This Mysterious Computer Could Prove Time Travel Exists | Nostalgia Nerd

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0:00-01:10 Introduction
01:10-02:05 Curiosity Stream
02:05-29:15 The Dodleston Messages
29:15-35:52 Post Events
35:52-40:35 Dissection
40:35-41:53 Further Reading
41:53-43:01 Credits

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Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

[indridcold]

Time travel does exist. I have been traveling forward in time for quite some time, with great ease. Going the other way is rather challenging, though.

[tobermoryx]

As soon as I saw the first message I was reminded of 'The Ghost of Thomas Kempe', which is a book that was very popular in Britain in the early 1980s, and was indeed used for study in English classes at that time. The plot was a boy in modern times, living in a 400 year old house, receiving letters from someone that had lived there in the 1600s.

Was surprised the video did not make that connection, but maybe the book is forgotten now.

[jeremydas]

I had a BBC Model B in the mid 1980s, and I too used to receive mysterious messages, especially after midnight, when I was in a state of semi-wakefulness. The messages tended to be somewhat shorter than the ones in the video, since they always came in the form of bizarre, seemingly meaningless phrases that were sometimes repeated two or three times, as if the sender, in some unfathomable way, knew that I hadn't quite understood them. The phrases certainly had some kind of poetic power, but what, if anything, they meant is anyone's guess. They included "SYNTAX ERROR", "TOO MANY GOSUBS", and "DIVISION BY ZERO", the latter perhaps alluding to the infinite nature of reality...

[darkroast]

The biggest flaw with this story is that all the apparent "professionals" involved mysteriously disappeared and somehow couldn't be found. Which ultimately makes the story entirely contigent upon the honesty of the tellers.

[synthnerd]

Dunno about time travel but that was the shortest 43 minutes I've had for ages.

[Vokabre]

Perhaps some ghosts are angry because there only were zx spectrums available to type their cryptic messages, and they couldn't deal with the keyboard.

[drinksanddice]

Around the time Windows 8 was released I was sent on a home call to repair this old man's IBM XT (my manager thought he said XP), when I got there his table was covered in hand drawn astrological charts, he took me to another room with an identical XT covered in dust, and explained that he was using the broken computer to communicate to his dead wife who was sending him messages from the second computer. Told him I could maybe get the data off the broken computer so he could archive it, but I couldn't restablish then connection to his wife... Guy complained to my manager, said I wasn't trained properly, and I got a write up for the bad customer survey.

[LukeInnes]

I *love* that the best that time travellers from 2109 could muster for communication was a BBC Micro

[alexalexis]

The real mind-bending aspect of this story is the never-ending battery on the computer sent back to the 16th century.

[butter]

I'll tell you guys a story I still can't explain and I spent years trying to solve it. I was 18 and was a senior in high school. I was at a party in a home about a ten minute drive from my home. Very late at night my friend and I realized we didn't have anyone to take us home so we decided to walk home through the forest. This happened in Pennsylvania and all around our small towns is thick forest with atv trails throughout. As we made it into the forest it began to lightning. Halfway to our hometown it began to pour and we could hardly see the trail. My friend spotted a huge cave entrance on one of the rock walls on one side of the trail. We went in and started a small fire to wait out the storm. Now we knew these woods like the back of our hands and as we sat in this cave we discussed why we never found this place before. As we were sitting there my friend found an Indian arrowhead that was in very good condition. You can find these all around where I live. We eventually fell asleep and when we woke up it was daylight and the rain had stopped. We walked out of the cave and instantly knew where we were. That night we decided to go back and show our friends what we found. The only problem was we couldn't find the cave. Both of us knew exactly where in the forest this cave should have been but we could not find it. We were very confused and after speaking at length we remembered everything exactly the same. A few days later we remembered the arrowhead my friend found and since he and his father collected them he put it in a display case on the wall. We went to get it as proof and the slot he put it in was empty. He asked his dad why he took it out and his dad said he didn't touch it. Now we were really like wtf is going on here. We started investigating and everytime we had some time together we would look for the cave but never found it or the arrowhead. I'm 45 now and still walk my dogs in that forest and always in the back of my head is that cave. I don't understand what happened to us that night. Did we both hallucinate the same exact thing? If we did where were we? We were dry the next morning so we had to be in some sort of shelter. I've never found the cave and still to this day whenever I see my friend the first thing we talk about is if either of us found it. How does a huge cave just disappear? Neither of us ever found any answers and imo something paranormal happened. Anyway it was the strangest thing that ever happened to me and seems like a channel that would appreciate the story. If anyone has questions I will be happy to answer because I too am still looking for answers.

[James-txgf]

The "Dost thou hath horse?" question immediately gives it away for me. That is exactly the type of question someone would think a time traveler would ask but in reality it would be exceptional for someone from 1600 to question if horses were still around as their first question about the future.

[AwokenEntertainment]

as much as I wanted to believe.. it sounds like a hoax to me..

[jamesrozell]

You can’t really fault a time traveler for appearing at the exact right time.

[TheMAZZTer]

The "REATE" file suggests to me whoever did this didn't know how to really use the computer. They probably tried to type "CREATE" at the main menu but typing the "C" then prompted for the filename, which they didn't see... presumably they were not familiar with typing on a keyboard and were hunting and pecking instead of looking at the screen.

(To be clear I don't believe time travel was involved in any way with this.)

[Monkey_SK]

Did anyone suspect the cats, I mean look at them there, plotting their next message!
I remember watching this back in the 90's. Great video.

[ELREASON]

Even though it was 40 years ago, this would have called for a video camera to monitor the computer to have known what really happened. If they wanted to force proof, they should describe a particular brick to remove (which can be checked that it has been unaltered for centuries) and place something specific from that time period, but very rare today. If this 15th century guy were real, he could easily place that object. Indeed, it should be there almost as soon as they leave him the message. So maybe it would not have been so difficult to establish better evidence.

[NicholasBrakespear]

This reminds me of a story I thought I'd made up - I remember playing the Quake 3 demo back in the day, alone, and I have a memory of one of the bots asking me what my favourite thing was. I replied, food.
The bot asked me if they'd get a frag for starving me.

For years and years, I remembered this, and yet doubted it; as the years went by, I doubted it more and more, for as I learned more about how computer games function, and got into game development myself, I found it to be implausible that such an elaborate text parser existed for the bots in a predominantly multiplayer shooter from the end of the 90s (especially given that so few games bother to even include bots these days).

Turns out I was wrong. The game DOES feature a parser. I did talk to the bot. Those crazy boys at id actually put a text parser into the game... for no apparent reason, beyond the fact that they could. And you can indeed talk to the bots in a rudimentary manner (though I don't know the full limitations of it) - in a recent test, having acquired the full game on GOG, I said "Hug me" to a bot. The bot replied with something along the lines of, "Let's get married and have lots of children".

Given that I didn't have internet access back in the 90s, I can only speculate as to what weird stories I would have been telling my friends about my solitary experiences with such an unexpected feature. But it rather demonstrates that technology was not so limiting in the past when it came to subtler, more ingenious ideas.

And frankly, if this story were about a program from the 90s communicating with someone? I would now immediately proclaim - text parser, and prank.

[SpoonOfDoom]

As if the "time travellers and communicating throughout centuries using a BBC Micro" wasn't hard enough to believe, suddenly there's ALSO ghost activity in the house? This really sounds like someone going "how far can I go with this prank". Also, the first messages really seemed more along the "I can see you in my house, you stole it, this message is spooky" vibe than "just" a normal person from the 16th century dictating messages to his chimney.
The only consistent thing about this story is the inconsistency throughout the entire thing.

[midimusicforever]

The really elaborate trolls are the best ones.

[clintward]

Have to give these people credit. The time, and more importantly the effort and thought they put into planning and carrying out this hoax is outstanding.