Bermuda Past-2

This is the second part of a compelling time travel story published on August 1.

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Several days passed before John was able to go ashore and return to the village. He wanted to see if he would feel the same sense of eeriness that he’d felt there with Barbara. But he also wanted to recapture that sense of being with her and the feeling that they had lived in the village as husband and wife.

When he reached to top of the rise, he paused and was dumbfounded by what he saw. There was no sign of a village, just open undeveloped land. I asked John in an e-mail if he had any inklings that he would find no trace of the village.

“I fully expected it to be there. In addition to wanting to see it in the daytime, I was going to find a place to sit and write a letter to Barbara I was totally surprised and found it hard to believe when it wasn’t there.”

Where the village was

He later added: “I don’t know if it’s important but thought you might want to know that we were able to touch and feel the houses and the church and both of us sat on the graveyard wall. These were solid objects and not projections or holographic images. Also, when we tried to see if the church was open, the doors wouldn’t open, but they definitely made noise when I pulled/pushed on the door handle. So there were definitely sounds.”

After making sure he was in the right place, he gave up and started back to the ship. But first he stopped at a pub for a couple of drinks to settle his nerves.

An elderly man was tending bar and he asked him if he knew anything about an old neighboring village. The bartender said he’d heard of a hamlet in the direction that John had pointed. I had existed in the 1700s, but was wiped out by a massive hurricane in the late 18th century. He suggested John talk to an even older man, a retired British sea captain whose relatives had lived in the lost village, which was called St. Catherine. He easily found the man’s house, but he was told that the man was in England and wouldn’t be back for several weeks. He returned his ship disappointed, but vowed to try again to find the man.

Finally, in April of 1965 when he returned to Bermuda on the cutter Cook Inlet, John found the captain at home and told him he was researching the lost village of St. Catherine. The old man welcomed John and showed him an old painting of his great great grandparents. It was their betrothal portrait, supposedly painted by a renowned English artist. He said they’d married in 1764 and died in 1780 in the hurricane that destroyed the hamlet.

John was startled by the picture because of the likeness of Barbara to the bride in the painting. The man somewhat resembled John, but the young woman looked like the nurse’s twin. But what really took him aback was when the captain told him their names…Lady Barbara and Sir John. Definitely a synchronicity. And a clue.

The captain had done quite a bit of family research and knew the young woman was of noble birth, while her husband was the naval attaché to the governor of the British colony.

The captain went on to say that Barbara was in the final weeks of pregnancy when the deadly hurricane struck Bermuda. She was found the next morning when the water receded and a midwife cut her open and removed the baby who amazing was alive. The baby survived and ultimately became the mother of the captain’s maternal grandfather.
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I found this story fascinating. Did John really find his own great-great-grandson from another life that he and Barbara lived? John believes so. Was that why he and Barbara were able to pass through the veil of time and enter St. Catherine, a hamlet that no longer existed? But why didn’t they see any people while they were there?

Of course, I also wondered what happened afterwards. As I said, John and Barbara were both involved with other people back in the States. Did they abandon those relationships, find true love together and return to Bermuda? Did they ever slip back into St. Catherine? Are they still together? Are they even in contact with one another?

I’ll tell the remainder of the saga in the next post. But until then, I’ll give you a hint. I’ve been exchanging e-mails with both of them.

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