Portals of London
Portals of London is an online project cataloguing ‘inter-dimensional gateways’ in London. It exists in the form of a blog, claiming to report a range of supernatural phenomena in the UK capital, including time-slips, spectral sightings, and unexplained disappearances.[1] The blog claims these happenings are the result of breaches in the ‘temporal fabric’ of the city. According to the website’s ‘about’ page, the blog’s author(s) are part of “a growing number [who] explore, discuss, research and sometimes use London’s portals”.[2]
Since appearing in January 2017, the blog has been the subject of speculation as to how much of it is ‘real’,[3] stemming from the anonymity of its author or authors, its ambiguous connection to folklore and urban legend, and its journalistic, matter-of-fact tone. Many of the posts are concerned with contemporary events, featuring what is claimed to be testimony from everyday Londoners, living in recognizable locations.[4]
The blog’s claims have been investigated by the Fortean Times.[5]
The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly
The best-known post on the Portals of London website details a ‘time anomaly’ that affected construction workers renovating the Woolwich Foot Tunnel in 2011.[6] It includes claimed testimony from an ‘anonymous worker’, recounting his experiences when ‘time froze’ in the Edwardian-built tunnel, which runs beneath the Thames between Woolwich and North Woolwich.
According to the blog’s counter, almost 250,000 visitors have read the story. Commenters have likened it to an urban myth, and discussions of its veracity have appeared on forums such as reddit.[7] The same story, with slightly different details, was told on the Night Terrors youtube channel in June 2018, leading many to question its origin.[8]
Urban myths, Folklore, and Physics
The time slips and other worlds featured in the blog have reminded some followers of the blog of folklore such as the Wild Hunt, Tir-na-gog, and Water-spirits,[9] [10] as well as contemporary takes on urban myths such as doppelgangers and poltergeist-type hauntings.[11]
Many of the website’s articles exhibit pseudo-Freudian concepts of the psyche’s ability to affect the material world,[12] as well as support for the theoretical physics of parallel universes, in particular the Many World’s Theory, which posits the existence of multiple, possibly infinite universes.[13]
Media / Fact or Fiction?
In June 2018, storytelling collective London Dreamtime led a guided walk in Stoke Newington in which ‘the secretive Portals of London’ conducted ‘an exploration of the rifts and fractures’ of North-East London.[14] In the same month, Time Out London ran an article purporting to be by the ‘anonymous author’ of Portals of London, titled “6 inter-dimensional time portals in London you never noticed”.[15] A later Londonist article (‘originally published in March 2027’) titled “London’s top time machines”, listed a device originally recorded on the Portals of London blog.[16]
In July 2018, the Mysterious Universe podcast retold several Portals of London stories.[17] In an accompanying blog, Brett Swancer wrote of the Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly, “while there are those who hold it up as a genuine time anomaly and a real case, others have criticized it as being nothing more than a fictionalized tale”.[18]
Several grass-roots bloggers have also assumed the website to be fiction. In November 2017, book blogger Kate Coe wrote, ‘London is strange, and I love that these fragments pull out that strangeness and make it sharper, turn it into a mystery…that I just have the urge to check, just to see, just in case it might be real’.[19]
Martin Belam, writing in The Guardian, described Portals of London as ‘a great example of the blurring of fact and supernatural fiction, presented as documentary fact. There was an 1860's act of parliament to reduce the number of churches in central London due to declining parish populations. It is, however, unlikely that that caused any specific churches to become temporally untethered’. The same article carried an interview in which the blog’s creator said he was influenced by the ghost stories of M.R James.[20]
In a further interview, on the Sense of Place podcast, the blog’s creator spoke of influences including authors Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Alan Moore and China Mieville; the films of Patrick Keiller; the online fictions Hookland and Scarfolk; and the pre-occupations of the ‘Hauntology’ and ‘Folk Horror’ movements, such as The Wicker Man, the television works of Nigel Kneale, and Public Information Films.[21]
The matter seemed to be settled in the February 2018 issue of the Fortean Times. Responding to numerous messages regarding the Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly, Noel Rooney, in the magazine’s Conspirasphere column, concluded that the blog, while ‘charmingly creepy’, was a work of ‘gently Borgesian fiction’.[22]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Portals of London". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "Welcome to Portals of London". Portals of London. 2017-01-20. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix - Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly". reddit. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2018-07-14). "Faraway islands (part 1): The Stockwell Bus Garage Manifestation". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ Rooney, Noel (February 2018). "The Conspirasphere". Fortean Times Magazine. FT363.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2017-07-02). "Under river, outside time: The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "r/HighStrangeness - The Woolwich foot tunnel anomaly". reddit. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "Thames Time Tunnel (the Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2018-05-31). "Shadows and clocks: Temporal Disturbances at Hornsey Town Hall". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2019-01-13). "Drowned lair: The Deptford Creek Necker". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2017-10-20). "Document of Interest: The Kilburn Hoardings Transcript". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2018-11-16). "A Hampstead Horror: The Ghost House". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ portalsoflondon (2018-10-19). "Mist shrouded cities: The Newcourt Continuum". Portals of London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "Portals of London: Abney Park". Vanessa Woolf. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ Editors, Things To Do. "6 'inter-dimensional time portals' in London you never noticed". Time Out London. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "London's Top 8 Time Machines". Londonist. 2018-10-02. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "20.03 – MU Podcast | Mysterious Universe". mysteriousuniverse.org. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "Very Strange Accounts of Bizarre Time Anomalies | Mysterious Universe". mysteriousuniverse.org. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ Coe, Kate (2017-11-29). "Ideas & Inspiration: Portals of London". Writing & Coe. Retrieved 2020-12-21. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Belam, Martin (2018-01-08). "The time anomaly of the Woolwich foot tunnel and other portals of London". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
- ↑ "The secret world of London's hidden Portals ft. Portals of London". The Sense of Place Podcast. Retrieved 2020-12-21. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Rooney, Noel. "The Conspirasphere". Fortean Times Magazine. FT363: 5.
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