Elderly Mrs. Charlotte W. (the woman requested that her last name not be disclosed in the press to maintain anonymity) from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, UK, in 1968, as it were, stepped into the past, shopping in a small supermarket. She didn't notice anything strange until she discovered that the room she had visited was not there and had not existed at all for several years.
Charlotte W. led a rather secluded life. Once a week, she and her husband attended a whist drive (visiting neighbors to play whist). Apart from this and their morning trips to Tunbridge Wells, they rarely left their cottage. On Tuesday June 18, 1968, Mr and Mrs W. went into town to shop as usual.
They parted in the city center to buy each one of their own, agreeing to meet later for a cup of coffee at a department store restaurant on the High Street.
Tunbridge Wells High Street.
Mrs. W. had made her usual weekly supplies and was also eager to buy a box of shortbread cookies as a whist drive prize. Still unable to find a suitable box in the stores she used to visit, she went to a small self-service store that was unfamiliar to her and asked the salesperson if such a box was available. There was not.
In order not to leave empty-handed, Mrs. W. selected two boxes of soup and looked around to see if there was anything on the shelves to her liking when she noticed a passage in the wall to her left. It was the entrance to a rectangular room, at first glance seven by four meters, trimmed with mahogany, in stark contrast to the chrome and plastic cladding of the store.
“The mahogany gave it a heavy look,” recalls Mrs W., “I didn’t notice the windows there, but the room was lit by electric bulbs with small shades of tinted glass. In a room near the entrance, I saw two couples dressed in the style of the mid-20th century, and I still clearly remember the clothes of one of the women. She wore a beige felt hat diagonally on her head, trimmed with a bunch of dark fur on the left side, her coat was also beige and quite fashionable, but too long for 1968."
Mrs W. also noticed half a dozen men, dressed in dark holiday suits, sitting a little further in the room. All these people were sitting at cream-colored tables, drinking coffee and chatting about something. Quite a common scene for small towns at eleven o'clock in the morning. Not far from the left wall near the entrance there was a small counter and a glass-bordered cash register, although the cashier was not there.
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Mrs W. found it “a little odd” that she hadn’t heard of this coffee shop before, but she thought it was a great idea from the self-service store, since the owner had long been an importer of tea and coffee.
"Another thing that struck me as odd was that I didn't smell coffee or, after all, other smells that are usually found in cafes, but these days with this ventilation, I am not very surprised."
For a moment Mrs. W. hesitated whether she should try coffee in the cafe she had just opened, but changed her mind and went out to meet her husband, as they had agreed. Naturally, she told him about the “new coffee shop,” and they decided to stop by the next Tuesday.
“A week later, after completing all of our usual shopping, we went to the convenience store and walked to the left wall where I saw the entrance to the cafe,” says Mrs V. “There was no entrance, just a huge glass refrigerator with frozen food. I was shocked. My husband jokingly asked what I drank last Tuesday. Having recovered a little, I asked the main salesperson if there was a cafe in the store, but she shook her head and said that I must have made the wrong store. I left feeling like a complete fool."
After visiting her usual cafe, Mrs. V. finally recovered from the shock and persuaded her husband to go with her in search of the mysterious coffee shop.
“After all,” she says, “I knew what I saw. I told my husband about this last week. We went into two similar shops on this street. None had a cafe. Anyway, I knew that store well and I never went to the other two."
Speaking long and seriously about the curious incident, Mrs W. later visited Miss S., founder of the Tunbridge Wells Psychic Society and something of an expert on the supernatural. Unlike Mrs W., Miss S. had lived in Tunbridge Wells for many years.
Mrs W. asked if she knew of any structures similar in detail to her description. Mrs W. remembered that seven or eight years ago there was a small cinema next to the self-service store. Does Miss S. remember if there was an extension where the cafe was located?
She did not remember. But on reflection, she nevertheless remembered that some time ago, during the last war, she had attended the Tunbridge Wells Constitutional Club, located to the left and back of the modern store, which, as she remembered, was covered with mahogany and where dining tables.
“In short,” says Mrs W., “I found the current address of the Constitutional Club, which is now on the outskirts of town, and spoke to the manager on the phone. He ran the club since 1919, with a brief break during World War II. I tactfully asked him what the old club looked like, in which rooms it was located and how many rooms there were.
He told me that the club could be accessed from the street by going through the door to the left of the self-service store (where I was) and going up the stairs. On the second floor there was a meeting room, at the back of which (to the left of the self-service store) was a small bar with tables. A billiard room followed.
He went on to tell me that it was his job to set up tables in the bar when meetings were held, and that in addition to coffee, there were both soft drinks and alcoholic beverages in the assortment. I asked him to describe the cafe, which he did. His description matched everything I saw. Only then did I tell him what had happened. He found it rather unusual."
Dr. A. R. J. Owen of Trinity College, Cambridge, anomalous phenomena expert, comments on this case:
“Mrs. W. seems to me to be a completely normal person and clearly without quirks, her story does not contain any obvious flaws. Retrospective clairvoyance is much less common than ordinary clairvoyance and cannot be adequately explained.
The Tunbridge Wells case is very valuable to the paranormal researcher for several reasons. To begin with, the subject (Mrs. W.) knew the exact place and time of the event.
She also has a very good memory for little things, so she was able to give an excellent description of what she saw. In addition, what Mrs V. saw is amenable to investigation in the context of what happened in that place in the past. Thus, her case seems to be a real and undeniable manifestation of retrospective clairvoyance."
Retrospective clairvoyance is a term used for the type of paranormal activity, when a person enters the past and sees events and places that happened and existed years before.
From the book "The Subconscious Mind Under Control"
