Ghost ship to time slip

So, I was walking along a very familiar suburban street recently when I saw something very unfamiliar. There, at the entrance to a side street some 200m away, was the prow of a big ship! I stared at it for a few seconds in disbelief. I knew it couldn’t be there but there it was! As I slowly approached the ship it suddenly vanished.

I’ve heard of ghost ships at sea but never in a suburban street. I examined the place where the ship had appeared. There was still a prow shape but it was the setting sun lighting up a white windowless house wall. The distinctive prow shape was created by a shadow cast by the house roof. Because of the layout of the nearby houses the rear of the ‘ship’ was conveniently concealed so that only the ‘prow’ was visible.

The ghost ship was caused by misperception. It is the largest misperception I’ve seen. I’m used to misperceptions being of small objects up to around the size of a human figure. But it seems they can be much bigger, in the right circumstances. This opens up some interesting possibilities. A witness seeing a scene from a distance, or briefly, might report major differences from reality. A building, for instance, could look different from reality. When the witness realises the scene they saw was 'wrong' they might report it as a time slip experience.

There was another notable point to this experience. I knew for a certain fact, even as I was looking at the obvious ‘ship’, that it was not real. I know the street very well and there are no ships there, nor could you even physically fit one in. But despite knowing this, the ship image persisted and looked utterly real! It only vanished as I got a better view. It seems the conscious part of my brain could not override the unconscious bit that was pro