what time period would you like to "spy" on?

eclecticreader10 · Post by **eclecticreader10** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 5:28 am

I love this question. I want to know it all - did Cleopatra really kill her self, what happped to the princes in the tower, did Noah really build the ark, the Tudors, etc. If I have to pick one time it would be more personal. I would love to see my parents as children. If I went to Buffalo, NY in approx 1933, I could see both my parents. My dad would be 10 and my mother would be 5 and there would be my grandparents as young adults. Maybe that would explain some of my hang ups. LOL

lama · Post by **lama** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 8:58 am

I would love to be in Paris 1913 when Nijinsky performed the Rite of Spring!
http://www.lebutler.net

Alaric · Post by **Alaric** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 11:36 am

Peter and Catherine the Great's court, any of Napoleon's campaigns (although I wouldn't mind giving Russia a miss!), the Battle of Trafalgar, Wellington's state funeral, Romulus Augustus surrendering his throne to Odoacer, Caesar's defeat against the Senate ...

There's far too many!

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 12:49 pm

I have a close friend with the psychic ability (for want of a better phrase) to tune into the people of the past and see their lives like a movie with all the senses involved. I regularly pop back via her gift to the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. I record what she relays to me and I send transcripts to a historian and an archaeologist for verification. So far it all gels and it has become a core strand of my research. I've met Henry II (he never sits still) , Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Marshals (obviously!) Henry I, King John (yes, he did murder Prince Arthur) Richard the Lionheart (no, he wasn't gay). Rosamund Clifford, the historical characters featured in the Time of Singing, various servants and attendants etc etc.
Obviously such ability is difficult to prove and it might all be rot, but personally I'm convinced - and it really is like time travel.
Ages ago I wrote an article about it on my blog. Here's the archive note:
http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwic ... ntrol.html

Alaric · Post by **Alaric** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 1:12 pm

Wikipedia will also tell you that Henry II never sat still too.

I'm far too much of a cynic to believe anything a psychic says, alas.

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 1:48 pm

[quote=""Alaric""]Wikipedia will also tell you that Henry II never sat still too.

I'm far too much of a cynic to believe anything a psychic says, alas.[/quote]

So was I at one time Alaric, so was I

donroc · Post by **donroc** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 2:11 pm

I have had a psychic tell me that I would be involved with two men in Chicago and that I would receive a certain sum of money connected with my writing. He did not say when.

Three years later, two men invited me to Chicago for the BEA and I received from them the exact sum of money mentioned by the psychic to write a book for one of them.

He also said something interesting of a personal matter about my mother. When he said he saw my two siblings, I thought Ah-ha! gotcha' because I am an only child. When I told him that, without missing a beat, he said, "Yes, your mother had two miscarriages before you were born." Unfortunately she had passed away before I could confirm it; however, she did try to have a child for six years before I was born so those miscarriages could have taken place.

I have been to psychics/astrologers/aura readers who have been way off the mark and a few who have gotten a some things right about me.

I keep an open mind about psychic abilities, always alert to frauds and charlatans. My wife has had more than a few precognative dreams that have come to take place in real life within a short period of time of the dream.

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 2:35 pm

[quote=""donroc""]I
I keep an open mind about psychic abilities, always alert to frauds and charlatans. My wife has had more than a few precognative dreams that have come to take place in real life within a short period of time of the dream.[/quote]

Exactly Donroc,
I have an open mind but I'm not a pushover. I don't take things as an absolute given and I'm sure there are many charlatans out there or people with only sporadic ability. In my case I've known the person in question for twenty years and I know her integrity. I take it that there are going to be occasional moments of 'white noise' in what she tells me and that sometimes if she herself is tired or off colour, it will affect her skills. I go out and get the mindset and the details corroborated by experts in the field. I am told by a professor of medieval cultural studies with a particular interest in my period that the mindset that is coming through is medieval through and through.
I know of a couple of professional historians who use their own abilities of this nature as part of their researches but they would never dare come out loud and admit it in to the academic community at large because they'd lose their jobs or be laughed off campus. One of them wrote to me after reading about my researches on my blog and confessed that she used her own abilities to help her out with her professional studies. I talk to her now and then on an academic e-list but neither of us ever mentions her 'alternative' researches, even though they've brought her a long way. Me being a novelist, I don't have the problem of having to keep it quiet...

Leyland · Post by **Leyland** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 2:41 pm

I would most prefer to sit in different positions around Beethoven as he played and composed his magnificant music, or sit quietly behind Winslow Homer on a beach in the Bahamas as he painted those lovely sailing boats. Color and harmonic sound - nice!

I'd like to simply walk and walk through any medieval or early modern era market place and listen, smell, and touch all the different wares for sale. The entertainers and buskers would be a cool sight to see. Listening in on various conversations about daily happenings would keep my attention for quite awhile as well.

What most would interest me would be to experience the smallest details that made up any past era and culture. No drama or war or mystery for me, just a chance to be there in a day in the life.

Ash · Post by **Ash** » Sun October 5th, 2008, 2:47 pm

[quote=""donroc""]
Ideally, if I could trace my DNA, I would like to see how my ancestors were doing from the start through the centuries.[/quote]

I know what happened to many of them who didn't already escape The Jewish Pale in the Ukraine by the time the Germans came through in 1942. The earliest record we have is the death of my great grandmother in 1869. So I agree, I'l love to go back to the beginnings and see what it was like. Oh, and I'd also love to check on a rumor that my uncle insists is true - that my grandmother on mom's side had a lover, that she didn't want to marry my grandfather (arranged marriage) and that she was already pregnant when she got on the boat to the US. Whose child was that? And who was this lover who could have been my relative?