The Versailles Time Slip: Moberly and Jourdain

In 1901, two respectable English academics claimed to have experienced a time slip at the Palace of Versailles, briefly stepping back to the eighteenth century and encountering what they believed were the ghosts—or somehow living presences—of Marie Antoinette and her court. Their book about the experience, “An Adventure,” became one of the most famous and controversial supernatural accounts of the twentieth century.

The Witnesses

Charlotte Anne Moberly was the daughter of the Bishop of Salisbury and the first principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Eleanor Jourdain was a respected academic who would later succeed Moberly as principal of St Hugh’s. Both were educated, intelligent women with reputations to protect.

In August 1901, they visited Paris together. On August 10, they traveled to Versailles to tour the palace and grounds. Neither had previously visited Versailles or studied its history in detail.

The Experience

After touring the palace, Moberly and Jourdain decided to find the Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette’s private retreat in the palace grounds. They became lost in the extensive gardens and found themselves in an area that felt increasingly strange.

Both women later described feeling depressed and oppressed, as if something was wrong but they could not identify what. The atmosphere seemed dreamlike. They noticed that their surroundings looked different—flatter, less vivid—than normal.

They encountered several figures in what appeared to be eighteenth-century dress. Two men in gray-green coats were operating a wheelbarrow near a building. A man with a pockmarked face and wearing a slouched hat and cloak sat near a garden pavilion. His expression was so malevolent that both women felt deeply disturbed.

Another man appeared suddenly, seeming to come from nowhere, and gave them directions. His speech and manner seemed odd, out of place. They crossed a small bridge over a ravine that neither could later locate on maps of the grounds.

Near the Petit Trianon, Moberly saw a woman sitting and sketching in the garden. The woman wore an old-fashioned summer dress with a pale green fichu and had fair hair beneath a light-colored sunhat. She looked up at Moberly with an expression of peculiar intensity.

A wedding party approached, and the atmosphere returned to normal. The strange figures and oppressive feeling vanished. The women toured the Petit Trianon and returned to Paris without initially discussing what had happened.

The Investigation

A week later, Moberly mentioned the woman sketching. Jourdain had not seen her. Comparing notes, they discovered they had each seen different things during the strange episode and that both had experienced the oppressive atmosphere.

Both women began researching the history of Versailles. They concluded that the figures they had seen corresponded to people from August 1789, when Marie Antoinette was at the Petit Trianon shortly before being forced to Paris by revolutionaries. The sketching woman, Moberly believed, was Marie Antoinette herself.

They identified the pockmarked man as the Comte de Vaudreuil, a favorite of the queen. The man who gave them directions was possibly a servant. The landscape they had traversed, including the bridge and ravine, matched old maps of the grounds but not their current layout.

The Book

In 1911, Moberly and Jourdain published their account as “An Adventure” under pseudonyms. The book caused a sensation. Critics attacked it as fantasy or fabrication. Defenders noted the witnesses’ impeccable credentials and the detailed historical research supporting their claims.

Both women maintained their account until their deaths. They made return visits to Versailles and found that the landscape had changed from what they had seen in 1901 but matched eighteenth-century plans.

Skeptical Explanations

Critics proposed several explanations. A costume pageant or theatrical rehearsal might have been taking place that day. The women might have embellished ordinary experiences with research conducted afterward. Their memories may have become contaminated by subsequent discussion.

Some researchers found that a historical film had been shot at Versailles in 1901, which could explain costumed figures. Others noted discrepancies between the women’s accounts and historical records of Versailles in 1789.

The most prosaic explanation suggests that both women simply became lost and confused, saw locals in unusual clothing, and later constructed a supernatural interpretation based on their research.

The Legacy

The Moberly-Jourdain incident remains one of the most famous time slip cases on record. Whether it represents a genuine paranormal experience, collective hallucination, misperception, or fiction disguised as fact remains debated.

The case raises questions about the nature of time, perception, and place. Can locations retain impressions of their past? Can the boundary between present and history sometimes weaken? Or is the Versailles time slip simply a cautionary tale about how intelligent people can convince themselves of impossible things?