LOOSING TRACK OF TIME

Tim R. Swartz and Sean Casteel (editors.). Weird Time, Zontar Press, 2024.

UFO and time-slip accounts have many similarities. Witnesses often enter a mist and/or feel that their environment has become silent and still. They feel disorientated and are puzzled by what they experience - the 'Oz Factor'. Such events seem to occur in localised ‘hot spots’ such as Liverpool's Bold Street, and certain people often have repeat experiences. 

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SHIFT WORKING

Von Braschler. Time Shifts. Destiny Books, 2021.

This is not quite what its subtitle might imply - experiences of slipping into the past and future - and although that is not in of itself in any way incorrect it is just more than a collection of cases. The book starts off with a few accounts of time slips and there are personal stories from the author’s life throughout but it develops into more of a 'How-To' guide for experiencing such things yourself and what they might mean, rather than just an investigative exploration of the data.

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THE GAP IN THE PLOT

John Buchan. The Gap in the Curtain. Handheld Press, 2021. 

John Buchan is chiefly remembered for his spy novels featuring the adventurer hero Richard Hannay: the most famous being The Thirty Nine Steps. Yet he also wrote a considerable amount of supernatural and weird fiction – four collections were published from 1902 to1928. In 1932 came the novel The Gap in the Curtain exploring the idea of precognition. 

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FUTURES PAST

Martin Van Creveld. Seeing Into the Future, A Short History of Prediction. Reaktion Books, 2020.

One thing you must consider when writing about looking into the future is that for a great part of human history everyone knew that the future was going to be exactly the same as the present, or that any major changes in the world would be part of some endlessly repeating cycle which had been ordained since the creation. 

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TIME OF OUR LIFE

Joseph Mazur. The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time. Yale University Press, 2020.

I have long been fascinated by the mystery of time and specifically anomalies associated with it. So it will be no surprise that I found this book particularity interesting. It is a genuinely fresh approach to the subject and I learnt many things that I never knew. Always a sign of a good book. 

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TIME AND TIME AGAIN

Eric Wargo. Time Loops. Anomalist Books, 2018

First things first - this is the most interesting and well-argued book about a paranormal topic I have read in years. It slowly develops a fascinating case with scientific rigour and, whilst proposing what might seem a startling premise - that precognition is not what we often assume it to be - it never seems more than objective and takes seriously, and argues well, sceptical rebuttals. This approach for me is how we should address these topics and is in the true spirit of Fort and Vallee. 

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