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00:00In Doctor Who, the Doctor rides the TARDIS through time and space.
00:04In Back to the Future, Marty McFly drives the DeLorean through a causal loop.
00:09In Harry Potter, Hermione uses a time-turner to rewrite history.
00:14But what do you think about true time travel in the real world?
00:22Do you believe that time travel is possible?
00:24It's one of the most hotly debated concepts in all of science,
00:28as well as one of the most wished-for hypothetical technologies on the planet.
00:32Given the chance, would you go forward or back in time?
00:35It's another deep-rooted question that has us all deeply divided.
00:39So, whenever there's even a sniff of a real-life time travel story,
00:42it usually attracts a lot of attention.
00:45And in this video, we're going to look at four of the most compelling temporal tales
00:49from four different corners of the world map.
00:52First, and arguably the most famous time travel story of modern times,
00:56John Titor.
00:57An alleged American soldier sent back from the year 2036,
01:01he posted on a spate of internet forums in the early 2000s,
01:05originally under the name of TimeTravelUnderscoreZero.
01:09At the time, Titor's messages caused a stir,
01:12because they appeared to place him across three separate generations.
01:15According to him, he was first sent back to the year 1975
01:20to regain an early IBM 5100 computer.
01:24The retro machine was apparently needed to prevent computing problems in the future,
01:28a reference that some of Titor's audience took as relating to the year 2038 problem,
01:33a predicted Y2K-style computer glitch scheduled to happen two years after Titor's original time.
01:40The seeming time traveller explained his appearance at the turn of the century, though,
01:44as him simply stopping off on his way home.
01:47In his posts, Titor made various references to imminent civil war in America
01:52between the years 2004 and 2015,
01:54and even to the outbreak of World War III shortly afterwards.
01:58Today, we know that that didn't happen,
02:01but believers claim there's a ready-made explanation at hand.
02:04Crucially, Titor also advocated the many-worlds theory of reality as being the correct one.
02:10It was something which he suggested was common knowledge by 2036.
02:14And it's an important part of the story because it effectively means that
02:18any predictions Titor made that didn't come true could be explained away by it.
02:22So, the theory goes that his reappearance in 2000 could have caused a split in the timeline,
02:28and fortunately for us, that split meant that war in this world was avoided.
02:32So, what do you think?
02:34Did John Titor save the world, or was it all just an elaborate hoax?
02:38For our second, and perhaps even stranger, time travel claim,
02:42we're headed across the Atlantic to Europe and France.
02:45What's come to be known as the Moberly-Jordain incident
02:48also took place almost exactly 100 years before John Titor took to his keyboard.
02:53And it does what all good time travel stories should do, by adding ghosts into the fray as well.
02:59In 1901, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jordain were two academics visiting Paris
03:05shortly before they began working together at Oxford University.
03:08As part of their trip, they took in the Palace of Versailles,
03:12where, while exploring the gardens, they took a wrong turn and became lost.
03:16And right about now was when it got weird.
03:19Both remembered walking along the outskirts of a wood
03:22when they alleged that the world around them suddenly changed.
03:25The trees reportedly took on an unreal quality,
03:28and they came across a variety of unusual characters dressed in old-fashioned clothing.
03:33One in particular caught the attention of Moberly,
03:36while the woman in traditional dress stood on an open lawn, apparently sketching the landscape.
03:41Eventually, Moberly and Jordain found their way back to the palace,
03:44and a week later traded notes on what they both suspected had been a paranormal experience.
03:50The main idea was that wherever they had stumbled upon had been haunted,
03:54but also that in being there, they had travelled back in time.
03:58They would spend the next ten years gathering more research before publishing, under pseudonyms,
04:03of their experience in the 1911 book, Unadventure.
04:06Among the most noteworthy claims they made in it were that they believed
04:10that they had travelled back to the late 1700s,
04:13and also that the sketching woman had been Marie Antoinette.
04:16In the time since, the Moberly-Jordain incident has been explained away by others as a number of things,
04:22including a shared delusion and an unknowing encounter with a period costume party.
04:27But what's your verdict?
04:28Could there really be some kind of portal in the Palace of Versailles grounds?
04:32Or were these Oxford academics simply mistaken?
04:35From Paris to Rome, and more specifically, the Vatican City,
04:38where there are some serious claims that the Church has a secret and ongoing history of dabbling with time travel, too,
04:45the Chronovisor is probably one of the craziest machines ever said to have existed anywhere, anytime.
04:51According to those who claim it to be real, it's a bizarre, cabinet-like contraption,
04:56packed with buttons, gadgets and gizmos, all designed to totally reconstruct our experience of time.
05:02A Chronovisor user is said to be able to view any past event through the machine,
05:07thanks to some spectacular technology that can somehow convert electromagnetic radiation
05:12into effective backwards time travel.
05:14Or, at least, convert it into a window through which you can revisit actual history.
05:19Records mostly come from a one François Brune,
05:23a Catholic priest who wrote about the Chronovisor in his 2002 book, The New Mystery of the Vatican.
05:29Broadly speaking, Brune claims that the device was built by another priest named Pellegrino Ernetti,
05:35and allegedly with the help of many of the world's leading scientists in the twentieth century,
05:39including Enrico Fermi, today famed for the Fermi Paradox.
05:43Father Ernetti is then said to have used the Chronovisor to go back in time to observe the actual crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
05:51And while Ernetti's claims have been continually challenged, and even he himself reportedly admitted making them up,
05:57proponents to the Chronovisor's existence insist that it's real.
06:01And, now that after Ernetti was allegedly forced into casting doubt over it,
06:05the machine is today used in secret by a global elite to control world governments.
06:10Of course, if it does exist, then it's something unlike anything else ever built on Earth.
06:15Would it surprise you if there were a machine like this, used by a select few to pull the strings of society?
06:21Our last time travel story is perhaps a little more grounded, but strange all the same.
06:26And this time, we're headed for the UK.
06:28The city of Liverpool is famous for many things.
06:31The Cavern Club, The Beatles, Anfield.
06:34But did you know there's also a real-life time warp there?
06:38Allegedly.
06:39Most of the reported stories center around Bold Street, an area full of shops and shoppers.
06:45And while most of the time you can stroll around this part of town and stay firmly in the here and now,
06:50there have been some occasions when people have reported suddenly being transported back to a bygone era.
06:56The most famous case involves a former policeman who was out shopping in the year 1996.
07:02His wife went to a nearby bookstore while he went to pass time elsewhere.
07:06But then, when he went back to meet up with his wife again, he was confused to find that the bookstore wasn't there.
07:12In its place was a clothes shop, and it didn't turn back into a bookstore until he stepped through the door.
07:18Thankfully, husband and wife were swiftly reunited, and nobody was lost in time forever.
07:23But when the former policeman came to realize that the same building had been a clothes shop decades beforehand in the 1960s,
07:30that's when this particular tale took on a whole new meaning.
07:33It was as though he had been briefly transported back in time and given a glimpse of history,
07:38in a similar way to how Charlotte Ann Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain felt after their experience in Paris.
07:44Both Liverpool and Paris are fine European cities, granted, but could they also have something truly incredible in common with one another?
07:52If these stories are to be believed, then they both offer the unsuspecting visitor the possibility that they might suddenly be plunged back into the past.
08:00Failing that, you could always visit the Vatican to try to unearth the chronovisor and at least be given the opportunity to observe times gone by.
08:08Or else you can keep regular tabs on the internet's time travel forums, in the hope that one John Titor might make another appearance soon.
08:15Because those are four time travel stories to make you question reality.
08:20What do you think? Is there anything we missed?
08:22Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.