The Liverpool Time Slips and Mysterious Occurences in Bold Street

The Bold Street Timeslips Liverpool parascience.org.uk

The subject of time has always intrigued us. Is it as set as we have always believed? Or does time loop back on itself, giving us a glimpse of a shadowy past out of the corner of our eye.

Was is just our imagination that made us believe we had seen an object or building change before our very eyes, and seem as though we had stepped back into the past?

When this happens we usually shake our heads and put it down to imagination. But over the last few decades, something strange has been happening in or near Bold Street, Liverpool England. Not just a glimpse of the past, but full immersion into the strange and mysterious world of English History, if only for a few moments at a time.

The strange thing about the Bold street time slips is the actual time and place they are set. In the following cases, the people involved do not go back really far, but seem to visit a particular decade or decades.

So far, most of the sightings have centred around the 1950s and ’60s. This is strange in itself. Most time travel experiences seem to take the recipient back to the 18thor 19thcentury. But not in this case.

Are these people simply copying each other in their experiences, or are they genuinely taking a step back in time?

The answer to this has to take into account whether they are doing it deliberately to get noticed. In other words are the perpetuating a hoax?

Another explanation could be mass hallucination.

And last but not least, they really are experiencing this strange phenomena!

The most important point is, the very first person that had this experience, obviously totally believed in what he saw, heard and felt.

So, does time flow like a river? Or does it twist and turn, going forward then sweeping back, picking up historic events and placing them down in front of you, if only for a few moments?

A Step Back In Time To The 1950s levintageexpress.tumblr.com

In this first tale, we find Frank and his wife out for a stroll in Liverpool town center.

It is 1996.

His wife decided that she wanted to go and buy a book at Waterstone’s the large book store, and they started to walk towards the area of the shop.

As they approached Bold street, Frank decided to go to another shop first, but bumped into his friend, and stopped to chat in the street. His wife went ahead without him.

A few moments later, Frank said goodbye, visited his shop and turned to go back to meet his wife. After reaching Bold Street, he headed on towards the bookstore. As he approached, he glanced up and was surprised to see the name, Cripps above the door. As he was about to cross over to see what was going on, a van swept past him with the name Cardin’s on the side. The van drive honked his old fashioned horn and drove past.

Looking around, Frank suddenly realized that things were not quite what they should be. He looked at the cars driving past and realized that they were all old fashioned vehicles such as people would drive back in the 50’s and 60's.

And then he noticed the people. Men were wearing hats and macs, and the women were dressed in head scarves, full skirts and had old fashioned hair styles such as women wore just after the war.

By this time, Frank was beginning to feel slightly freaked out. He carried on crossing the road and headed towards the store.

As he got closer he noticed in the window there were handbags, shoes and umbrellas. Suddenly he saw a young woman looking up at the shop sign. She looked confused.

She was wearing modern clothes and as she saw him approaching, she smiled at him.

Bold Street Liverpool Then And Now forteantimes.com

Frank went into the shop, closely followed by the young women. When they entered he was surprised and pleased to see that it had indeed turned back into a bookshop. The young women smiled, shook her head and said, ‘that was strange, I thought it was a new clothes shop!’ then she walked away looking extremely puzzled.

This may sound an unlikely tale, but the odd thing about it is that Frank was, in fact, a former Police officer who was used to dealing in facts, and definitely wasn’t the type of person who would believe in the paranormal.

Frank never stopped talking about it. Was this a time slip? Evidently Cripps was a women’s shop that sold clothes and other goods decades before!

And Cardin’s was also a well known Liverpool firm that owned vans around the same time.

The second story concerns a young girl by the name of Imogen. She had decided to go into Liverpool to buy her sister Abigail a few things for her new baby. Upon arriving she was happy to see a new MotherCare store that had opened up on the corner of Lord Street and Whitechapel.

She wandered around the store, and picked up a few baby items such as cardigans, baby bibs, and gloves. She was surprised to see how cheap the items were, but thought they were on offer as the store had just opened. Taking them to the counter, she tried to pay with her credit card. The staff member looked at her suspiciously, and went off to get the manager.

When she came back, she looked at the card and told Imogen that they didn’t take cards. So, disappointed, Imogen went and put the items back as she hadn’t any money with her.

When she got home, she told her mother what had happened. Her mother was surprised and really puzzled. ‘That store closed years ago,’ she said. ‘There is a bank there now, in fact that’s where I have my account’.

Not believing her, Imogen took her mother back to the same place the next day. Sure enough the store wasn’t there. It was a bank, just as her mother had told her.

The third tale is of a young man named Sean, who, while shop lifting in Liverpool back in 2006, ran away from a Security Guard and headed down Hanover Street. Trying to shake off the Guard, Sean, 19, turned into a dead end street called Brookes Alley.

By this time he was out of breath and started to get a tight sensation in his chest. He soon realized that actually it wasn’t a problem with him, but the atmosphere around him.

He waited for the Guard to come around the corner after him, but he never appeared. So, thinking he had given him the slip, he sauntered back out and started to walk down Hanover street again. But he soon realised that something was wrong.

The road looked different, and so did the pavement. He noticed cars driving by that looked very old fashioned, and the road works that he knew were there, were now gone.

Soon he saw that the people around him were wearing strange clothes. Crossing over to Bold Street, he noticed that there were traffic lights where they weren’t before, and bushes growing around the Lyceum, near a bar that he recognized.

He carried on walking. Soon he began to feel that something was not quite right. Then he began to panic. He realized that somehow he had stepped back in Time. And the time slip was not going away.

Then he remember his Cell phone. Taking it out of his pocket, he tried to get a signal, but of course it didn’t work. Eventually he began to really panic, but soon spotted a kiosk selling newspapers and headed over.

Leaning over the Stand, he took a look at the front page of the Daily Post. There in bold lettering was the date. 18th May 1967.

He wondered what to do. What happens if he can’t get back to his own time? What about family and friends?

So, speeding up his pace, he reached H. Samuel the Jewelers, and tried his phone once again. This time it worked. Sighing with relief he looked around and realised that he had returned to the present. But the strange thing was, he could still see, down the end of the road, people still walking around in 1967.

By this time Sean had seen enough, and dived onto a bus to go home. When he was interviewed by the local newspaper later, he stated over four times, the exact account.

Now, you may think that Sean was making the story up to escape from the guard. But the strange tale didn’t end there. When the Security Guard was interviewed, he stated that when he ran after Sean, and turned down the dead end Alley after him, he said that Sean had completely disappeared!

When the newspaper checked out the facts of Sean’s story, they found that everything he said was historically accurate.

Thief Running jimjay.blogspot.com

These three stories are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many tales from around Liverpool that tell of time slips, ghosts and other strange phenomenon. The stories keep coming thick and fast, and of course the more tales, the more likely people will start to believe that they are all being made up, or as the saying goes, Urban Tales. So, what do you think? Real life time slips, imagination, mass hallucination or purely tales that have started out as fun but have turned into the greatest Urban Legends of all time.

My opinion is that, yes, something did happen. Probably to the first guy, Frank who was just out shopping with his wife. The others? Maybe it was a case of mistaken roads, taking a wrong turning or just a glitch in the persons memory. By the time they get home they totally believe what happened.

Or is it true? There are so many cases concerning Bold Street, and just about anywhere else in Liverpool, that maybe, just maybe they are all living on top of the biggest time slip phenomena in the World.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk 2011

Paranormal Merseyside by Steven Tucker 2013

Originally published at exemplore.com.