I experienced a 'time slip' that doctors say aren't possible

Sebastian Garrido was traveling to visit his dying grandfather in the hospital when he had what he calls a 'time slip' that changed his views on what happens after we die.

Often dramatized in science fiction, a 'time slip' is defined as a moment when someone accidentally travels through time — but Garrido said his all too real 'time slip' hit him on the street when he noticed a mysterious figure standing nearby.

He told DailyMail.com that a mysterious figure stood along the road, and a closer look revealed it was his grandfather, but younger, as he was in his 40s or 50s.

'Fancy meeting you here, everything will be okay. Tell your dad I'll be fine,' the man said before disappearing.

During the eerie encounter, Garrido, 26, said he 'got goosebumps and then threw up.' Then, he ran to the hospital to see his present-day grandfather, finding the man was still alive, resting in his bed with just weeks to live.

When Garrido arrived at the hospital, his grandfather said, 'I saw you in a dream.' 

While there is no scientific evidence to support time slips, doctors have suggested these experiences could be related to déjà vu, external stimuli impacting the brain, or simply just one way that some people cope psychologically with trauma.

'Time slips might be explained by electromagnetic fields,' as Buckinghamshire New University psychologist Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe wrote for the Daily Mail this June.

'Research from Canadian academics shows that such energy fields can produce hallucinations,' Dr O'Keeffe explained, 'by toying with signals in the brain.'

But, while the psychologist does not himself believe in the phenomena of time slips, he admits that modern physics does not rule it out. 

'If you've seen Christopher Nolan 's sci-fi film Interstellar — or even know your Einstein — you'll be aware that time is not necessarily ­linear,' he argued in his essay.

Garrido, like many experiencers, said it felt very real. The life-changing experience happened in 2021 while Garrido was studying and  being supported through college by his grandfather, Hiram Garrido, with whom he was very close.

Hiram died at the age of 86.

Garrido described the encounter as the 'weirdest experience of his life,' saying he's never experienced anything like it before or since — save for one childhood episode where he saw someone in a dream and then saw someone identical in real life.

He said that his experience of this 'time slip' and other traumas he experienced around this time in his life 'forged him' as a person.

'The experience deeply affected me; I was shaken and didn't know what to think,' Garrido confessed. 'I was very emotional during those weeks.'

'I felt closer to my grandfather, and even though it was strange, I think it was his way of reassuring me that everything would be okay, despite his impending passing,' he said. 'It was a difficult time.'

According to Garrido, the experience changed his views on life and made it easier to think that there might be some form of life or consciousness after death.

Before the experience, Garrido was uncertain in his views, but the meeting with this younger version of his grandfather 'made him wonder' about the true nature of reality. 

'It definitely gave me a different perspective on life and death,' he said.

Stories of 'time slips' first appeared in fiction in the 19th century, including Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. 

But the internet and social media are full of people who genuinely believe they have 'slipped' briefly through time.

DailyMail.com also spoke to podcasters Carrie and Sean McCabe of 'Ain't It Scary,' who researched the subject. The podcasters said that 'time slip' reports are common, but less so than Bigfoot sightings and UFO encounters.

And yet, certain 'time slip' stories have achieved cult status, they told DailyMail.com.

'The most famous one, and the craziest story, is the turn-of-the-century "Moberly-Jordain Incident,"' McCabe said. 

The alleged incident, as attested to by the witnesses Charlotte Anne Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924), was dramatized by ITV in 1981.

The two ladies — both English literary academics at St Hugh's College, Oxford — said they had their time slip while visiting the Palace of Versailles in France, the famous former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV.

As they would later claim in their best-selling 1911 book, An Adventure, the pair were lost in the Petit Trianon château located on the grounds when all of a sudden they traveled back in time to Marie Antoinette's garden party.

Marie Antoinette was the last Queen and wife of Louis XVI. Both were tried and convicted of treason, and died at the guillotine eight months apart.

In their book, they said that everything suddenly looked unnatural, and then they saw a lady in an old-fashioned dress who was sketching and looked at them.

After the pair compared notes, they came to believe that they had traveled back to 1792, just before the abolition of the French monarchy.

The book, published under fake names, caused a sensation and the pair later claimed to have other supernatural experiences, including seeing the Emperor Constantine in the Louvre.

Theories abound for what really might have happened to Moberly and Jordain during that fateful trip to Versailles. 

In 1965, a biographer of the French poet and aristocrat Robert de Montesquiou, Philippe Jullian, proposed an innocent error wherein the two women had crashed an 18th century-theme party held by the poet and his eccentric friends, accidentally.

While by no means definitive, Jullian argues that de Montesquiou threw such soirées and his circle was exactly the type who might stay in character with strangers.

As podcasters steeped in the topic, the McCabes think that some 'time slip' experiences may also come from the fact that people are familiar with the idea from TV and film — so when something unusual occurs, it's a ready-made explanation.

But for Garrido, and others like him, a concrete explanation for what happened during their curious episode is often less important than the life-changing shift in their own way of thinking, that grew out of their perceived 'time slip.'

'No one knows what happens after death, but this experience changed my view,' Garrido told DailyMail.com. 

'It made grief a little easier — although grief is never easy.'