Historic Rendezvous in a Time Warp

"Mr. Hoes was walking to the museum one winter's day. We think it was in the late 1960s. He was walking down Charles Street, and when he got adjacent to the Masonic Cemetery, which is next door, he saw two men standing at the front door of the museum. Apparently, he became excited at the thought of two prospective paying customers during the slow off season, because he shouted at them to go on into the building.

"The men, both tall, appeared to be having a lively animated discussion, possibly an argument, and when Mr. Hoes shouted, they both turned to face him. It was then that he noticed their dress. They were in 18th century attire, each with silk knee britches, silk stockings, knee buckles, low quarter shoes fashioned with buckles, embroidered waistcoats and long jackets! Mr. Hoes then realized that the two men, still engaged in their heated discussion with occasional raised voices, looked strangely familiar. The taller one had distinctly red hair, and the other brown hair."

It was at this instant, Mrs. Harrison believes, that the revelation struck Hoes. He was looking squarely at James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson!

As Hoes neared the entrance, the two men turned to him again, and the one with brown hair—allegedly Monroe—waved at him. Then the two turned back toward the front door and walked through it! Breathless, Hoes reached the door seconds later, but he couldn't open the door. It appeared to be stuck. He pounded on it and shouted for the guides inside to open it. When they finally did, Hoes screamed at them, asking where the two men had gone.

They told him that no one had come in. They hadn't seen anyone. Hoes became agitated. He thought they were playing a joke on him; that they had seen the "visitors," but weren't telling him. He ranted at them. At this point, the guides, seeing how excited and serious Hoes was, joined him in room-to-room search of the building. It yielded no sign of the two gentlemen.

So far as Mrs. Harrison can determine, neither Hoes nor any of the guides ever saw or heard of any such incident afterwards. Hoes died in 1978. He was not a drinking man. How then, does one explain his incredible experience on that cold wintry day? In the psychic realm there is a phenomenon called a "time warp," in which a person or persons in the present somehow is given a view of something that may have occurred in the distant past.

There have been reports of such happenings although they are extremely rare, psychic experts say. One apparently took place early on Sunday morning in 1971 near the old colonial-era church on Jamestown Island when a troup of men, women and children, clad in "settler-style" clothing marched past two tourist-witnesses. The difference here was the tourists said the group appeared to be talking and laughing, but they heard no sounds. Hoes adamantly declared he heard his two "visions" arguing, at times in loud voices.