becomes terrifyingly real.

And what truly defines these phenomena is that they happen to people.

They are not time travelers nor explorers.

They are in the purest sense unwitting passengers swept up by forces still far beyond our understanding, which leads us to reconsider what we know and what we assume about the world around us.

Carl Rees was a quiet electrician from western Kentucky.

By all accounts he lived a simple life, even going so far as to eat the same lunch each day.

But on the morning of the 19th of June 1989, Carl would find himself forced into the annals of paranormal history.

That day, Carl and his crew had been assigned to inspect a relay tower just outside Fort Campbell near Hopkinsville.

Because the job involved a slight drive through the country, he decided to invite his wife to join him.

The team arrived at the Fort Campbell Relay Tower just after 10am on what had turned out to be a beautiful summer's day.

As his wife laid out a blanket on the grass, Carl and his crew set about checking connections and inspecting various components for wear.

At precisely 10.47, Carl's wife saw her husband walk around the back of the tower to inspect a wire.

The only problem was that he never came back.

At first, neither his wife nor his other crew members noticed, assuming he was just obstructed by part of the tower.

But after about five minutes, they finally became aware of his lasting absence.

Confused, Mrs.

Reese calmly called out to him whilst his colleagues began circling the base of the tower.

But there was no denying it.

He was gone.

Adding to the perplexity of the situation was the fact that this particular tower stood in the center of a wide, empty field free of trees, fences and buildings.

There was nowhere for him to hide, even if he was the type of person to pull pranks which he wasn't.

Realising this, Carl's wife began to panic.

One of the workers called Fort Campbell's base security to report a missing person, but upon receiving confirmation that a search team had been dispatched, Carl then stepped out from behind the tower as if he'd been there the whole time.

It was 11.03am,

just 13 minutes after he'd disappeared.

Though relieved, Mrs.

Reese could see that something was wrong.

Her husband was pale, drenched in sweat, and he had a look of pure horror plastered across his face.

Upon embracing him, she noticed his watch, which read 2.03pm.

Once he could speak again, Carl confirmed what his watch implied.

He hadn't been gone 13 minutes.

He'd been gone 3 hours.

Yet that was just the beginning.

He described stepping behind the tower and feeling a sort of buzz in the air, which he described as the fizz of static before a lightning strike.

This was followed by a distinct hum that rose in pitch until it became almost painfully intense.

The air around him shimmered, and just like that, the field, the tower, and the sky had all disappeared.

Instead, Carl found himself in a cold dim hallway made of smooth concrete.

The lights above flickered in a sickly yellow, and other than the sound of his own breath, he recalled hearing nothing, not even his own footsteps.

Confused and disorientated, he had no option but to walk forward down the corridor.

As he did, he noticed a large steel door with a black panel, but nothing resembling a knob or handle.

He reached out and was greeted with a beep, and the door swung open.

Inside was a large room filled with humming machines, screens, dials and strange devices that didn't match anything Carl had ever seen.

But the real shock came when he realised he wasn't alone.

Two men were standing across the room from him, both wearing white lab coats.

For years, Carl would state what shocked him the most was that one of the men was holding a potted plant, a detail that seemed too mundane to be part of a hallucination.

Carl also noticed something in the men's eyes, a distinct look of recognition.

Somehow, they knew he was going to be there.

Wordlessly, one of the men scribbled something onto a clipboard and slid a metal disc across the table.

Instinctively, Carl picked it up to find that it was warm to the touch and softly vibrating.

Just then the hum from the vibration seemed to fill the room, rising in pitch just as it had when he'd disappeared behind the tower.

Then came a voice saying, not yet, you can't stay.

Immediately after this came a flash.

Carl later said he felt as if he was being yanked, like every cell in his body was being pulled through the eye of a needle.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing behind the tower again, as if no time had passed at all.

Then,

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That night, Carl found himself unable to sleep, not just because of his experience, but because his head was full of information.

And so he wrote, ultimately filling 11 pages with notes, descriptions and sketches of what he'd seen and heard.

He gave a copy to his wife and another to his pastor and told them never to speak of it unless something happened to him.

From that moment on, Carl's life slowly unraveled.

His wife told close friends that he wasn't the same.

He refused to look at mirrors, claiming they were doorways.

Eventually, he covered everyone in the house with heavy cloth.

Carl and his wife divorced and he moved away to live alone.

In 2011, he died in a hospital bed, suffering from severe anxiety and chronic nightmares.

The staff wrote that he often claimed visions of red hallways, windowless rooms and faces without features.

That's when his ex-wife retrieved his notes and handed them over to a journalist.

Amongst the scribbles was a single paragraph about something called Project Gateway, a phrase Carl had apparently seen flashing across the screens whilst in the room with the two scientists.

He also recorded a string of numbers he'd seen printed on the floor, 43-9-7221.

At the time, no one knew what any of it meant.

But in 2003, 14 years after Carl's experience, declassified military documents revealed the existence of what many claim is Project Gateway, a secret research program exploring time distortion and energy field manipulation.

Even more baffling, the number Carl wrote was found in a 1991 internal defense report connected to something called the Joint Reconnaissance Integration Technology, or JRIT.

This program wasn't known to anyone outside the military until the early 2000s.

Whatever happened in those three hours, it gave Carl unique insight into secrets he should know nothing about, but it came at the cost of his sanity.

In 1988, David Hale was living in the small town of Rutherfordton near the North Carolina foothills.

Struggling to find a job, He stopped by a local employment office where he was handed a list of businesses hiring in nearby towns.

One warehouse gig caught his eye, and early the next morning, David drove off to attend the interview.

By midday, his hope had turned to frustration.

He'd followed the directions as best he could, but now he was starting to wonder if he'd somehow written them down incorrectly.

Roads weren't where they were supposed to be, and landmarks didn't match.

To make matters worse, the highway had officially ended, and he now found himself travelling down a dirt road with tobacco fields on both sides.

Eager for employment, David decided to push on, knowing that the warehouse should be somewhere ahead of him.

He then noticed that the relatively straight road he was on was about to transition into an S-bend, swerving first to the left, then back to the right.

As he approached the turn, something caught his eye.

Another car, speeding towards him from the opposite direction.

The vehicle didn't just stick out for how fast it was moving, but also because it was clearly a vintage model with rounded fenders and a polished black finish.

Instinctively taking his foot off the throttle, David watched in stunned horror as the other driver completely misjudged the curve and plowed straight into the open field.

At this he slammed on the brakes, watching as the car bounced several times on the uneven ground and then disappeared into the tall grass.

He muttered aloud to himself about what a shame it was to have wrecked a classic car in such a way.

Even so, he decided to wait and make sure the driver was okay.

After several minutes without any movement, David's conscience got the better of him and he strolled out into the field to see if anyone was hurt.

To his shock, the field was completely empty.

Not only were there no signs of the car driving away, but there were no signs of the path it had taken from the sharp curve into the field.

Thinking it must have driven off some other way, he got back into his own vehicle and drove on, through the curve and back onto a paved road.

David arrived late for his interview, which ended up being a complete disaster.

He would later say he just couldn't get the image of that speeding car out of his mind.

To him, it looked like something you'd see in a museum or classic car show, not speeding around the back roads of North Carolina.

But it was when he drove back that things got strange.

As anyone would, he took the exact same route home, only to find that the road had changed somehow.

There was no sharp S curve and no sections of dirt road.

He did find the field, however, and inside of it, he saw the car.

Only, this was not the shiny black classic he'd he'd seen crash earlier that day.

This car had long since rusted out, its windows shattered with weeds coiling up through the engine block.

It was the same model, but this one had clearly been here for decades.

He checked the area carefully, scanning for tyre tracks, disturbed soil, anything that could explain what he'd witnessed.

But there was nothing.

Just a shell of a forgotten vehicle, rusted and silent, like it had been waiting for him.

David never found a rational explanation.

He told friends but few believed him.

They figured he must have seen a different car or even imagined the whole thing.

But David knew he had witnessed a crash that day.

He'd just been 40 or 50 years too late.

As unsettling as these time slips may be, they pale in comparison to our final story which not only landed the four people who experienced it in a different time, but in a completely different reality.

In the remote desert region of southwestern Utah, not far from the Nevada state line, lies a scarcely documented area known as Gaddianton Canyon.

It is a place of sparse vegetation, jagged rock formations, and has a history of unsettling folklore, largely dismissed by modern sensibilities, but not forgotten by those who live nearby.

In May of 1972, an encounter in this little-known landmark would leave four women deeply shaken and investigators baffled for decades to come.

The incident occurred just after 10 p.m.

on a dark and moonless night.

Four college students, two sisters, their cousin and a close friend, were returning to their dormitory following a day at the Utah State Rodeo.

They were traveling westward in a 1971 Chevy Nova along Utah Highway 56 with the aim of arriving back at their campus before the midnight curfew.

With time running short, one of the passengers suggested taking a known but rarely used shortcut through Gaddyanton Canyon.

Although some locals had long warned against travelling along this stretch of road, citing old cephalus stories of vanishings and other strange occurrences, the women decided to proceed.

Upon reaching the Union Pacific Railway crossing, they approached a fork in the road, where one path continued along the main highway and the other dipped southward into the darkness of the surrounding landscape.

Without a second thought, the girls turned off into the canyon.

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At first, the detour seemed uneventful as the road narrowed and twisted between canyon walls.

Approximately 15 minutes later, however, the women encountered a sheer cliff face obstructing their way.

With no alternative, they turned around, frustrated by the added delay.

It was during this return journey that the group began to notice several disconcerting changes.

The surface of the road seemed to have transformed from asphalt to crack concrete.

The desert landscape had shifted as well.

Where there had been sagebush and red dust, there now stretched cultivated fields filled with unfamiliar vegetation.

Most inexplicably, a full moon now illuminated the terrain, despite the night having previously been moonless.

As the car proceeded, the women observed what appeared to be a lake in the distance, reflecting the moonlight across its surface.

Soon after, a low-lying building came into view, dimly lit and unmarked except for a large sign bearing strange angular symbols.

The characters did not resemble any known alphabet.

Believing it to be a rest stop or small establishment, they slowed the vehicle.

But before they could approach further, The building's doors abruptly opened and between 10 and 15 figures emerged, shouting in a language the women could not understand.

As they moved towards the vehicle, it became apparent that these individuals were not only extraordinarily tall, but not even human.

Their proportions and movements were distinctly unnatural.

The girls sped away, momentarily relieved to have escaped the unsettling scene.

But the reprieve would be short-lived.

Just minutes later, lights appeared in the distance behind them, rapidly gaining ground.

As the lights drew closer, the women saw four small egg-shaped vehicles each with a single headlight, two front wheels and one at the rear.

The crafts emitted no sound but moved at alarming speed.

Then there was a bright flash of light.

In an instant the strange vehicles vanished and the women found themselves driving across the rugged terrain of the Nevada desert.

They continued until the terrain became too unforgiving.

Though visibly shaken they were unharmed but the vehicle was no longer drivable.

Three of its tyres were flat.

With no other options they chose to spend the night in the car.

At dawn They set out on foot and eventually reached Highway 56.

There they were spotted by a highway patrol officer and were escorted to to the local police station where statements were taken from each of them.

A brief investigation revealed that no tire tracks were found near the canyon entrance where the car had apparently turned off.

However, the officers did find tyre tracks which extended a mere 200 yards into the desert before abruptly stopping.

There were no signs of skidding, dragging or external interference.

The tracks then resumed roughly 3 miles away, continuing for another 300 yards and leading right to the broken down vehicle, which was sitting in the middle of the desert.

This strange inconsistency raised serious questions as to how it had arrived at that location, leaving hardly any tracks over such a long distance.

Each of these stories is unique in its own way, but all share one unnerving thread, a sudden, inexplicable and unwelcome distortion of time and space.

Skeptics are quick to dismiss these experiences as nothing more than campfire tales and urban legends, yet this is one of the few topics in which scientists and paranormal theorists share similar explanations.

Some theoretical physicists believe in what is known as the many worlds theory.

the idea that an infinite number of parallel realities exist besides our own.

To them, time and interdimensional slips could represent moments of overlap between these realities, with matter, including people, accidentally passing through.

The incident involving the four college students in Gadianton Canyon lends itself to this interpretation.

They didn't just experience a time slip, they seemed to cross into an environment altogether different to their own, altered geography, unknown symbols, and beings that defied human biology.

Could the canyon itself be a geographical weak point, an inadvertent gateway between dimensions?

David Hale's account also supports this idea.

He didn't vanish or lose time.

He simply witnessed something that shouldn't have been happening in his present moment.

Yet the accident he saw had occurred decades earlier.

If time and space aren't fixed, it suggests certain places may allow them to intersect.

Legends of Enoch, King Kikudmi and Asheen hint that such distortions may have existed throughout history.

But physics is not the only realm of science to tackle the concept of time and interdimensional slips.

Psychology states that in moments of stress, grief or fatigue, the brain is capable of remarkable distortions.

There's also the phenomenon of memory confabulation, where the brain fills in gaps with imagined events.

The only problem is that except for David's account, each of these stories involves multiple witnesses.

And what of Carl's predictions?

He came away from his experience with knowledge that later proved to be 100% correct.

More importantly, the men in the lab coats he interacted with seemed to have been expecting him.

One of them even said, not yet, as if acknowledging that Carl was an innocent victim of their experiments.

Finally, those with even a passing interest in the paranormal may have bristled at the mention of the location where Carl had his experience, Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

In 1955, this was allegedly the location of one of the most famous extraterrestrial encounters in US history.

in which several families claimed to have been terrorized by what they described as alien creatures attacking their farmhouse.

The area is still considered a hotbed of UFO activity today, which both sceptics and believers point to as having something to do with a nearby army base.

Was Project Gateway a government time travel experiment based on alien technology?

Though the project is not mentioned by name, the term gateway does appear frequently in CIA records and other documents relating to human consciousness, space and time.

Whatever their cause, time and interdimensional slips remain one of the most unsettling phenomena in the world of the unexplained.

This is because they suggest we might be wrong about one of the most fundamental and grounding concepts in all of nature.

While skeptics point to psychological and environmental causes, there is no shortage of respected scientists who believe in things like dimensional bleed-throughs and multiple overlapping worlds.

In the end, none of these explanations can fully account for the consistency, detail or emotional weight found in the stories of those who traveled through time and between dimensions against their will.

If space-time isn't as fixed as we think, then where do we stand?

Are we walking forward, drifting sideways or moving in a series of overlapping circles?

For those who've slipped, there's no easy return.

Whether they found another world or just a reflection reflection of their own mind, the experience changes them.

And perhaps that's the real mystery.

Not where they went,

but why they were allowed to go.

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