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Moberly–Jourdain incident

January 01, 1970

The Moberly–Jourdain incident (also the Ghosts of Petit Trianon or Versailles, French: les fantômes du Trianon / les fantômes de Versailles) is a claim of time travel and hauntings made by Charlotte Anne Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924).[1]

Aerial view of the Petit Trianon, Versailles.

In 1911, Moberly and Jourdain published a book entitled An Adventure under the names of "Elizabeth Morison" and "Frances Lamont". Their book describes a visit they made to the Petit Trianon, a small château in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, where they claimed to have seen the gardens as they had been in the late eighteenth century, as well as ghosts, including Marie Antoinette and others. Their story caused a sensation and was subject to much ridicule.

Background edit

 
Charlotte Anne Moberly

Charlotte Anne Moberly, born in 1846, was the tenth of fifteen children.[2] She came from a professional background; her father, George Moberly, was the headmaster of Winchester College and later Bishop of Salisbury.[3][4] In 1886, Moberly became the first principal of a hall of residence for young women, St. Hugh's College in Oxford.[5] It became apparent that Moberly needed someone to help run the college, and Jourdain was asked to become Moberly's assistant.[6]

 
Eleanor Jourdain

Eleanor Jourdain, born in 1863, was the eldest of ten children.[7] Her father, the Reverend Francis Jourdain, was the vicar of Ashbourne in Derbyshire. She was the sister of art historian Margaret Jourdain and mathematician Philip Jourdain.[8] She went to school in Manchester, unlike most girls of the time who were educated at home.[6]

Jourdain was also the author of several textbooks, ran a school of her own, and after the incident became the vice-principal of St. Hugh's College.[9] Before Jourdain was appointed, it was decided that the two women should get to know one another better; Jourdain owned an apartment in Paris where she tutored English children, and so Moberly went to stay with her.[6]

Claims edit

Moberly and Jourdain recounted that they had decided to visit the Palace of Versailles as part of several trips around Paris, detailing how, on 10 August 1901, they travelled by train to Versailles. They remembered not thinking much of the palace after touring it,[6] so they said they decided to walk through the gardens to the Petit Trianon.[10] Upon reaching the Grand Trianon they found it was closed to the public.[6]

They recollected travelling with a Baedeker guidebook, but said they became lost after missing the turn for the main avenue, Allée des Deux Trianons, and entered a lane, where they bypassed their destination.[10] Moberly reported that she noticed a woman shaking a white cloth out of a window[11] while Jourdain recalled noticing an old deserted farmhouse, outside of which was an old plough.[11]

At this point they described a feeling of oppression and dreariness coming over them[12] after which men who they thought looked like palace gardeners told them to go straight on. Moberly described the men as "very dignified officials, dressed in long greyish green coats with small three-cornered hats".[13] Jourdain recalled that she noticed a cottage with a woman holding out a jug to a girl in the doorway,[11] describing it as a "tableau vivant", a living picture, much like Madame Tussauds waxworks. Moberly did not observe the cottage, but remembered that she felt the atmosphere change. She wrote: "Everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless, like wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees."[14]

 
The Comte de Vaudreuil was later suggested as a candidate for the man with the marked face allegedly seen by Moberly and Jourdain.

They reported reaching the edge of a wood, close to the Temple de l'Amour, and coming across a man seated beside a garden kiosk, wearing a cloak and large shady hat.[15] According to Moberly, his appearance was "most repulsive ... its expression odious. His complexion was dark and rough."[16] Jourdain noted "The man slowly turned his face, which was marked by smallpox; his complexion was very dark. The expression was evil and yet unseeing, and though I did not feel that he was looking particularly at us, I felt a repugnance to going past him."[16] They said that another man whom they described as "tall ... with large dark eyes, and crisp curling black hair under a large sombrero hat" came up to them, and showed them the way to the Petit Trianon.[17]

 
Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Wertmüller. The figure that Moberly saw near the Petit Trianon was claimed to bear a resemblance to the Queen as depicted in this painting

Moberly said she noticed a lady sketching on the grass who looked at them after they crossed a bridge to reach the gardens in front of the palace.[18] She later described the lady as wearing a light summer dress and a shady white hat with much fair hair. Moberly reported that she thought she was a tourist at first, but the dress appeared to be old-fashioned. Moberly came to believe that the lady was Marie Antoinette. Jourdain, however, did not see the lady.[19]

At their return to the palace, they reported that they were directed round to the entrance and joined a party of other visitors.[20] They said that after they toured the house, they had tea at the Hotel des Reservoirs before returning to Jourdain's apartment.

Aftermath edit

According to Jourdain and Moberly, neither woman mentioned the incident to one another until a week after leaving Versailles when Moberly, in a letter to her sister[20] about their trip, started writing about the afternoon of the Versailles incident. She reportedly asked Jourdain if she thought the Petit Trianon was haunted, and Jourdain told her that she thought it was. Three months later in Oxford,[21] the pair said they compared their notes and decided to write separate accounts of what happened while also researching the history of the Trianon. They thought they might have seen events that took place on 10 August 1792, only six weeks before the abolition of the French monarchy, when the Tuileries palace in Paris was besieged and the king's Swiss guards were massacred.

According to their narrative, they visited the Trianon gardens again on several occasions, but were unable to trace the path they took. Various landmarks, such as the kiosk and the bridge, were missing, and the grounds were full of people. Trying to come up with an explanation, they wondered if they had stumbled across a private party or an event booked that day. However, they found that nothing had been booked that afternoon.[20] Through their research, they thought they recognised the man they reportedly saw by the kiosk as the Comte de Vaudreuil, a friend of Marie Antoinette, who herself Moberly had claimed to see.

Convinced that the grounds were haunted, they decided to publish their story in a book An Adventure (1911) under the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont. The book, containing the claim that Marie Antoinette had been encountered in 1901, caused a sensation. However, many critics did not take it seriously on the grounds of the implausibilities and inconsistencies that it contained. A review of the book by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research suggested that the women had misinterpreted normal events that they had experienced.[n 1][22] In 1903, an old map of the Trianon gardens was found and showed a bridge that the two women had claimed to have crossed that had not been on any other map.[23] The identity of the authors of An Adventure was not made public until 1931.

Both women claimed many paranormal experiences before and after their adventure.[24] In one of them, Moberly claimed to have seen in the Louvre in 1914 an apparition of the Roman emperor Constantine, a man of unusual height wearing a gold crown and a toga; he was not observed by anybody else.[25] During the First World War, Jourdain, the dominant personality of the pair who had succeeded as Principal of St. Hugh's, became convinced that a German spy was hiding in the college.[26] After developing increasingly autocratic behaviour, she died suddenly in 1924 in the middle of an academic scandal over her leadership of the college, her conduct having provoked mass resignations of academic staff.[27] Moberly died in 1937.

The story of the adventure was made into a television film, the Anglia Television Production, Miss Morison's Ghosts, written and produced by Ian Curteis and directed by John Bruce, in 1981,[28] with Dame Wendy Hiller as Moberly/Morison and Hannah Gordon as Jourdain/Lamont.[29] The BBC broadcast a 90-minute radio dramatisation in 2004 and 2015.[30]

Explanations and critiques edit

 
Robert de Montesquiou

A non-supernatural explanation of the events was proposed by Philippe Jullian in his 1965 biography of the aristocratic decadent French poet Robert de Montesquiou.[31] At the time of Moberly and Jourdain's excursion to Versailles, Montesquiou lived nearby and reportedly gave parties in the grounds where his friends dressed in period costume and performed tableaux vivants as part of the party entertainments. Moberly and Jourdain may have inadvertently gatecrashed a gay fancy dress party that they confused for a haunting. The Marie-Antoinette figure could have been a society lady or a cross-dresser, the pockmarked man Montesquiou himself. It was suggested that a gathering of the French decadent avant-garde of the time could have made a sinister impression on the two middle-class Edwardian spinsters who would have been little used to such company.[32]

In a review of the history of the Moberly-Jourdain adventure and the extensive public reaction to it, Terry Castle noted with skepticism the claim that a shared delusion may have arisen out of a lesbian folie à deux between the two women.[33] Castle concludes that, when all proposed explanations have been considered, a core of mystery remains as much in relation to the psychological dynamics of the pair as to any aspects of the paranormal associated with their story.

Without fully endorsing the de Montesquiou explanation, Michael Coleman carefully examined the story and, in particular, the two published versions of the ladies' accounts (the earlier-written of which, from November 1901, had only previously been published in the second, small print-run, edition of An Adventure in 1913). Coleman concluded that the more widely available texts, as published in the 1911 and later editions, had been considerably aggrandized well after the events described and after the ladies had begun their investigations, while the original accounts had little or nothing to suggest a supernatural experience. He also questioned the rigour and reliability of the ladies' subsequent research, pointing out that few, if any, of their informants are named and that most of their literary and historical references were taken from unreliable sources.[34]

Psychologist Leonard Zusne suggested that it was a hallucinatory experience embellished over time by the two women finding out more about the history of the Palace.[35]

Brian Dunning of Skeptoid concluded that "Moberly and Jourdain were simply human" and were mistaken. He notes that editions of An Adventure were embellished each time they were published, and inconsistencies in their memories were apparent. For example, in the second edition the pair wrote that Moberly did not mention the sketching woman to Jourdain until three months after their visit to Versailles, and Jourdain did not remember such a thing. In contrast, Moberly did not remember much of what Jourdain described. "It was only after much discussion, note-sharing, and historical research that Moberly and Jourdain came up with the time period as 1789 and assigned identities to a few of the characters they saw, including Marie Antoinette herself as the lady sketching on the lawn." As Moberly and Jourdain admitted they had been lost on the vast grounds of Versailles, Dunning notes that their descriptions of footbridges and kiosks could fit any number of existing structures.[36]

Dame Joan Evans, who owned the copyright to An Adventure, accepted the Jullian explanation and forbade any further editions. However, after the work came out of copyright, it was republished in 1988 as The Ghosts of Trianon: The Complete 'An Adventure' by Thoth Publication and again in 2008 by CreateSpace, both times crediting Moberly and Jourdain as the authors.

Historian Roy Strong has noted that although the Moberly-Jourdain story has been debunked it "retained its hold on the public imagination for half a century".[37]

See also edit

References edit

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ The review is reprinted in Iremonger 1975, pp. 146–55.

Notes edit

  1. ^ Wheatley, Chris (2024-03-12). "The Respected Oxford Professors Who Say They Time Traveled". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2024-03-19.
  2. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 27.
  3. ^ Deuchar 2004.
  4. ^ Harrison & Harrison 1869, p. 4637.
  5. ^ Quare 2007.
  6. ^ a b c d e Farson 1978, p. 18.
  7. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 64.
  8. ^ O'Connor & Robertson 2005.
  9. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 80.
  10. ^ a b Iremonger 1975, p. 127.
  11. ^ a b c Iremonger 1975, p. 128.
  12. ^ Iremonger 1975, pp. 128–29.
  13. ^ qtd. in Castle 1995, p. 193.
  14. ^ qtd. in Castle 1995, p. 194.
  15. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 129.
  16. ^ a b Moberly & Jourdain 1989, p. ?.
  17. ^ Farson 1978, p. 20.
  18. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 130.
  19. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 181.
  20. ^ a b c Farson 1978, p. 22.
  21. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 131.
  22. ^ Goodman, Dena; Kaiser, Thomas E. (2003). Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. Routledge. p. 231. ISBN 0-415-93394-3 "Mrs. Sidgwick's anonymous review appeared in the June 1911 supplement to The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research."
  23. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 197.
  24. ^ Iremonger 1975, pp. 41, 97–103.
  25. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 42.
  26. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 92.
  27. ^ Iremonger 1975, p. 105.
  28. ^ cf. Miss Morison's Ghosts at IMDb  
  29. ^ "Miss Morison's ghosts". Worldcat.
  30. ^ "Miss Morison's Ghosts". BBC. Retrieved 8 September 2015.
  31. ^ Jullian 1967, pp. 140–41.
  32. ^ Evans 1976, pp. 33–47.
  33. ^ Castle 1991, pp. 741–72.
  34. ^ Coleman, M. H. (Ed.) The Ghosts of the Trianon. Aquarian Press, 1988.
  35. ^ Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (2014 edition). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Psychology Press. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-805-80507-9
  36. ^ Dunning, Brian (7 February 2012). "Skeptoid #296: The Versailles Time Slip". Skeptoid. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
  37. ^ Strong, Roy. (1991). A Celebration of Gardens. Timber Press. p. 362

Bibliography edit

  • "An Adventure" the 1913 second edition full text and illustrations in pdf format
  • Castle, Terry (1991), "Contagious Folly: An Adventure and Its Skeptics", Critical Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 741–72, doi:10.1086/448611, S2CID 144654323.
  • Castle, Terry (1995), The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508098-X.
  • Coleman, Michael H (1988), The Ghosts of the Trianon, The Complete An Adventure, Aquarian Press.
  • Deuchar, Andrew (2004), , Claves Regni, St Peter's Church, Nottingham, archived from the original on 9 February 2008, retrieved 2007-11-15
  • Evans, Joan (1976), "End to an Adventure: Solving the Mystery of the Trianon", Encounter, vol. 47, pp. 33–47.
  • Farson, Daniel (1978). The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in fact and fiction. Hamlyn. ISBN 0-600-34053-8.
  • Harrison, Thomas; Harrison, James William, eds. (17 August 1869), "[untitled]", The London Gazette, vol. 23527, retrieved 2010-10-03
  • Iremonger, Lucille (1975). The Ghosts of Versailles : Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain and their Adventure. White Lion. ISBN 0-856-17915-9. OCLC 1651218. LCC BF1473.V3 M63 1975.
  • Johnston, David (1945). The Trianon case;: A review of the evidence. A.H. Stockwell. ASIN B0007JHNTA.
  • Jullian, Philippe (1967), Robert de Montesquiou a Fin-de-Siecle Prince, Seker & Warburg, pp. 140–41.
  • Moberly, C. A. E.; Jourdain, Eleanor (1989). Ghosts of the Trianon: The Complete "an Adventure". Borgo. ISBN 0-8095-7105-6.
  • O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (2005), , JOC/EFR Biographies, University of St. Andrews School of Mathematics and Statistics, archived from the original on 2008-02-23, retrieved 2008-02-17.
  • Quare, Deborah (2007), , St. Hugh's College, archived from the original on 2009-04-11, retrieved 2007-11-15.
  • Salter, W. H. (1950), "An Adventure: A Note on the Evidence", Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 35: 178–87.
  • Moberly and Jourdain papers at Oxford University

Further reading edit

  • Antony Flew. (1953). A New Approach to Psychical Research. Watts & Co. pp. 142–47
  • Ian Parrott. (1966). The Music of "An Adventure". Regency Press.
  • Joseph Jastrow. (1935). Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief. D. Appleton-Century Company.
  • J. R. Sturge-Whiting. (1938). The Mystery of Versailles: A Complete Solution. Rider.

48°48′57″N 2°06′35″E / 48.8158°N 2.1097°E / 48.8158; 2.1097

January 01, 1970
moberly, jourdain, incident, also, ghosts, petit, trianon, versailles, french, fantômes, trianon, fantômes, versailles, claim, time, travel, hauntings, made, charlotte, anne, moberly, 1846, 1937, eleanor, jourdain, 1863, 1924, aerial, view, petit, trianon, ver. The Moberly Jourdain incident also the Ghosts of Petit Trianon or Versailles French les fantomes du Trianon les fantomes de Versailles is a claim of time travel and hauntings made by Charlotte Anne Moberly 1846 1937 and Eleanor Jourdain 1863 1924 1 Aerial view of the Petit Trianon Versailles In 1911 Moberly and Jourdain published a book entitled An Adventure under the names of Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont Their book describes a visit they made to the Petit Trianon a small chateau in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles where they claimed to have seen the gardens as they had been in the late eighteenth century as well as ghosts including Marie Antoinette and others Their story caused a sensation and was subject to much ridicule Contents 1 Background 2 Claims 3 Aftermath 4 Explanations and critiques 5 See also 6 References 6 1 Footnotes 6 2 Notes 6 3 Bibliography 7 Further readingBackground edit nbsp Charlotte Anne Moberly Charlotte Anne Moberly born in 1846 was the tenth of fifteen children 2 She came from a professional background her father George Moberly was the headmaster of Winchester College and later Bishop of Salisbury 3 4 In 1886 Moberly became the first principal of a hall of residence for young women St Hugh s College in Oxford 5 It became apparent that Moberly needed someone to help run the college and Jourdain was asked to become Moberly s assistant 6 nbsp Eleanor Jourdain Eleanor Jourdain born in 1863 was the eldest of ten children 7 Her father the Reverend Francis Jourdain was the vicar of Ashbourne in Derbyshire She was the sister of art historian Margaret Jourdain and mathematician Philip Jourdain 8 She went to school in Manchester unlike most girls of the time who were educated at home 6 Jourdain was also the author of several textbooks ran a school of her own and after the incident became the vice principal of St Hugh s College 9 Before Jourdain was appointed it was decided that the two women should get to know one another better Jourdain owned an apartment in Paris where she tutored English children and so Moberly went to stay with her 6 Claims editMoberly and Jourdain recounted that they had decided to visit the Palace of Versailles as part of several trips around Paris detailing how on 10 August 1901 they travelled by train to Versailles They remembered not thinking much of the palace after touring it 6 so they said they decided to walk through the gardens to the Petit Trianon 10 Upon reaching the Grand Trianon they found it was closed to the public 6 They recollected travelling with a Baedeker guidebook but said they became lost after missing the turn for the main avenue Allee des Deux Trianons and entered a lane where they bypassed their destination 10 Moberly reported that she noticed a woman shaking a white cloth out of a window 11 while Jourdain recalled noticing an old deserted farmhouse outside of which was an old plough 11 At this point they described a feeling of oppression and dreariness coming over them 12 after which men who they thought looked like palace gardeners told them to go straight on Moberly described the men as very dignified officials dressed in long greyish green coats with small three cornered hats 13 Jourdain recalled that she noticed a cottage with a woman holding out a jug to a girl in the doorway 11 describing it as a tableau vivant a living picture much like Madame Tussauds waxworks Moberly did not observe the cottage but remembered that she felt the atmosphere change She wrote Everything suddenly looked unnatural therefore unpleasant even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless like wood worked in tapestry There were no effects of light and shade and no wind stirred the trees 14 nbsp The Comte de Vaudreuil was later suggested as a candidate for the man with the marked face allegedly seen by Moberly and Jourdain They reported reaching the edge of a wood close to the Temple de l Amour and coming across a man seated beside a garden kiosk wearing a cloak and large shady hat 15 According to Moberly his appearance was most repulsive its expression odious His complexion was dark and rough 16 Jourdain noted The man slowly turned his face which was marked by smallpox his complexion was very dark The expression was evil and yet unseeing and though I did not feel that he was looking particularly at us I felt a repugnance to going past him 16 They said that another man whom they described as tall with large dark eyes and crisp curling black hair under a large sombrero hat came up to them and showed them the way to the Petit Trianon 17 nbsp Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Wertmuller The figure that Moberly saw near the Petit Trianon was claimed to bear a resemblance to the Queen as depicted in this painting Moberly said she noticed a lady sketching on the grass who looked at them after they crossed a bridge to reach the gardens in front of the palace 18 She later described the lady as wearing a light summer dress and a shady white hat with much fair hair Moberly reported that she thought she was a tourist at first but the dress appeared to be old fashioned Moberly came to believe that the lady was Marie Antoinette Jourdain however did not see the lady 19 At their return to the palace they reported that they were directed round to the entrance and joined a party of other visitors 20 They said that after they toured the house they had tea at the Hotel des Reservoirs before returning to Jourdain s apartment Aftermath editAccording to Jourdain and Moberly neither woman mentioned the incident to one another until a week after leaving Versailles when Moberly in a letter to her sister 20 about their trip started writing about the afternoon of the Versailles incident She reportedly asked Jourdain if she thought the Petit Trianon was haunted and Jourdain told her that she thought it was Three months later in Oxford 21 the pair said they compared their notes and decided to write separate accounts of what happened while also researching the history of the Trianon They thought they might have seen events that took place on 10 August 1792 only six weeks before the abolition of the French monarchy when the Tuileries palace in Paris was besieged and the king s Swiss guards were massacred According to their narrative they visited the Trianon gardens again on several occasions but were unable to trace the path they took Various landmarks such as the kiosk and the bridge were missing and the grounds were full of people Trying to come up with an explanation they wondered if they had stumbled across a private party or an event booked that day However they found that nothing had been booked that afternoon 20 Through their research they thought they recognised the man they reportedly saw by the kiosk as the Comte de Vaudreuil a friend of Marie Antoinette who herself Moberly had claimed to see Convinced that the grounds were haunted they decided to publish their story in a book An Adventure 1911 under the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont The book containing the claim that Marie Antoinette had been encountered in 1901 caused a sensation However many critics did not take it seriously on the grounds of the implausibilities and inconsistencies that it contained A review of the book by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research suggested that the women had misinterpreted normal events that they had experienced n 1 22 In 1903 an old map of the Trianon gardens was found and showed a bridge that the two women had claimed to have crossed that had not been on any other map 23 The identity of the authors of An Adventure was not made public until 1931 Both women claimed many paranormal experiences before and after their adventure 24 In one of them Moberly claimed to have seen in the Louvre in 1914 an apparition of the Roman emperor Constantine a man of unusual height wearing a gold crown and a toga he was not observed by anybody else 25 During the First World War Jourdain the dominant personality of the pair who had succeeded as Principal of St Hugh s became convinced that a German spy was hiding in the college 26 After developing increasingly autocratic behaviour she died suddenly in 1924 in the middle of an academic scandal over her leadership of the college her conduct having provoked mass resignations of academic staff 27 Moberly died in 1937 The story of the adventure was made into a television film the Anglia Television Production Miss Morison s Ghosts written and produced by Ian Curteis and directed by John Bruce in 1981 28 with Dame Wendy Hiller as Moberly Morison and Hannah Gordon as Jourdain Lamont 29 The BBC broadcast a 90 minute radio dramatisation in 2004 and 2015 30 Explanations and critiques edit nbsp Robert de Montesquiou A non supernatural explanation of the events was proposed by Philippe Jullian in his 1965 biography of the aristocratic decadent French poet Robert de Montesquiou 31 At the time of Moberly and Jourdain s excursion to Versailles Montesquiou lived nearby and reportedly gave parties in the grounds where his friends dressed in period costume and performed tableaux vivants as part of the party entertainments Moberly and Jourdain may have inadvertently gatecrashed a gay fancy dress party that they confused for a haunting The Marie Antoinette figure could have been a society lady or a cross dresser the pockmarked man Montesquiou himself It was suggested that a gathering of the French decadent avant garde of the time could have made a sinister impression on the two middle class Edwardian spinsters who would have been little used to such company 32 In a review of the history of the Moberly Jourdain adventure and the extensive public reaction to it Terry Castle noted with skepticism the claim that a shared delusion may have arisen out of a lesbian folie a deux between the two women 33 Castle concludes that when all proposed explanations have been considered a core of mystery remains as much in relation to the psychological dynamics of the pair as to any aspects of the paranormal associated with their story Without fully endorsing the de Montesquiou explanation Michael Coleman carefully examined the story and in particular the two published versions of the ladies accounts the earlier written of which from November 1901 had only previously been published in the second small print run edition of An Adventure in 1913 Coleman concluded that the more widely available texts as published in the 1911 and later editions had been considerably aggrandized well after the events described and after the ladies had begun their investigations while the original accounts had little or nothing to suggest a supernatural experience He also questioned the rigour and reliability of the ladies subsequent research pointing out that few if any of their informants are named and that most of their literary and historical references were taken from unreliable sources 34 Psychologist Leonard Zusne suggested that it was a hallucinatory experience embellished over time by the two women finding out more about the history of the Palace 35 Brian Dunning of Skeptoid concluded that Moberly and Jourdain were simply human and were mistaken He notes that editions of An Adventure were embellished each time they were published and inconsistencies in their memories were apparent For example in the second edition the pair wrote that Moberly did not mention the sketching woman to Jourdain until three months after their visit to Versailles and Jourdain did not remember such a thing In contrast Moberly did not remember much of what Jourdain described It was only after much discussion note sharing and historical research that Moberly and Jourdain came up with the time period as 1789 and assigned identities to a few of the characters they saw including Marie Antoinette herself as the lady sketching on the lawn As Moberly and Jourdain admitted they had been lost on the vast grounds of Versailles Dunning notes that their descriptions of footbridges and kiosks could fit any number of existing structures 36 Dame Joan Evans who owned the copyright to An Adventure accepted the Jullian explanation and forbade any further editions However after the work came out of copyright it was republished in 1988 as The Ghosts of Trianon The Complete An Adventure by Thoth Publication and again in 2008 by CreateSpace both times crediting Moberly and Jourdain as the authors Historian Roy Strong has noted that although the Moberly Jourdain story has been debunked it retained its hold on the public imagination for half a century 37 See also editTime travel claims and urban legends Miss Morison s Ghosts a movie about the incident The Girl in the Fireplace a fictional account of time travel from Versailles from the TV series Doctor Who References editFootnotes edit The review is reprinted in Iremonger 1975 pp 146 55 Notes edit Wheatley Chris 2024 03 12 The Respected Oxford Professors Who Say They Time Traveled Atlas Obscura Retrieved 2024 03 19 Iremonger 1975 p 27 Deuchar 2004 Harrison amp Harrison 1869 p 4637 Quare 2007 a b c d e Farson 1978 p 18 Iremonger 1975 p 64 O Connor amp Robertson 2005 Iremonger 1975 p 80 a b Iremonger 1975 p 127 a b c Iremonger 1975 p 128 Iremonger 1975 pp 128 29 qtd in Castle 1995 p 193 qtd in Castle 1995 p 194 Iremonger 1975 p 129 a b Moberly amp Jourdain 1989 p Farson 1978 p 20 Iremonger 1975 p 130 Iremonger 1975 p 181 a b c Farson 1978 p 22 Iremonger 1975 p 131 Goodman Dena Kaiser Thomas E 2003 Marie Antoinette Writings on the Body of a Queen Routledge p 231 ISBN 0 415 93394 3 Mrs Sidgwick s anonymous review appeared in the June 1911 supplement to The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Iremonger 1975 p 197 Iremonger 1975 pp 41 97 103 Iremonger 1975 p 42 Iremonger 1975 p 92 Iremonger 1975 p 105 cf Miss Morison s Ghosts at IMDb nbsp Miss Morison s ghosts Worldcat Miss Morison s Ghosts BBC Retrieved 8 September 2015 Jullian 1967 pp 140 41 Evans 1976 pp 33 47 Castle 1991 pp 741 72 Coleman M H Ed The Ghosts of the Trianon Aquarian Press 1988 Zusne Leonard Jones Warren H 2014 edition Anomalistic Psychology A Study of Magical Thinking Psychology Press p 195 ISBN 978 0 805 80507 9 Dunning Brian 7 February 2012 Skeptoid 296 The Versailles Time Slip Skeptoid Retrieved 11 August 2012 Strong Roy 1991 A Celebration of Gardens Timber Press p 362 Bibliography edit An Adventure the 1911 first edition full text in pdf format An Adventure the 1913 second edition full text and illustrations in pdf format Castle Terry 1991 Contagious Folly An Adventure and Its Skeptics Critical Inquiry vol 17 no 4 pp 741 72 doi 10 1086 448611 S2CID 144654323 Castle Terry 1995 The Female Thermometer Eighteenth century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 508098 X Coleman Michael H 1988 The Ghosts of the Trianon The Complete An Adventure Aquarian Press Deuchar Andrew 2004 Bishop George Moberly Claves Regni St Peter s Church Nottingham archived from the original on 9 February 2008 retrieved 2007 11 15 Evans Joan 1976 End to an Adventure Solving the Mystery of the Trianon Encounter vol 47 pp 33 47 Farson Daniel 1978 The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in fact and fiction Hamlyn ISBN 0 600 34053 8 Harrison Thomas Harrison James William eds 17 August 1869 untitled The London Gazette vol 23527 retrieved 2010 10 03 Iremonger Lucille 1975 The Ghosts of Versailles Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain and their Adventure White Lion ISBN 0 856 17915 9 OCLC 1651218 LCC BF1473 V3 M63 1975 Johnston David 1945 The Trianon case A review of the evidence A H Stockwell ASIN B0007JHNTA Jullian Philippe 1967 Robert de Montesquiou a Fin de Siecle Prince Seker amp Warburg pp 140 41 Moberly C A E Jourdain Eleanor 1989 Ghosts of the Trianon The Complete an Adventure Borgo ISBN 0 8095 7105 6 O Connor J J Robertson E F 2005 Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain JOC EFR Biographies University of St Andrews School of Mathematics and Statistics archived from the original on 2008 02 23 retrieved 2008 02 17 Quare Deborah 2007 A brief history of St Hugh s college St Hugh s College archived from the original on 2009 04 11 retrieved 2007 11 15 Salter W H 1950 An Adventure A Note on the Evidence Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 35 178 87 Moberly and Jourdain papers at Oxford UniversityFurther reading editAntony Flew 1953 A New Approach to Psychical Research Watts amp Co pp 142 47 Ian Parrott 1966 The Music of An Adventure Regency Press Joseph Jastrow 1935 Wish and Wisdom Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief D Appleton Century Company J R Sturge Whiting 1938 The Mystery of Versailles A Complete Solution Rider 48 48 57 N 2 06 35 E 48 8158 N 2 1097 E 48 8158 2 1097 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Moberly Jourdain incident amp oldid 1214740766, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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