Has Time Travel Already Happened?

When we think about time travel, our minds often jump to sci-fi movies or the hypothetical ‘butterfly effect’, the idea of what we might change in history if we could. But let’s pause for a moment and consider a more intriguing question: Is time travel currently possible, and have people already done it without realizing?

I’ve put together a list of documented cases and stories that suggest some individuals may have already journeyed through time.

1. The Vision of Sir Robert Victor Goddard

During World War II, Sir Robert Victor Goddard was a highly respected senior commander in the British Royal Air Force, not exactly someone prone to wild delusions. He later became the Deputy Director of Intelligence.

One day, Goddard was flying a mission to inspect an unused Airfield called Drem, near Edinburgh. He saw exactly what he expected: a decrepit, grass-overgrown field with cows grazing.

On his return flight, he was caught in a heavy rainstorm and decided to fly back to Drem to re-orient himself. As he approached Drem, the storm abruptly vanished, replaced by bright sunlight. The deserted airfield he’d seen before was now pristine and fully operational. He saw mechanics in blue overalls and planes painted bright yellow.

This was peculiar because the Royal Air Force did not use those colors for mechanics’ uniforms or planes. Goddard didn’t land and flew back home, keeping the strange incident to himself.

Four years later, the RAF began painting their training planes yellow, and their mechanics’ uniforms were switched to blue. The previously deserted Drem Airfield was, of course, in full operation. Goddard’s unusual story even inspired a movie.

2. The Vanishing Passenger Plane

A story reported by The Epoch Times describes a passenger plane about 40 years ago that allegedly vanished as it was preparing to land at what is now the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Emergency crews were called in, fearing the plane had crashed or gone severely off course. However, just 10 minutes after it was last seen, the plane suddenly reappeared in the exact location it had vanished from.

The truly bizarre part? All the clocks on the plane, including the passengers’ personal watches, were exactly 10 minutes behind. To everyone on board, the 10 minutes that the plane seemed to disappear didn’t happen at all. The only thing they noticed was the sudden presence of a large number of emergency vehicles on the ground upon landing.

3. The Case of The Vanishing Hotel

This widely reported incident from October 1979 was even featured on the British TV series Strange but True. Two English married couples, the Simpsons and the Gisébys, were driving through France to Spain. Near Montélimar, it got late, and they needed a place to stay.

After being turned away from a full motel, they drove down a very narrow road and saw old-fashioned buildings and a sign for a circus. They eventually found a two-story stone building that looked like a hotel and checked in.

The rooms were clean but extremely old-fashioned: no curtains, just shutters on the windows, antique plumbing fixtures, and no telephones or elevators. At breakfast the next morning, they saw two policemen in uniforms that pre-dated 1905. The bill was also incredibly cheap, less than a tenth of what they expected.

A couple of weeks later, on their return trip, they wanted to stay there again. They found the same circus sign but could not find the hotel. When they got home and developed their film, the pictures they had taken at the hotel were missing from the middle of the roll. The couple had no answers for the logical questions: why did the hotel accept their modern money, and why wasn’t anyone surprised by their clothes or car? They simply maintain that this is what happened to them.

4. The Versailles Time Slip

This is one of the oldest and most discussed time travel stories. In 1901, two highly intelligent English women, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, were visiting the Palace of Versailles. While lost in the massive gardens, they claimed everything suddenly felt “unnatural” and “unpleasant.”

They described the landscape as flat and lifeless, “as a wood worked in tapestry,” with no shadows or wind. They came across a woman drawing on the grass, who they later felt resembled Marie Antoinette. They also reportedly encountered an elaborate wedding party.

Upon returning to the same grounds later, the landmarks they had seen were now empty and filled with regular tourists. Checks confirmed that no wedding or private event had been booked or had taken place. They detailed their strange experience in a book published in 1911 called An Adventure.

5. The Firebombing of Hamburg

In 1932, German newspaper journalist J. Bernard Hutton and his photographer were reporting at the Hamburg shipyards. As they were leaving, they suddenly heard planes overhead. They looked up to see the sky filled with warplanes dropping bombs. They took pictures and quickly fled.

When they returned to their editor, the film was developed, but nothing showed the scene they had witnessed. The editor, thinking they were drunk, dismissed them.

Years later, in 1943, after Hutton had relocated to London, he saw a newspaper article about an Allied air raid on Hamburg. The pictures in the article were an exact match for the horrific scene he had witnessed in the shipyards over a decade earlier.

6. The Infamous Philadelphia Experiment

This is probably the most controversial and well-known alleged time travel event. The story claims that in 1943, the U.S. military attempted to cloak a ship from radar. However, the experiment supposedly went haywire. The ship didn’t just become invisible; it allegedly teleported from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, and then back in time for 10 seconds.

When the ship reappeared, the results were horrifying. Crew members were said to have fused to the ship’s metal, and some reportedly vanished completely. It has been alleged that even Albert Einstein was involved in this project.

Imagine walking or driving, and suddenly you end up in a different time period. A portal opens up and drops you into another era. These stories, if true, raise the question of whether our understanding of the timeline is far more fluid than we assume.

I believe time travel is possible, and maybe, just maybe, people are already doing it.

What do you think about these stories? Could these people have slipped through time?