Time Traveler Caught on Film?

by Nancy Atkinson on October 28, 2010

There’s a video making the rounds and creating buzz on the internet and we thought we might as well join in. Filmmaker George Clarke from Ireland is a Charlie Chaplin fan, and saw something unusual in a 1928 Chaplin movie called “The Circus.” In a crowd scene at the opening of the movie there appears to be a woman (or a man in drag) talking on a cell phone as she walks in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. In the video above, Clarke goes on about it for awhile, but at about 2:40 in, you can see the footage. This person has all the mannerisms of someone walking down the street and talking on a cell phone.

Screen grab of Clarke's zoom in of the Charlie Chaplin film 'The Circus.'

I’ve been checking around the web and no one seems to be able to come up with a good explanation, although there are lots of questions, such as, how could she be using a cell phone in 1928 since there were no cell phone towers or satellites at that time? Across the internet there are discussions of “Back to the Future”- like Walkie Talkies, alien homing devices, and pretty much everything else you can think of. My favorite discussion comes from the Washington Post, which claims this person is the worst time traveler ever, and the only reason no one has noticed this person before is “Because this may be the first time in history that someone has watched the DVD extras of “The Circus.” Forget the DVD extras! People didn’t even watch “The Circus” when it came out!”

It doesn’t appear this is a movie set, just film from taken out front of a real location. Anyway, its a weird video and there’s lots of discussion out there, but what are your thoughts?

Via SciBlogs

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  • avshel

    Hee!Heee! HEEE! Uncle Fred! I saw the Siemens website. Besides, a hearing aid would be for hearing. That person was clearly TALKING to someone. Ah! You mean to herself?? That could be. So, unless she was a loony, it was NO hearing aid.

    HEARING AIDS ARE OUT OF THE QUESTION FOLKS! HEE! HEEE! HEEE!

    She was either a time traveler from the future holding a device that does not require transmission stations because they use technology that transcends time and space or an alien dressed up as a human speaking to a spaceship somewhere in the sky.

  • Nexus

    Avshel, how have you ruled out the possibility that this lady is muttering to herself?

  • pcp

    Without intending to sound cheesy here, the exact nature of discovery within science is based on 100 crazy ideas with one ending up being correct. This is almost certainly someone being camera shy or holding a hearing aid, but if it`s something that may be interesting, provoke a fair bit of opinion (and emotion), and therefore – presuming the moderator has some standard of censure – should be on this page. Well done Nancy

  • http://www.idlelimey.co.uk idlelimey

    @ Nancy, I actually quite liked this post. I also like pretty much all the posts on this site. I think it’s a shame that the comments are getting a bit too ‘Youtube’ and everyone should take a step back and wonder what is wrong in their lives when they blow steam over an article.

    UT is well respected, I seriously doubt that this post has ruined the reputation of this blog, as some have suggested. I actually thought someone might quickly come up with a definitive answer to the riddle. Perhaps you should stop posting WITU too? Or not.

    For what it’s worth, I liked this post and I’m about to share it on FB. Thanks for sharing :)

  • jcent

    I am surprised as anyone to find this story on this wonderful site. I didnt see anyone mention this take on it…

    The man who appears in front of the woman in question is clearly walking faster than her and had just passed her as he walked by. He doesn’t even glance her way or act in all like there is something unusual she is doing. If she was in fact holding a device never introduced in those years, wouldn’t the man at least look in her direction curiously? Obviously, there is nothing out of the ordinary happening here, (a time traveler talking on a cell phone would probably get the guys attention walking by her)

  • LS

    The fact that the supposed footage is captured from a TV screen is very dodgy, and is a trick commonly employed by UFO-fakers to mask their fakery. After all, anyone who can edit/produce videos like that one surely would have the know-how to rip the DVD footage directly (even I can do that, just by using VLC).

    He’s also promoting himself and probably affiliated with the DVD box set distributor that he encourages everyone to buy. I smell a rat.

  • Jon Hanford

    Besides the “cell phone”, what about some of the other odd “items” seen in the “full length” film clip? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWyD54lr22c

    (btw, I first caught this story on NBC Nightly News [see beginning of the video clip] and thought it amusing. Seeing it posted here, I was curious to see if other readers would play along with the story and offer other “explanations”. Well, some took the gambit. FWIW, I enjoyed the write-up and see a few other readers had fun playing along too. Thanks Nancy. :D

    @Dominion

    “i had to take several close looks to be sure but i’m fairly positive now that the “woman” is actually Pavel Chekov in disguise. He’s talking into what is clearly a standard issue star fleet communicator. Poor guy must still be looking for the nuclear wessel.”

    LOL, My ‘trek brain’ figured this was Spock trying to hide his pointy ears ala “City on the Edge of Forever”. :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/ThinktankPlanet @ThinktankPlanet

    Bloody hell, no wonder the sceptical movement is treated with such distaste by the superstitious majority. To all the ‘flamers’ of this article: listen to yourselves! You unforgiving, arrogant-sounding know-it-alls! OF COURSE THIS IS NOT A TIME-TRAVELLER CAUGHT ON FILM! NANCY DOES NOT FOR A SECOND BELIEVE THAT IT IS, AND NOR DOES UNIVERSE TODAY! Nancy simply thought you would be an intelligent, mature, and decent enough bunch of people to enjoy a momentary humorous chat, before moving on to regular business. Clearly she was sorely mistaken.

    Nancy, I empathise completely – I am an extreme sceptic, I manage the UK’s busiest small digital planetarium, and administrate a popular Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ThinktankPlanet) – and although I, like you, try hard to communicate science to my particular audience, it never ceases to amaze me how many haughty, ‘holier-than-thou’ so-called scientifically-minded people exist out there! Sigh. I guess just holding a rational world-view does not necessarily make you a nice, pleasant and mature human being.

    Looking over all the acrid comments once more, I just cannot believe the bunch of childish snobs who voiced their opinions. I certainly hope these loudmouths are all also activist members of sceptical, humanist and secularist organisations, where their (negative) energy is actually put to good use.

    Mario Di Maggio
    Thinktank Planetarium, UK

  • joseluis7696

    Interesting.. I had never noticed that people could talk into their hearing aids, antique or modern models.

    Now, this is a Film, it could be that Chaplin just wanted to include freaks in a circus story and had no better idea than to anticipate mobile phones. the Dick Tracy’s sort of thing, only that back in 1928…

  • avshel

    NEXUS! It may very well be the case…in which case it may further show that she was talking to someone and ruling out the possibility of her being a time traveler or an alien would also not be prudent.

  • MartyLK

    Not a cellphone. It is simply an ear trumpet and she is chewing the cudd, so to speak, like most country-style old folks are known for doing. For one thing, the arc of the trumpet is visible toward the back of the head and her fingers aren’t holding a straight-edged device, there’s a bit of curvature going along with a common ear trumpet.

    One thing I am certain of is she is chewing the cudd, rather than producing words.

  • Jim Krug

    The amount of totally arrogant replies in this thread is disappointing, but not at all surprising. I’m guessing a lot of the same people here- had they been alive 2000+ years ago- would’ve been all the more ready to toss Aristarchus of Samos in jail for suggesting the Earth went around the Sun.

    I believe this mindset also explains why the “scientific” community has made little progress on matters of UFOs, crop circles, etc.: many here are willing to immediately abandon the scientific method if they’re nervous at the outcomes it might produce.

    Thanks to those who actually took the topic seriously, and thanks to Nancy for posting it. The thing I wonder about the most is this:

    If you read any respected time travel book by Kaku, Hawking, etc., they usually only outline 2 possible theories of traveling back to the past: Timescape, and Many Worlds.

    But what if there were a third? What if we really don’t understand causality like we think we do, and a time traveler could go back in time AFTER this movie was originally made, and insert himself into it? Although not seriously considered by physicists, it would align with what many great sci-fi time travel flicks like Back to the Future and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure have depicted.

    JIm

  • santafedog

    a handshake, pat on the back or big hug to Nancy. I love when stuffed shirts get jacked up. Scientists have taken themselves so seriously so long that a lot of the lunar fringe religions believe it is black magic. Science needs to be a little more human so humans can relate to it.
    While this might have been more appropiate on April first, it has caused a huge reaction from many i never see posting in here and that is a wonderful thing to see.
    By the way, After finally looking at the vid clip, if you notice, her hand opens right in the last frames and anything she was carrying would have dropped out. The guy who put this out edited it pretty carefully, but went a couple of frames too long. First, this was an extra on a movie set and odd things happen there and two, many people in that day and age had bedbugs or fleas or boils along their hat lines. Or maybe she was stalking that guy with a knife in her hand!
    Every once in awhile he really need to get our cages rattled.
    Thanks again, Nancy.
    Brad C.

  • http://www.dvefx.com damian

    Like it or not, the long list of comments on this story suggests it has engaged more of you then other posts on UT do. :)

    Personally I was bitching about this farcical extrapolation before it appeared here.

    But it is interesting how hungry the human psyche is for mystery, or validation of existentialism over the rationality inherent in science.

    I would also like to point out that humans today or even perhaps thought history tend to look to existentialist concepts, like gods, faries, space travel, time travel and externalize them, attributing the mystery to something that is not us. But I would like to say that it is us.; These ideas all spring from the human imagination, and that about a whole level of wonderful speculation about predetermination of reality.

    Think about color, all light is a wavelength, every human sees colors differently. We can agree that what we see by a social classification, using words and labels, however each brain interprets it in their own way. We see color because we classify the differences our brain can perceive.

    So in reality the universe has no color, its just the way we interpret it.
    The metaphysical question is do intelligences generate reality.

    If we can imagine time travel, are we creating the reality that will make that possible. Technically the future is not yet written, and somehow on a gut level I dont think anyone will be able to go into the future. But thats just my opinion.

    Damian

  • TomSaidak

    I have two explanations that would explain what we can see in the film clip…

    Regarding hearing aids. My grandmother, Cybil wore a hearing aid. It was worn as a necklace – picture a 1970′s AM portable radio, with a lanyard, and earphones that carried the amplified sound. And this in about 1935 or so.

    Instead of wearing both earpones, picture instead the woman in the picture, was holding a single headset earphone to her ear. So far, so good – but why was she talking??

    Imagine, you are in your late 60′s or early 70′s, and you haven’t heard yourself talk for say, 30 years. Think you might be fascinated by hearing your own voice for the first time in decades? Or, because you haven’t hear yourself talk, you might be fascinated by how your own voice sounds?

    Another possibility… If the woman had been deaf for long enough, her ability to to talk will have been compromised. Imagine that your family has been writing notes – “Quit talking – I can’t understand you….” Suddenly, you can now hear yourself. How hard, how often, would you practice talking so people could understand you? If you can’t image this – find recordings of Helen Keller.

    Explanation #2…..
    Crystal radios were built as early as WWI – you CAN find instructions on how to build a “trench” crystal radio. In 1928, Edison tried marketing a crystal radio as a cheap alternative to a 6 vacuum tube radio. If you look at the video, and look at the FINGERS, the curve is consistent with holding a 3/4″ to 1 1/4″ depth round object, i.e, a one sided headphone. She could be carrying a crystal radio set with a single ear headphone. I have personally built crystal radios that were capable of powering a military style headset. Her talking would then be explained as talking to either the man in front of her (Husband??) or talking to the radio show. How many of us have a family member “telling” Oprah Winfrey what to say or to ask her guest?

    My wife has given me permission to admit she talks to television shows ALL the time….. Trust me, from my perspective it isn’t that hard to imagine….

  • meteoricide

    http://www.roger-russell.com/sonopg/sonoha.htm

    It’s hard to believe hearing aid technology began at the point of being the size and shape of today’s cell phones; yet telephones languished for 50 years being the size and weight of the average stenograph. There have been occasions while conducting patent searches to prove the patentability of a product or process, where I have found the the core technologies I’m researching described verbatim in a competing patent writeup; yet the patent is for a completely unrelated product or process than that which I’m looking for. The path I’m on was there hiding in plain sight before the competing inventors, yet they ended up in a totally different place. Technology advancement (or it’s non-equivalent), like the rest of existence (or it’s non-equivalent), is at the whim of the winds of chaos … all we can do is set the sail, & hang on for the ride. Have a great trip!

  • Ziggy

    She’s just a bag lady scratching her head and talking to herself, pfff come on guys time travellers!

  • wjwbudro

    I wasn’t aware that fade in/out cinematography technique had been developed back then. Can anyone explain how she faded from the scene at the end?

  • Belle

    I’m new to your site.

    Unlike the others, I find this fascinating.

    Perhaps it’s not a time traveler on a cellphone, but an extra-terrestrial on a communication device.

  • TheGhost

    Greetings to all,
    I Also find this to be a fascinating idea. As has previously been stated, how else would you detect a time traveler? (Such things are allowed by the General Theory of Relativity.)

    To respond to WJWBUDRO: a relatively simple cross-fade (now known as a ‘Cross-dissolve’) will produce the effect shown. Without doing any actual checking, we can say that such effects have been around for a long time. (Pun Intended!)

    To Ms. Nancy Atkinson, We thank you for bring this bit of unsettling information to our attention. One only has to look at the knee-jerk reaction of some of the early responders to gage the story’s impact.

    As we see it: The film in question appears to show a man (Never mind the TV issue.) talking into a device held in his right hand. This may just be a trick of light and shadow, however, Who talks in a silent movie?
    We would also point out that his/her clothing is rather more remindful of the era of Sherlock Holmes. i.e. About fifty years or so before this film was shot.
    To further the conjecture, You can bet that if we had just booked our time travel vacation to the past English time of the great literature, and found ourself’s standing in Hollywood (Or there abouts!) we certainly would be on the Chrono-Phone (Or its equivalent) post-haste!
    (It would be fascinating to see if a skilled lip reader could determine what he is saying! … In English? … From some future time?)

    We don’t know what we don’t know,
    The Ghost In The Machine

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