We're accustomed to time moving from past to present to future. Yet, is time always linear? Here are true stories of experiences of time and space anomalies. The firsthand accounts include time travel, time slips, and encounters with other dimensions. The stories were collected by a well-known writer and expert in paranormal phenomena and edited by Anne Helmenstine.

Baby Monitor Time Warp - Sheri N. Can a baby monitor transmit sounds from the past?. claudio.arnese / Getty Images As usual, the long work day was coming to an end and I was dutifully putting the last load of laundered clothes away in our bedroom when I heard a ruckus on the baby monitor just a few feet away from me. I thought it strange when I knew my husband and toddler were both in the living room quietly watching TV as my two-year-old drifted silently off to sleep curled in my husband's lap as he caught the evening news. The bedroom door was straight in front of me and I could see all the way down the hall to my husband and son in the Lazyboy chair as this ruckus over the monitor continued. It didn't take long for me to realize the sounds were very familiar. Earlier in the day, I was in my toddler's bedroom putting a load of folded clothes into the drawers and picked up some stray toys and books that weren't being played with at the time. As I was doing so, I was telling my son about the story of "Jack and The Beanstalk" for the first time. Now I stood in disbelief as I heard the drawers being pulled open and shut and rustling of the toys and books being put into their proper places. But I nearly fainted when I heard my son's voice over the monitor! I kept looking back and forth at my husband and now-sleeping son in the chair in the living room and the monitor sitting on my dresser that was literally replaying the specific events from earlier in the day! The monitor is a standard baby monitor bought from Wal-mart and is NOT a recorder, but instead monitors the sounds coming from the room as they are happening at present time only. I listened as my voice retold the story of "Jack and The Beanstalk" and listened with familiarity as my son responded in baby-talk to the tail he had never heard before. The incredible part was this all happened five hours earlier on the same day! I quickly called my husband into the room as he listened to the last part of the story with my voice coming through the monitor and our sons coos and chuckles. He stood stunned and turned his head and looked at our sleeping son flopped peacefully over his shoulder. In disbelief, he asked, "How in the hell...?!" as his voice drifted off trying not to miss a thing. I just stared at him in the same disbelief and we both just shook our heads. This has never happened before or since and became pretty clear from the beginning that we were listening to some kind of warp in time. I never imagined in a million years that I would be witness to it and must admit, if it should happen to you, it is indeed, one of the most incredible moments one can ever experience!

Dimension Shift in Tacoma - Gary Spring Gary went to the theater to check the time, but lost time instead. David L. Ryan / Getty Images I was walking in downtown Tacoma, Washington one evening around 9:00 o'clock. I was on my way to meet a friend at a certain intersection. The year was 1976. I was enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Lewis. I remember it was the month of April. As I was walking, I started wondering what time it was. So I looked around for the nearest store where I could find out the time. I looked across the street and there was a walk-in movie theater. I figured that was as good a place as any. Then the weirdest thing happened. I started to cross the street... and the next thing I knew my vision was clearing up and I was standing in front of the ticket counter inside the theater lobby! I had a ferocious headache and my legs felt very unsteady. I recovered a little, but that headache was something else. I bowed and started rubbing my forehead. After a minute or so, I heard a gasp. I looked up and there was this pretty girl on the other side of the counter with a suprised look on her face. She asked me how I got in! With the throbbing pain in my head, I looked at her and didn't know how to answer her. I was confused. I started to walk toward the counter and she backed away. Now she had a scared look on her face! She asked me again how I got in. I looked up at the wall behind her. There was a clock hanging there. I started to mutter, "What time is it?" She then told me I had better leave or she'll call the police. I felt so weird; it's hard to explain. I felt like I had broken through into a territory I didn't recognize. I stood there for a few minutes. That's when the girl went into the back room. I could hear her talking to someone. I turned around and started to walk toward the entrance. That's when this big guy came out of the back room, walked around the counter and before I could say anything, grabbed me by the arm, pulled me toward the entry way, unlocked the door and shoved me outside. He told me to get out of there and went back inside. I still couldn't figure out what was going on. I stood there looking around rubbing my head. Then it dawned on me. The time on the clock read past midnight! I looked back at the theater. It had the "CLOSED" sign on the front door! The girl and the guy were still there looking at me. Then the big guy opened the door again and warned me that if I didn't leave that instant he was going to kick me in the butt. So I started to walk away, still confused, and as I was walking I heard the guy say, "I don't know how you got inside with the door being locked, but you better not come back!" The headache eventually went away and I never did meet my friend.

Future City - Daisy Rick and Daisy encountered a futuristic city. Colin Anderson / Getty Images It all began when Rick and I were going to a friend's house last September. We were driving Rick's beat up old truck and the drive went smoothly for the first 45 minutes. Suddenly, the truck's engine died and Rick and I were stranded on a deserted highway in the middle of the night. We were surrounded on both sides of the road by cornfields that stretched into the distance. Rick began a desperate effort to restart the truck and fix the "broken" engine. He tried to fix the truck in vain, but nothing seemed to work. Rick finally gave up and we decided to walk to the nearest town about two miles away to find a payphone to call our friend. We walked for what seemed like hours and the town was nowhere in sight. However, just when desperation was about to grip us, we saw a light, a gloriously bright light, shining over the steep hill ahead of us. We ran up the steep hill that blocked us from the light and were flabbergasted by what we saw. Just over the hill, Rick and I saw what could only be described as a futuristic city with lights streaming out of every window of the massive, metallic towers. In the middle of the futuristic city, was a huge silver dome. I stared at the city, stunned, until Rick elbowed me, which pulled me out of my trance and he pointed to the sky. Hovering above the city were hundreds of hovercraft. One flew toward us with amazing speed. Rick and I were so scared that we took off running back to the broken down truck. I never looked back, but I felt someone watching me the whole way. When we got back to the truck, it started without difficulty and Rick and I took off as fast as we could in the opposite direction. We never went back or spoke of it again to this day.

Hospital Space-Time Confusion - Mel H. Mel visited a hospital in its past state. Hero Images / Getty Images My husband and l live in the deep woods of east Texas, near a tiny place called Mt. Sylvan. I had been having some medical tests done at a hospital nearby. I went for testing three days in a row, always with the same routine: I parked in the same small parking lot, walked through the double doors leading to the first floor cardio testing area, turned right at the gift shop and signed in at the desk. I always exchanged some casual conversation with the same young and very pleasant blond receptionist. There was a small sitting area across from her desk, with a door leading to the phlebotomy (blood drawing) lab right behind her cubicle. The door to the lab was always open, though, and the sight of patients sitting in the exact type of chairs -- even the same color -- that I saw my late mother sit in for her chemo treatments was just too gut wrenching. (She died a year ago.) I even heard a patient in the lab comment on the new chairs, and a nurse replied that the hospital's oncology department had donated them. I decided to sit across the hall anyway. Last Friday my husband went back to the hospital with me to hear the test results. He had never been there before. Usual routine: we parked, walked in, turned past the gift shop and... there was no check-in area! I stood and stared in total shock: no desk, no chairs, no blonde receptionist, and the door to the lab was on another wall! The other sitting area was just as before. I started to walk up and down the hall searching for "my" check-in area, but it was nowhere to be seen. A doctor walked by, noticed my confusion, and asked what I was looking for. When I told him that the place I had checked in for my tests was missing, he laughed and said that it had been moved to the second floor three years earlier because they needed more space!

He Got There Before He Arrived - Eula White When the boy opened the gate, the horse and rider vanished. Stu Borland / EyeEm / Getty Images My mother, Eula White, was born in October, 1912. She grew up in rural Alabama and Florida in the 1920s. She told a lot of stories of the people and of the events of those days, most of them of interesting but ordinary events. But one day she told me a story of an unusual event that she had directly experienced as a young girl along with about a dozen other women and children. "I remember this event well even after all these years," she said, "precisely because it was so unusual." "In those days," she told me, "rural Alabama was still kind of backward. Little electricity and horses and wagons the only transportation for many farm folk. I remember it was a bright summer day. Early that morning the other women and I had gathered on the front porch of the Hawkins' farmhouse to shell quite a few bushels of peas and beans for preserving and just to talk as we worked. The younger children were playing in the yard. Mr. Hawkins came out on the porch and told Mrs. Hawkins that he was going to town on business. Mr. Hawkins saddled his horse, and as he rode through the big gate directly in front of the porch, Mrs. Hawkins reminded him to bring home a big sack of flour. He answered her with a grunt and rode off. "About mid-afternoon we were still on the porch shelling peas. We looked up and saw Mr. Hawkins approaching the house. The road leading to the house came off the main road and was about 300 feet long, and ran directly up to the porch. So we could see him coming quite clearly. Thrown across the saddle in front of him was a large white, cloth sack of flour and cradled in his left arm was a brown bag of other groceries. We watched as he rode up to the gate, and he stopped there, waiting for someone to open it. One of the boys ran to the gate and opened it. Then, in full view of all of us women and children, Mr. Hawkins vanished. He just disappeared, instantly. "We sat there for a second or so, just astonished. Then, terrified, we began screaming. After a few minutes, we calmed down. But were still shaking and confused. We just didn't know what to do. So after a while we went back to shelling peas. But all of us, the children too, huddled up there on that porch, afraid. Mrs. Hawkins made one the boys close the gate. "About half hour later, we looked up and again saw Mr. Hawkins riding toward the house with that same white sack of flour across the saddle in front of him and that same brown bag of groceries in his left had. Again he rode up to the gate without a sound and stopped. None of us had the nerve to open the gate. We were all just too afraid to move. We just sat there staring at him, waiting to see what would happen next. Finally, to our relief, Mr. Hawkins spoke: 'Well, is someone going to open the gate for me?' "Mr. Hawkins," mother said, "got there before he arrived."

The House That Wasn't There - Suzan Suzan wanted to buy a house, but it disappeared. Givenworks / Getty Images I swear this is a true story. My husband was carting wheat in the summer of 1994. He was outside Molong in NSW, Australia, and drove past a "For Sale" sign on a farm gate along with the agents details. Our 12-year-old son was with him. On the return journey, they stopped, climbed through the fence and walked up the circle-shaped drive to have a closer look at the old house. He said he could see through the window and found the old house old and abandoned. On his return home a few days later, we rang up the agent and asked for further details about the property, as we were interested in purchasing it. The agent had no idea what we were talking about and insisted that he had no properties for sale on that road. A week later, my husband and I drove to Molong to have a look at the farm ourselves. We drove up and down the whole road until we were almost to the next town. All that he could recognize was a water tank on the hill, a creek and some trees where the house used to be. There was no gate, drive, real estate sign... or house.

Instant Replay - Ryan Bratton Ryan saw the girl ride her bike down the hill and then the experience repeated itself. Rafael Ben-Ari / Getty Images This happened when I was about eight. My friend and I were sitting on his yard while some kids rode their bikes down a downhill driveway. A car came down the road and stopped at a house. A kid got out and ran inside making noises that kids around his age make. Then a girl rode her bike down the driveway. A couple of minutes after this happened, the same car went down the road, stopped at the house, and the same kid got out of the car and ran inside screaming the exact things he had been saying. Then the girl went down the hill on her bike again. I looked over to my friend and he said he had no idea what had just happened.

Lagoon Mystery - Jacob Dedman Jacob tried to locate the cliff and lagoon, but they were nowhere to be found. Corey Nolen / Getty Images On a hiking trip when I was 16, I got separated from my group. I wandered around for hours looking for them. I came to a the edge of a cliff overlooking a small lagoon. I attempted to yell for help when the edge I was standing on gave way. As I started to fall, the thought of my death began flowing through my mind. Before I reached the halfway point of my fall, I saw a strange shadow approach me out of the corner of my eye. The form of a black-haired woman appeared from the shadow dressed in what appeared to be animal hides. Her eyes were what I noticed most, though. One a silvery blue, the other a glowing green. She grabbed hold of me in her small but strong arms and our fall began to seemingly slow. We landed softly, almost like a feather, next to the small lagoon. I asked her if she was an angel. She smiled at me and said no. All she told me was that this place belonged to her, then turned and walked into the shadows of the forest and disappeared. I shortly met up with my group and told them what had happened. They laughed at me and said no place like the lagoon was around here. We went home. I returned the next weekend determined to find her. I retraced all of my steps. But the lagoon and the cliff were gone.

The Disappearing Boarding House - Richard P. After Valentine moved out of the boarding house, the building and landlady disappeared. vandervelden / Getty Images This is a story of my mother's experience that took place near her home in Jersey City, New Jersey during the mid 1930s. My great-grandfather Valentine was living in a boarding house a few blocks from his daughter, my grandmother Sarah. One day Sarah got word that her father was not only about to be evicted, but was about to be committed to a mental institution. When she got to the boarding house, my great-grandfather was shaking and drooling. She looked at her dad and said,"Pop, Do you want to come live with me?" Her dad inquired, "Do you have the room?" She replied, "We'll make room." So, my great-grandfather moved in with his daughter and her children. According to my mother, a few days after that incident, the boarding house and landlady disappeared. There had been no explosion, it was not torn down, not moved. It simply vanished as if it never existed.

London Time Slip - Ronnie M. Ronnie met children who seemed to be from an earlier time. Kirn Vintage Stock / Getty Images I live in London and it was late October, 1969, and I was walking home late one Saturday night. I had to walk through an underpass, which was under the busy North Circular Road. It was cold and late and I was surprised to see about five kids down there collecting pennies for the Guy, being as firework night, 5th November, was soon. These kids should not have been out that late, seeing as the oldest was a girl aged about 12 years old and the others younger. What shocked me were their clothes. Their attire made me think they had come straight out of 1920s or 1930s London. Their speech could have been taken straight from a Charles Dickens' novel. I heard one young boy say, "That other gent gave me a florin." At his age there is no way he could have known what a florin was, an old English coin for the then two shillings. This was the late 1960s and kids certainly didn't use words like "gent" anymore. "Geezer" or "bloke" perhaps. The girl approached me saying, "Evening sir, penny for the Guy, please, sir?" Her politeness shocked me, but I said I hadn't any money. She slid her arm through mine and she ran her hand down my sleeve saying, "Yes you do, sir. You are a fine gent. You do have money." I assured her I hadn't and I expected a rude mouthful, but she replied, "Ok, thank you, sir. You have a good evening, sir." I knew I had to give these kids something, so I pulled a silver sixpence from my pocket and called her. I threw her the coin and she gave me a thank you and a beaming smile. I walked off into the night. This experience bugged me bad. Who were those kids from the past? I asked local people if any kids were killed there during WW2, but nobody remembered. Did I meet ghosts? Kids from the past? I guess I will never know.

Lost Time in Ohio - Douglas Douglas and his dad lost time and had a horrible experience in a rental house. Paul Taylor / Getty Images This story takes place in Austintown, Ohio on Route 76 back in 1981. I was 20. Dad asked me if I wanted to look at a house that was for rent. The next morning we went to his mom's house at 5:00 for some coffee. She asked what we were doing out so early. Dad told her that we were meeting a realtor at at 6:00. At 5:30, we left getting to the house a couple minutes before 6. As we pulled in the drive, we noticed the yard had not been cared for. The house was a rectangular two-story dwelling with front windows only on the second floor. As we got out of the van, it was a quiet, calm day except for two kids laughing in the back yard. We figured it was the neighbor kids from across the street. As we approached the back of the house, there was a swing set with two swings. They were swinging in opposite directions with nobody on them. There was laughter of a boy and a girl. Another quick glance and the swings were still. Dad asked if I had seen that. I had. We proceeded back to the side of the house. We passed the garage. It had two wooden doors with small glass panes. We looked in the window. The garage had a dirt floor and was empty. We walked up to the side porch. The door was unlocked so we went inside.

Dad turned on the switch, but no lights came on. I tried a few with no luck. The inside of the house was weird. There was a large room with doorways branching off. The living room was like none I had ever seen. It was about 10x40 with no windows except for the small one in the door. I went back into where dad was. He was trying to open the basement door, which was locked. Dad asked if I was ready to go. Instead of leaving, he went into the living room and stared out the front door window for about three or four minutes. I was about to go upstairs when I got an eerie feeling. So, I stayed in the main area. Dad then came out and asked if I was ready to go again. At that point, dad made the remark that we hadn't tried that door. We had. It was the locked basement door. He turned the knob and the door opened. The hair on the back of my kneck stood up. Now I was getting scared. Dad flipped the light switch and it came on. I was wondering why the other lights didn't come on earlier. Dad proceeded to go down the steps, but I was leary. I went down. The basement was small. There was an old wringer washer with a loaded revolver on the lid. It was like the silver and ivory-handled cap guns that kids use today. I picked it up four inches off the lid and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a light cord moving. The lights went out and the door slammed shut. It was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. I felt aimlessly for my dad. Holding his shirt, we went up the stairs. At the top, he stopped and let out a blood-curdling scream. It made my blood run cold. I pushed him and he pushed the door open. All the lights were on and it was dark outside. After jumping in the van, dad turned the headlights on. The garage doors were open. There was a lamb lying on the dirt floor with its throat slashed, jerking violently. Blood was running into the dirt. When we arrived back at my grandmother's, it was 2:30 a.m. She asked where we had been all day. We had lost 21 hours in five minutes time in the basement. Later, we drove past the house and all the doors were shut and the lights were out. When I would ask dad about what he had seen, he would cuddle in the corner and shake like a kid crying. To this day, I don't know what he saw and I don't want to know. Since he has passed away, I will never know. When I went back in 1987, to see if the house was still there, it was boarded up. There was a large FBI sign on the house stating that for your own safety, stay out.