Perhaps the most intriguing case is a little-known study recorded by Scottish psychologist Andrew MacKenzie. As with the Jourdain case, the story consists of multiple witnesses — three Royal Navy cadets on what was meant to be a standard training exercise in 1957. They were supposed to report back to base with what they had seen on a five-mile trek — but what they found was more unsettling than anything imaginable.
Although it was autumn, the trees seemed to become green again, and the weather unseasonably warm, as they approached the rural English village of Kersey — which was not only quiet, but appeared deserted, with no cars on the street, nor were there any telephone wires, and the cottages had thatched roofs and timber frames. Peering into the windows of one of the shops, they saw the skinned carcasses of three oxen, moldy and rotting. As with the Trianon incident, a general feeling of hostility came over the cadets, and they quickly fled.
They wouldn’t speak of the occurrence again for another three decades. Did they really travel back to a bygone century? The building they peered through had actually been a butcher shop since at least the 18th century. Of course, skeptic or not, you might wonder why they traveled back to this particular time and place — why did the seasons change, and why the vague feelings of discomfort? Perhaps all of these episodes of retrocognition are the result of derealization — a condition in which the real seems unreal.
Instances of derealization, in which the individual takes herself away from her surroundings, are actually fairly common — estimated to occur in 31 to 66 percent of the general population. Your sense of place is often colored by specific memories you have of it, or expectations of how it should be.
You may have grown up with carpeting in the living room — but take it up or replace it, and you may soon forget what the room looked like during your childhood, or how the furniture was arranged. Look at the house after you’ve moved, and you may realize that many memories you have of the house are wrong, and find rooms that you don’t remember at all — perhaps the result of memories being compressed together as a type of shorthand for the brain, as we can only remember so much with accuracy.
For someone suffering from longer bouts of derealization — sometimes a symptom of more serious disorders like schizophrenia, but sometimes simply the result of anxiety or constant worrying — much of the world is like looking into that once-familiar house.
Occipital-temporal dysfunction in the brain is a common cause. The former deals with the brain’s visual processing, while the latter interprets sensory information delivered to the brain. Sleep deprivation, and even caffeine, can lead to episodes of derealization — and only about 5 percent of people will experience lifelong episodes.
When Jourdain met Marie Antoinette, as she claimed, she probably had some expectations of what the queen would be like, and this formed a mental image in her brain. In the Kersey incident, the cadets suspected they were in the Middle Ages — perhaps shortly after the outbreak of the Black Death epidemic, when villagers boarded up their homes for fear of catching the disease.
However, glass in rural England would have been rare in the 14th century, let alone a butcher shop. Few peasants could afford to slaughter their animals. Again, the cadets were not so much seeing history unravel as they were seeing what they expected it to have looked like.
So, if these episodes can be chalked up to derealization, why are they experienced by more than one person? In nearly every instance, years go by before anyone talks about their experience. It’s almost certain that they have time to iron out the details — landmarks, the season, feelings, people met along the way — and, perhaps, the idea of seeing the French Revolution as it happens makes for a better story than simply getting lost while on vacation. I don’t mean to say that such accounts are deliberately made up — but as stories, they are ones we’d all prefer to believe.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2016 issue of Brain World Magazine.
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