Versailles Time-Slip

Versailles Time Slip : is a story captured in the book, An Adventure, written by two middle aged spinsters. The ladies in question were; headmistress Eleanor Jourdain and college principal Charlotte "Annie" Moberley. Their story began one afternoon on the 10th of August 1901, when the two ladies were walking through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, searching for a building called the Trianon. While they were looking around they suddenly found themselves among people wearing strange clothes, much like those belonging to the period around the eighteenth century and Pre-Revolution France. As well as coming across a man sitting on the steps of a summer house bearing smallpox scars, common in the 1700's: Charlotte "Annie" Moberley saw a woman in an eighteenth century gown near the Petit Trianon who was sketching. Apparently she bore an uncanny resemblance to Marie Antoinette who was King Louis XVI's consort. It wasn't long before more people came forward to report similar episodes in the Versailles gardens. The conclusion that the women came to about the incident was that they had either traveled back in time or had actually stumbled across ghosts from the period around the 1780's. One lady called Clare M. Burrow helped to add some weight to their story by claiming that she had walked through a gate that had been sealed up years before.

In his book, The ghosts of the Trianon, Michael H. Coleman offered up an explanation for the phenomenon. He suggested that the two women had stumbled across a dress rehearsal for some play or pageant where the actors were wearing period costumes. Although this would appear to be a reasonable conclusion it does not solve the mystery of Mrs. Burrow's Gate. The story remains an enigma.

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