A group of teen friends are exploring a wooded area in Staffordshire, England when they come upon an old stone public house with a thatched roof. After that, things get interesting.
A reader forwarded the following account:
"I was 15 and living in a small town in Staffordshire, England. It was a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon. With nothing much to do, my girlfriend and two neighbour boys, a couple of years older than we were, decided to go for a walk (No romance, just friends). We walked for a few miles along the river bank and we were feeling jolly but soon felt rather hot and thirsty. We came to a small wooded area and decided to explore that in the coolth of the trees.
We came out of the woods into a clearing where there was an old stone public house. Low roofed, and thatched, which was unusual where we lived. It had a wooden bench outside. We sat there for a few minutes, counted our pennies, and found that we could go in and get a drink of some sort. The boys decided on beer, so in we went.
I remember vividly the wood-planked floor, the small-paned windows with sunlight streaming through, and lots of dust motes in the air, which gave the interior a mist-like greenish atmosphere.
I also remember that two men were sitting on a crude bench beside a thick wooden table. One old man with a pipe was sitting by a huge fireplace with a roaring fire, I thought it odd that there would be a fire on so warm a day.
The boys went to the bar and asked for a beer and lemonade. The barman just stared at them as if they were speaking a foreign language. He just stood with his mouth open holding a metal tankard in his hand and not moving.
The boys looked around and one of them pointed to a small cask at the bar. "Can we have 4 ciders then please?" he said.
The barman seemed dazed or ill, we didn't know which, but he took 4 battered tin pots down from a hook above his head and poured out the cider. One of the boys asked how much. The barman shook his head and waved us away.
We quickly drank the cider, it was very strong, and no doubt illegal for us. But we put the cups on the bar, said thank you, and left.
The other men who were there never looked at us nor made eye contact. The whole place was very basic, and quaint, but we were in rural England after all. I can't remember there being a name on the pub. It was really only one or two small rooms, with a low roof, large oak beams, 2 windows, and a door. We felt refreshed and we made our way back home.
The following week, again it was a lovely summer's day and we were playing a ball game, when we thought we would go for another walk, and have some illicit cider. Off we went. We walked for miles almost to the next town, but we found neither the small wood nor the little pub. We searched the area for several weekends until it was time to go back to school. We never even found any ruins or stones or stumps to show that there had once been a wood or a pub.
I even went to the library to see if there was anything like that on old maps, but I never found a thing. So where had we been that sunny, Sunday afternoon? We'll never know. This was 45 years ago, and I've never told anyone about this before. Sincerely, ML"
NOTE: Is it possible that this event was the result of a 'time slip?' Did these kids pass through a wormhole or portal, and 'time travel' to an earlier era? Intriguing story. Lon
The Time Traveler's Almanac
So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler's Guide to Time Travel
How to Build a Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel
The Time Machine
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