Clarence Street Time Slip in Staines, Surrey, London | True Scary Stories & Spooky Folklore | Ep #56

0:02 A time slip is not something you turn into HR or Accounts payable. I'll be here all week. Hello stranger, and welcome to Madam Strange Ways, where I, Madam Strange Ways, narrate your true strange stories of the unexplained. Whether you're a skeptic, A believer, or. Some. Secret third thing stick around after the story where I'll share my strange thoughts, strange research, and strange observations about said strange story. Along the way, I will also drag you down a slew of strange rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must.

0:45 Before we get to the True Strange story, however, the strangest of Shout outs to my Patreon patrons TJ Hotter of the Tapes of Trepidation podcast, G Man Music. Ted, Keith, and Tori, thank you so much to my Feral Fiendish 5 for supporting the show. Hear your name at the beginning of every episode, get a free sticker, and get bonus Madam Strange Notes episodes just for joining the Patreon today at patreon.com/madam. Strange Ways. I swear that Thunder is a paid actor. Now that it's about to rain Hellcats and hell hounds outside, though, you know what that means. Time for our new True Strange story here with Madam Strange Ways. Content warning this episode includes non gratuitous references to suicide.

1:54 Please listen with care. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideation, go to findahelpline.com and enter your country and it'll give you a suicide helpline to call or text in the USA and Canada, dial or text 988 clearance St. Time slip by Izzy Trigger warning a suicide is mentioned in the postscript. Hi Reddit, I've had a lot of strange experience in my 46 years. I finally decided to share them online. This is the one I chose to describe first. Apologies for the length, but I remember every detail of this clearly, helped by the fact that I wrote it all down as soon as I got home.

2:42 It was dusk, approximately 5:50 PM on Monday the 1st of November 2004. I'm 25 years old, It's lightly raining and I'm at the bridge end of Clarence Street, Staines, Surrey, UK, Walking home towards Egham after a day in the office. It's an Old Street, 4 lanes with a narrow median. The pavement or sidewalk, I'll use the latter term henceforth on my side at least, is just about wide enough for two people to pass, not much more, and has, or at least had at the time, an uneven patchwork surface which often presented a trip hazard. Since it is the evening rush hour, I am one of very many people heading home. The road is busy with cars and there are many pedestrians who might have to avoid bumping shoulders with whilst avoiding the puddles.

3:32 I look ahead to see a young woman walking towards me about 15 feet away. She has long brown hair, wears a thick white sweater and carries a black leather bag. She moves slightly to her left and I move slightly to mine so we can easily pass. I glance down to check my footing and in the exact moment that I look up, everything changed. The young woman vanished. Just popped out of existence like a glitch in a video game, as did all of the six or seven cars which were in my field of view on this side of the road. Simply gone in a moment, along with the rain and the puddles. Even the ground is now bone dry.

4:13 I stopped in my tracks, almost frozen to the spot. Every hair stood on end and my blood ran cold. I snapped my head round to see if the young woman had passed me, though she would have had to have teleported if so. No, she wasn't there. Nobody was. As far as I could see on my side of the road. There was now not a soul. Except there was now an old man in front of me, a man who I can say for certain had not been there before. He was about 20 feet in front of me with his back to me such that I had a three quarter rear view of him, 75 or 80 years old, a hunched stance, messy Gray hair, and a bald spot. For fans of the British Irish sitcom Father Ted, he looked exactly like Father Jack, at least from my perspective. He wore a slightly baggy and very crumpled dark grey suit and black shoes.

5:09 He was standing right on the curb in a rather odd way. His heels were on the curb and his feet were flat, leaving the toes of his shoes hung in the air over the edge in a way that almost seemed to defy gravity. I stood and stared at this man for a good 15 or 20 seconds, taking in every detail. This was no shadow in the corner of my eye. This man was as real as any. Notably, he was pointing towards the bridge, intently pointing with an arm fully extended, and though I couldn't see his face, I could see his mouth was open. I looked hard towards the bridge, but could not see anything of note that he might be pointing at.

5:51 But what was notable to me as I did so was that the other side of Clarence Street was as normal and as busy as it should be, and if something spooky was happening here, it was not visible to my fellow commuters. Most eerily, I couldn't hear any of it. All the racket of cars and their horns. People on the phone was mute. All was dead silence except for my own breath and subsequent footsteps. Well, whatever the case, I needed to pass this man. So I stepped to my right and gave him a berth so wide my shoulder was rubbing the walls as I passed him, all the while keeping him in my peripheral vision and decided in that moment that I would look round and look at his face as soon as I had passed.

6:41 I wanted to see the nature of his expression. Was he sad, angry, shocked. Confused? Despite these extremely odd circumstances, he could just be an old man with Alzheimer's, lost and in need of help. Also, I wanted to see if he really did look like Father Jack. So when I was no more than three paces past him, I turned to look at his face and he was gone, Vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye. Just like that young woman. My blood ran cold for a second time. I was now the only person on this side of the road, whilst the other side remained as busy as ever. There was simply nowhere for him to have gone. No cars to duck behind, no doorways to dash into. Nothing.

7:27 I stood there for a while and took in the scene across the road. It didn't quite seem right. The colours looked more vivid than they should be, certainly compared to my side, which seemed so desaturated of colour as to almost be in grayscale. These completely oblivious commuters seem to move strangely, almost speed up, and everything looked a bit smudgy, as if all of this was on the other side of a wall of wet glass. That's the only way I can describe it. What's more, it was clearly still raining on the other side of the road, whilst my side was bone dry. This divide, this apparent wall between realities, seemed to reach all the way to the bend in the distance, right down the line of the median, which was less than 20 feet away, though I got the distinct feeling that it was now inaccessible to me.

8:19 Maybe it was the rising fear, because I felt the sudden need to get the hell out of there. I turned and walked very briskly toward the corner of the street where I was relieved to see traffic on Bridge St. which looked completely normal, even making eye contact with a driver as I picked my way through it. Human acknowledgement, which was of a huge comfort in that moment. I turned left on the other side and jogged towards the bridge before stopping to look back where I had been. Barely 15 seconds had passed, but that part of Clarence St., impossibly, was now completely unremarkable, populated with cars as it should be, just as the sidewalk was now full of people marching home in both directions and apparently in the rain.

9:07 Whatever it was that I experienced had either passed or could only be seen from within Postscript. As I stood there on the end of the bridge, I wondered what that old man, if he existed at all, could have been pointing so intently at. Not much had happened on that bridge in recent memory, but there was a deeply traumatic event from my childhood that stood out. When I was about 6, circa 1985, I was feeding the ducks with my mum and sister on the Bank of the river, very close to the bridge. There was a sudden. Hullabaloo on the other side, shouting and screaming.

9:47 A young woman had climbed over the railings atop the bridge and was about to jump. Despite the pleading from those around. Just moments later she did so, fatally striking something hard on her way to the water amid the crying and wailing of onlookers. Some ran down to the bank and jumped in to try and reach her, but it was in vain of saving her life. It was too late. I remember my mother trying to stop my sister and I from seeing it, trying to usher us away from the ducks in this horrible scene, but in truth, we had all seen everything already. I don't know. Maybe it's not at all related to what I think of as a time slip. Maybe it's not a time slip at all, but some other inexplicable event.

10:35 All I know is I was young and fit. No alcohol, no medication. I had an appallingly easy desk job which left me neither tired nor stressed. I wrote every detail of this down when I got home, and though I have trod that same sidewalk many hundreds of times since, nothing like it has repeated. Izzy, thank you so much for letting me narrate your story on the show. I am so sorry that you had to witness that as a kid.

11:17 That's so stressful. Not not what you want to see as a kid. So I'm sorry that you had to experience it. I do think that it's fair to wonder if having seen that woman take her own life, if maybe that impacted what you saw as an adult walking down that same St. towards that same bridge. I mean, whether that's trauma resurfacing or if there's actually something unexplained or paranormal going on. Because, you know, I mean, classic paranormal activity, it's drawn to places that have trauma or sadness or violence or death, you know, etcetera. Either way though is fair to consider now. I love a good time slip. This is the first. I think this is the first time slip that's been on the show.

12:00 So woo exciting. I love a good time slip. This story does not disappoint. Not only is it fabulously written, but it's also so spooky. It's so spooky because I don't even, honestly, I don't know what I would do if that happened to me. I don't know what I would do. I would feel absolutely insane. And of course, if this is not your first time listening to the show, oh, are you new? Welcome, welcome, hello. It's good to have you. Or if you have listened to the show many times, in which case, welcome back. What I like to talk about is that so many people are afraid that having had some sort of unexplained experience means that they're crazy. Air quotes.

12:45 You can't see air quotes crazy. Or that they're never going to be normal again and that they are permanently damaged. They are permanently crazy. They're insane. And of course this stuff is crazy making, but that doesn't make you crazy. That was good. That just happened. That was it's crazy making. That doesn't make you crazy. Someone else surely has thought of this prior to me, if not TMTM, Madam Strangeways, All rights reserved, patent pending, etcetera. But it would make me feel insane. I would not know what to do with myself if that happened to me. Now. Did we confirm it definitely wasn't Father Ted? Are we sure it wasn't him?

13:27 I feel like we did establish it in the story that it wasn't, but how? What if it was? Would that make it even stranger of a story if it actually was? Now I intended for this to be an all time slips all the time episode where I talked all about. Time slips, time slips, time slips. But as usual, I did get pulled. Down a ton of spooky. Historical rabbit holes along the way, but I will save them for the end so that we can get right to the good stuff. Time slips? What is a time slip? Let's do it. No time slipping through my fingers. All the time slips, time slip after time slip. That one doesn't work as well.

14:09 It's fine a time slip. It's not something you turn into HR or accounts payable. I'll be here all week. It's much more, you might say wibbly wobbly. It's much more wibbly wobbly than that. A time slip is when a person or a group of people accidentally travel through time by unknown means, usually returning to their original time very shortly after, sometimes without even realizing that it happened until they returned to the place that it happened to find it completely different. Before I give you some famous examples of time slips, though, Put a pin in that. Let's talk about what could have possibly happened to Izzy to explain this now. That's what I like to do here on the show. That's what we do here at Madam Strange Ways.

14:51 Me being the royal Strange we, that's what we me. That's what I like to do. That's what me like to do here. I love to discuss not only paranormal theories, but also naturalistic explanations. You know, like mundane explanations for all of the strange stories on the show. But I'm going to keep it pretty brief today. Because of all the rabbit holes. All right, so. We're going to start with naturalistic or mundane or skeptical etcetera theories. So I think most skeptics would just suggest right off the bat that it was an isolated hallucination. I that I think any skeptic out there listening is thinking it was a hallucination or maybe a false memory. But we're going to go with hallucination, as I have said countless.

15:32 Times on the show, and we'll continue. To say countless times more hallucinations, wait countless times. Hallucinations are far more common than most people realize, and you don't have to be sick or mentally ill or crazy air quotes again or anything else to have them. Meaning hallucinations. They're super common. Normal is maybe not the word, but common is the correct word and they can be due to anything like starting or stopping a medication or a supplement or. Maybe you have sleep deprivation, although Izzy did say that he was healthy and not on any medication and not stressed and not tired. And Izzy, I believe you. I believed that you weren't feeling stressed or tired or sick. But I will say that it might surprise. Some of you to learn that.

16:17 You are so used to. Ignoring your own body's needs and and it's cries for help that feeling tired or stressed or unwell becomes your norm and you don't even. Realize how tired or stressed or unwell. That you are. And it's not until you get relief that you realize what a tough time you were having. I don't know that that's the case here. I am not really suggesting that it is. I am just mentioning it as an observer and OK, maybe what I'm about to say does not necessarily apply to this time slip, but look what I found in my research that might have something to do with, if not this time slip, other time slips. A case file called A Unique Case of Dehydration related Psychosis published by Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc. In a strange nutshell, it concludes that due to anecdotal evidence that dehydration can lead to temporary psychosis, including visual and auditory hallucinations, which resolves when electrolytes are back in balance and the patient is properly hydrated again.

17:19 I'm always saying this, stay hydrated. Staying hydrated doesn't just mean drinking water or drinking a lot of water. You got to get those electrolytes in, but not too many electrolytes because sodium is an electrolyte and you don't want to have too much sodium. It's so. Hard striking a perfect balance. Now, Izzy, I trust that you weren't in psychosis, even if you were just in temporary dehydrated psychosis. But a skeptic would have to wonder at what. Point of dehydration, would it actually call cause hallucinations? Is it the same level for everyone? Like if if 500 people are all becoming dehydrated do some of them start to hallucinate earlier than others? Like, because of, I don't know, science is hallucinating and temporary psychosis something that could happen after too many days of not enough water and then maybe bending the elbow at the pub or having a cheeky canned gin and tonic with a priest maybe.

18:18 I mean if your potassium is low enough potassium. 'S a thing that matters. So I started Googling. I started Googling about potassium and then look at this. It's not potassium, but hold on, look at this. Severe vitamin B12 deficiency can. Also cause hallucinations. What kids eat your vitamins? Take your vitamins. What is what's B what? What BI? Take B12 supplements so I don't know what foods have it. I take them. You should take them. I've never hallucinated from a lack of B12, but I was deficient in B12 so I might have been close. Maybe I was hallucinating and I didn't know. That's so scary. All right, on to Pub Med. Here's a case report titled severe asymptomatic hypokalemia associated with prolonged licorice ingestion. Licorice like the candy and then actually this. Didn't come up when I was searching for potassium, but Speaking of low potassium, apparently chronic licorice ingestion first of all.

19:19 Who outside of Scandinavia is? Eating a a chronic amount of licorice? I have to know, do you love licorice? Are are you eating a chronic amount of licorice? Let me know I'm out of strangeways@gmail.com Anyway, Chronic. Licorice ingestion can precipitate severe hypokalemia, which is low potassium, although patients may remain asymptomatic. This case report indicates that the severity of a patient's clinical presentation depends on individual susceptibility, as well as the dose and duration of licorice intake. Izzy, are you a licorice fiend? Were you on a licorice kick? Was licorice your hyperfixation snack around that time? Let me know.

20:01 Did I crack the case? Let me know. I'm out of strangeways@gmail.com. You know what? Speaking of licorice, I've, I love salty foods. I don't like the taste of licorice, but salty licorice I'm like, I wish I liked licorice. So I could eat this salty licorice. So weird. I think it's weird. Sorry. Oh, well, that's strange, you might say. Oh, it's strange. This is Madam Strange Ways from the future, Madam Future Ways. I kind of left out the most relevant part to Izzy's story. So instead of trying to just seamlessly put it in there so you didn't notice. As always, I like to admit my mistakes. I like to show you guys I am imperfect. I mean depending on the day.

20:45 So most relevant to Izzy's specific situation, because of the horrific, traumatic thing that he saw as a child, I now take you to the National Library. Of medicine, so we're at pub. Med and the article that we're looking at is Hallucinations and Post traumatic stress Disorder. Insights from predictive coding. I don't know what predictive coding means. I don't think I need to understand because they have put it here and a neat little abstract and a little introduction that I'm going to read you now pause PTSD you if if you've been here before, again, welcome back. If you've been here before. I talk a lot about complex PTSD. See PTSD, which comes from kind of prolonged childhood trauma, not necessarily one event.

21:30 Like if you are in a car wreck, that would be PTSD. You can get PTSD from a car wreck or obviously going to war. CPTSD is something that's like prolonged overtime. But also there's acute stress disorder which is the precursor to PTSD. So acute stress disorder would be like from like 3 days to a month. And if your symptoms extend past that, then that becomes PTSD. Of course, PTSD sometimes doesn't show up, you know, for a little bit, for a while after something happens. It doesn't immediately happen. And it's not really clear from Izzy's writing if Izzy had experienced any other PTSD symptoms related to seeing that woman jump off the bridge.

22:10 TBD but I feel like this is relevant. I can't believe I didn't mention this. I was in the shower this morning and I was like. Did I completely skip over this? OK, I did. So here we go, introduction to this study. Although hallucinations are not part of the DSM 5 criteria for Post traumatic stress disorder PTSD, auditory hallucinations are increasingly noted as a feature of trauma and combat related PTSD. OK I know it wasn't combat and I know that it's not specifically hallucinations or auditory hallucinations. OK, put a pin in. That Intrusive memory of a traumatic event, often in the form of a visual image, is a. Hallmark symptom of PTSD. Clinically, the presence of auditory hallucinations is often synonymous with a psychotic disorder.

22:54 However, hallucinations in PTSD often occur in the absence of clear delusions, formal thought, disorganization, disorganized speech or behavior, thusly ruling out a comorbid psychotic disorder like schizophrenia. So it's not. So they're basically saying that you're not having delusions, you're just having hallucinations, and you're not acting like you have schizophrenia, you're just having PTSD hallucinations. But listen. It goes on. It's just a few sentences. I'm skipping around. That PTSD is considered a disorder of memory processing and hallucinations and mutation of perception emphasizes the possible interactions between memory and perception and their disinteraction and generating psychotic departures from consensual reality.

23:40 OK, that sentence gets a little thick for me, but I feel like I'm picking up what they're putting down because say yes, yes, Izzy, you must have been on that bridge dozens if not hundreds or thousands of times since you saw that happen. However, if PTSD is considered a disorder of memory, processing disorder being the keyword and you're hallucinating a specific memory of something that you saw that day, maybe Father Jack from Father Ted, maybe Father Jack. Maybe you did see him as a kid. I mean, he's pointing at the bridge and he's staring at it in horror, right? Maybe that is something that you saw as a child and maybe that's what you hallucinated that day, that rainy day. I'm not saying this definitely was a hallucination. I am just saying these are just the facts. I am just the messenger.

24:29 I am just the strange messenger. All right, Madam. Strange ways from the future, Outback to the Past. Which is funny because of what I'm about to be talking about. OK. Now that wraps up all the skeptical slash naturalistic stuff. I think that was pretty. Compelling though, you know? I mean, maybe Izzy has never liked like Gresham was, not consuming A chronic amount of it. Or maybe. Izzy is the most well hydrated person and the planet, but I feel like they were pretty compelling. But now onto the spooky stuff, the paranormal, the unexplained. This stuff kind of made my head hurt. So let's just try, all right?

25:10 Is a time slip just accidentally stumbling into one of the possibly infinite universes that could potentially have been created from the moment The Big Bang banged? Like there's an infinite amount of universes where No2 of you are living the exact same lives. Just, you know, the universes aren't, you know, like perfectly lined up, I guess. So they're not like all in align neatly because, I mean, different choices are happening and and you're a different person in those, but you're still you, but you're not this you. I mean, like what's being off a couple decades in the scheme of things? I'm not really sure how one would slip from 1 into the other. I don't know the mechanics behind that, and I don't know how they would get back again or if you could do it on purpose instead of on accident, but that's basically. The multiverse theory, which I could spend, you know, no less than 17 episodes on.

25:58 So I'm forcing myself to move on. Also because it makes my. Head hurt and then I started thinking about string theory, which I also maybe the string theory. I picture them like little spaghetti strands and how you don't think it's sticky like when they're cooked but then dried, not dried. But you know what I'm saying? When they've been drained and then they've been heated a little so the waters anyway, they get a little sticky because of the starch. And so maybe that's like spaghetti strands and each spaghetti strand is universe and some of them stuck get stuck together in certain points and then they get unstuck and maybe that's a time slip. I don't know. I think I just cracked the case, guys. What do you think? Let me know, Madam Strange. Waste at Gmail. Dot com But what I really want to know, and I always think this about time slips, was that Father Ted guy telling someone his same time slip story but from his POV like in his time slip or like what about the woman who saw? OK, what about the woman who saw Izzy disappear? Or did she see Izzy disappear?

26:57 Did she just see him look walking around looking crazy? You know, I we don't know. I will never know. I wish we could ask those people, OK. And no, actually Speaking of that, people do interact with people in these time slips from an earlier time. Though it honestly just occurred to me that none of these happen where you slip into the future. It's always slipping back into the past. Interesting. There's something there. But anyway, if we're interacting with people from the past, what's to say that we couldn't accidentally say or do something that would impact time like Back to the Future or Back to the Future? Are there other movies like Looper?

27:37 Is it Looper? I don't know other time travel movies like that. What if you accidentally do that? Like what if we had a time slip that happened? OK, OK, OK. Here's what it is. What if I had a time slip and I saw my grandfather and then. For whatever reason, stay with me here because we're getting somewhere with those. I see my grandfather during a time slip and then I kill my grandfather. Don't ask. First of all, my both my grandfathers are dead. So this is a moot. Point. Let's just say it happens. I've murdered my grandfather in cold blood in the split seconds of time that I am in a time slip. OK, bear with me. But I couldn't kill him because if I killed him then I wouldn't have been able to have the time slip in the 1st place.

28:20 Because if I killed him here, then he wouldn't have been able to. I wouldn't be existing because he would be dead. But I guess if it's. Different timelines. Anyway, this is apparently called the Grandfather paradox. It's a whole thing from Wikipedia. A temporal paradox, time paradox, or time travel paradox is an apparent or actual contradiction associated with the idea of time travel or other foreknowledge of the future. This scenario is self contradictory, specifically regarding the grandfather paradox. One proposed resolution for this paradox is that a time traveller can do anything that did happen, but cannot do anything that did not. Happen. My head hurts. Another proposed resolution is simply that time travel is.

29:01 Impossible. Oh, OK. I mean, I guess that does kind of neatly wrap that all up. Is that time travel is not possible. OK, sure. And yet some people think that like everything else that they see wrong with the world, that time slips are because of demons. Demons. It's never demons. Don't make me be all House MD about this. OK. It's never demons, never demons. And there's not going to be an episode where it actually is demons. That's not going to happen. Not right here, partner. Hey. It's me again, Madam Strange Ways from the future future more future than the last Madam Strange Ways that Madam Strange ways was basically from the past compared to this Madam Strange ways. Anyway, give this 32nd trailer for a fellow spooky podcast to. Listen, and then maybe give the show a listen too. And then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled Spooky Strange podcast content.

30:01 Here we go. If you're anything like me, you're always hunting for stories that make your skin crawl in the best way. That's why I have to tell you about Grimly. Every week, they dig into the unholy, the unsolved, and the deeply unsettling, from chilling true crime to eerie tales that blur the line between fact and folklore. The production is hauntingly good, the storytelling absolutely captivating. It's the kind of podcast that stays with you long after you finish listening. So if you're ready to explore the darker side of history and humanity, subscribe to Grimly wherever you get your podcasts. Just don't say I didn't warn you. And Madam Strange ways from the future out again. But here are some famous time slips that I mentioned earlier. Remember that pen?

30:47 We're back. Here are some famous time slips that you should. Definitely read up on if you want to know more. And for some reason, Liverpool and Suffolk in the United Kingdom have a huge amount of time slips compared to other locations. Is it Ley lines? A thinner veil? LSD. Maybe it's proximity to fish and chips? Who can say? All right, here we go. In 1957, Suffolk, UK, three soldiers walked into a village called Kersey and ended up might be Kersey. I didn't look that up. Anyway, they ended up finding themselves temporarily transported to medieval England In 19 O1, two women in Versailles were transported back to 1744 and spotted none other than Marie Antoinette. Because of course, because of course they did. You know, when people talk about, oh, I did past life regression, which never, by the way, if you're listening to this, do not ever do any sort of past life regression. Never do any sort of hypnosis, anything, memory reclamation. Don't do it.

31:54 Don't do it. Just don't do it. Don't let someone into your head like that. Let's just not do it anyway. People that do it with the past life regression, they're always a queen, you know, or or a Princess or a king and they're never. Just. Some guy you know, struggling to eat. So I was like Cleopatra, OK. Anyway. Most famously in Bold Street, Liverpool from Medium. On a sunny day in July 1996, an off duty policeman named Frank hi Frank went shopping with his wife Carol. Hi Carol in Liverpool city centre. His wife went to Dylan's bookshop, but Frank noticed the street was cobbled where it never had been before, and instead of modern clothes, people wore clothes from the 1950s.

32:43 Crossing the road, Frank saw in place of Dylan's. Bookshop. There was a large store. With the name Cripps over its two entrances and a window display containing women's handbags and shoes, Frank saw a young woman dressed in the clothes of the mid 90s. She also carried a bag branded with Miss Selfridge, a store that was not in Liverpool in the 1950s. This modern girl entered Cripps looking baffled. And then suddenly, the whole street scene reverted to 1996. Frank asked the young woman if she saw the same things he had seen. She said she had and seemed frightened. Later it transpired that a woman's Outfitters called Crips had indeed stood on the site of Dylan's bookshop in the 1950s. Spooky.

33:27 That's spooky. And that's a truncated version. That is a abridged version of that story. So you can go to Medium, or you can just Google Liverpool Time slip and you're going to find a bunch of different people telling the story. I think that's probably the most famous time slip story. Anyway, now it's time for my accidental strange dive. Into this particular time slip. Just what everyone's been waiting for. All right, all right, so we're in the United Kingdom. By the way, did you know that the United Kingdom is actually short for the United Kingdom of Great Britain in Northern Ireland? Which is the longest? Country name in the world we're in Great Britain. Here we go. Hold on. Wherein Great Britain represents England, Wales and Scotland. Wales, which was never a Kingdom but was conquered by the English, well, the Normans. That's.

34:11 Fine splitting hairs and also Scotland which was a Kingdom and England did try and fail to conquer them with brute. Force. But in true English fashion, in which I think any English listeners will agree, England ultimately conquered Scotland via underhanded bureaucracy. The whole of Ireland used to be part of the United Kingdom until Northern Ireland, full of Protestants and the Republic of Ireland, full of Catholics broke up, citing irreconcilable differences. OK, here we go. We're coming back out of the rabbit hole. Just there's just, there's one last thing. OK? This is a comment I found on guardian.co.uk in my rabbit hole research and this is a comment by Marin Jones in Brixton. In his Seminole treatise, what is a nation? Boring.

34:54 It sounds so boring, right? Hold on, just hold on. In his Seminole treatise, What is a Nation? The French philosopher and writer Ernest Renan. I feel like it's Renan Winningly suggested. That a nation is a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors. It just seemed really fitting to me. OK, right. Where were we? All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. We're in the UK, England. OK, we're in Surrey. Which must have good Curry. We are also. In specifically Stains upon Thames, it's about an hour's Dr. Westy Southie from London. OK, sorry. Hold. On I just got to go in a brief little rabbit hole. Found this gym on the Wikipedia page for stains, which is the place where this happened.

35:36 At the end of the 20th century, Stains became infamous as the hometown of the fictional film and television character Ali G. What although many local residents felt that the town's reputation was suffering through its association with the character. Sasha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G, praised Staines for being a lovely leafy middle class suburb where Swans swim under the beautiful bridge. Partly in response to the reaction to the character, Spelthorne Borough Council voted in 2011 to add the suffix upon Thames to the official name of the town, so it used to be called Staines. Now it's called Stains upon Thames, all because of Sasha Baron Cohen, my wife.

36:18 I know that's not allergy. It's fine. We're continuing. Back to the strangeness and researching the bridge. That's in the story which come to find is called Stainsbridge, but not stains upon Thames Bridge, just Stainsbridge. I Google mapped it and I saw it. What should I discover in this research? But the fact that there was a Roman Rd. built in the 1st century called the Devil's Hwy. That used to run across the Thames at Staines, then called Pontase by the Romans. It wasn't called Staines, it was called Pontase by the Romans connecting it to. London, which the Romans called Londinium, by the way. But what are you talking about? Devil's Hwy. Come on, How close was the Devil's Hwy. to this event? How close was the Devil's Hwy.

37:04 to this time slip? I got really excited. OK, I got really excited and so I started. Going down the rabbit hole here you. Go Dragon, you're kicking and screaming. Let's go. But unfortunately it looks like the reason it's called Devil's Highway. Is that medieval folk who encountered the long abandoned Roman Rd. thought that only the devil himself? Could create infrastructure so straight and exact. It's funny because it's 2026 and actually we're still doing this, but with the pyramids and aliens. I guess it's actually not that funny. And by the way, don't get the Devil's Hwy. confused with the Devil's Causeway, which is another Roman Rd. up north in Northumberland in northern England. But there do seem to be at least two Devil's Highways in London.

37:47 Devil's Highways? Would that be like Attorneys General? So that be just like Devil's Hwy. Nope, because that's just all right. Anyway, there seem to be at least two Devil's Highways. In London, the other being a road called A-666-UP in Manchester. What? No question where that street got its name. To be clear, that's where it got its name. Is it 666? Which is so metal. And while we're just varying. Slightly off topic, there also was a route. 666. Or Route 666. Now, I don't know how I would have normally said it anyway. There was a Route 666 instead of Route 66. It was actually an offshoot of Route 66, but it was Route 666 in the United States, which was renamed boringly to Routes 491 and 191.

38:36 But not just because of Satan, Satan, Satan, but because people kept stealing the signs. They kept stealing the. 666 Route 666, they kept stealing the signs because they're so cool, so they had to rename the highway. I loved that, and that was a great fact. All right, back to Surrey. We're back to Surrey. We're back in Staines, specifically stains upon Thames. The Thames, of course, being the river that winds. Through London. All right, listen to this now. I found this on surreylive.com which is in. Guildford so about. 30 minutes drive South of Staines. But listen, this sounds like a time slip.

39:17 Ghost enthusiast Philip Hutchinson said his favorite story was only told to him recently by a customer on one of his ghost tours. This is where you think I'm going to try to do a Surrey accent? I sure don't know what that I'm not even going to. OK, maybe I'll give it a go. No, I'm not going to give it a go. Nope, I'm not doing it. This lady told me about when she camped on Saint Catherine's Hill with friends in the 1970s. A steam train went past them and people leaned out the window shouting at them to get off the line. But steam trains did not run on that line in the 1970s. And also I immediately thought of any accident which occurred in the 1890s. A steam train hit a cow on the line and many people on board were killed. The lady was unaware of this story, so my guess is that it was related to the crash at Peacemarsh as the line went past the hill.

40:09 Peacemarsh. That's the town name anyway. Now, Izzy, you mentioned heading towards Egham. And I found this really cool site that has an interactive map that shows a bunch of paranormal stuff in Great Britain called Haunted hosts.com if you're in the UK. Specifically Great Britain I assume. Check out Haunted host.com because I thought it was so much fun. When I pulled up stains there was unfortunately nothing there but. Over in Egham. Which is very close, just on the other side of the Thames on the other side of the Stains Bridge where we saw this time slip. Well, here I'll read it to you. This is called. The little man of Egham. Which is already. Why is that already spooky?

40:51 Hillside Villa in Egham, Surrey, is home to a most unsettling presence, the spirit of a child murderer known as the Little Man. Footsteps echoing through the night are said to be his, a haunting reminder of the dark history surrounding this villa. The house was at the center of three heated legal battles. Between 1903 and 1907. With the core question being whether the property was fit for human habitation given its alleged paranormal activity. And then it gives historical context. It says early 20th century England amidst rising concerns about property rights and paranormal activity. I feel like that sentence sounds so boring and yet I am invested.

41:32 I'm all in now. I did not go down a rabbit hole about the little man to find out more about this child murderer. But if you know, if you know anything about the little man, are you the little man of Egham, don't e-mail me. Please don't never e-mail me. Thanks very much. OK, and finally we'll wrap up on a somber note about suicide and the Reverend Thames. That actually does give me some hope in humanity. So it's not completely depressing. There's over 130 bridges that cross the Thames. According to an article in 2012 on thestandard.co.uk, an average of 80 to 100 people lose their lives in the River Thames every year.

42:17 Police say about 80% of those are by suicide, usually by jumping off one of the mini bridges that cross the Thames. But between 2012 and 2025 those numbers seem to have dropped drastically. But it's not necessarily suicide attempts that have dropped, although that might be true. I couldn't find any data to support that, but specifically I'm referencing the fact that London has reduced deaths from suicide attempts of the Thames. So there may be the same amount of attempts, but London has taken great lengths to reduce the amount of deaths from those attempts. This is on The Sunday Times by Lucy Kenningham. About 27 people each year die by suicide in the Thames.

42:57 It would be more if not for the fast response times of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's lifeboat station and the work of the Metropolitan Police's boat teams. Bridge Watch, a volunteer project, is non religious and is open to anyone. It's teams of volunteers walk around the bridges and embankments of central London hoping to intervene if someone looks like they are about to end their life. Many people do not plan to jump from a bridge. While suicide can of course be premeditated, the instinct to self destruct also often occurs in a moment of distinct distress, a loss event as researchers call it, such as a death, a relationship breakdown, or the loss of a job or a home. And I just thought that was so heartwarming that this bridge watch situation, that it happens and it's volunteers. So hey, if you're in the London area. And you want to do something nice for your community. If you want to do some some volunteering, check out Bridge Watch.

43:53 And if you do start volunteering for Bridge Watch, which by the way, I think what they like, they wear these like special, you know, like vests, like bibs or something. And they basically just like walk up and down the bridge just keeping an eye on people. Like, what are they doing? What's that guy doing? He's staring off into the distance, you know. Oh God, what's? Happening and they just go up there and they talk to them. So if you actually end up volunteering for Bridge Watch, I want to hear about it. e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com. If I was in the London area, you'd probably catch me on Bridge Watch. Izzy, honestly, maybe this will make you feel better about what you experienced. You know, and as a child, it might not be easy right away, but you know, maybe it would bring you some relief or some comfort to know that you can make a difference in someone else's life, even if you witnessed that woman in your childhood be unable to be saved. So again, guys, just a reminder, if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideations, seriously, this is a great website at findahelpline.com you can put in any country.

44:54 It'll tell you exactly who to contact. But of course, as most of my listeners are in the US and Canada, you can dial or text 988. How convenient is that? You can text and then there's no pressure. You don't have to talk to someone on the phone. You just text him 988 and listen. I might not be qualified, but if you're having a hard time and you just want to talk to a stranger about it, you can e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. And Izzy again. Thank you so much for allowing me to Share your story on the show.

45:39 Remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. You're safe here with me, probably. Thank you for joining me for more True. Strange stories of the unexplained. I'm running A1 Madam show here so please do me a strange solid and follow the podcast. Leave me a rating on Apple or. Spotify and maybe even join the Patreon at patreon.com/madam Strangeways for bonus content, Madam. Strangeways is produced and narrated by Me, Madam Strangeways. Theme music is by marina.ryan@marinamakes.co. Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram.

46:20 Every strange story is shared with the permission of the author. You can submit your own true strange story to madamstrangeways@gmail.com. See you soon, she said ominously.

47:00 Oh, wait a minute. OK, Tylenol break. ASMR Tylenol break OK. Just some strange ASMR for you.