Man discovers 1975 'time travel' poem at home and sets out to find it's mysterious writer

Finding decade-old messages and items in a house that people buy is a common phenomenon. However, being able to track down who actually did it is rare. A family in Accrington, Lancashire, England, was redecorating their new house when they pulled out the wallpaper to find a mysterious poem about “time travel,” according to The Sun. The Murphys found the note in their daughter’s room and they were stunned that it was written on the wall back in 1975.

The family moved to the new house in January 2021. When they started to peel the wallpaper a few months later, they found a message that read something like this, “I am here, you are there, separated by time alone. What’s it like in the future? Or am I the past? The only answer - you are my future, I am your past. I wish you a good day 1975 Eileen Walmsley,” reports Lancashire Live. Karl Murphy said that it was his daughter who first saw it. “We were in my daughter’s room and started stripping the first layer of wallpaper when we found it.” He added, “We tried to make it out (the message) and I took a picture of it.” Karl decided to put on the chat and see if anybody knew the Walmsley name. He was surprised by a response that he received from a family friend.

The dad recalled, “Another lady came back to me and said, ‘I know Eileen. I think she’s moved away. I’ll try and get in contact with her." Soon, the woman herself, Eileen Palmer, contacted Karl to let him know she wrote the message as a young teen. She aged 62 in 2021. This whole experience reminded her of her childhood when she wrote the message. She told Lancashire Live, “I was very happy they discovered it.” She remembered vaguely that she was 14 or 15 when she wrote it. “I knew the bedroom was going to be decorated and I thought, you either do something or you don’t,” she shared.

Then she spoke about how she wrote this message on the wall. Eileen explained, “I was thinking about time and time travel and how we are all connected and I thought, you know I’ll write a poem.” She had started living in the house when she was four with her parents and siblings. The room where the Murphys found the message was the same room where Eileen and her sister slept.“I’m glad I did it - that was our bedroom and we shared the bedroom, so it was sort of magical in that way,” she said. When she was 18, she went to Brighton for university and only used to come home to visit. Her parents, Dorothy and Francis Walmsley lived in Accrington for over 60 years.

Unfortunately, she lost her dad in 2017 and mom in 2018 and then it became difficult for her to visit her home as she felt upset. However, finding the message she wrote as a teen brought back happy memories for her. She added that it felt amazing to see the renovations that the Murphys made to the house. “Karl’s made such an amazingly beautiful job of it,” she said. The message also reminded her of her mood back then and “that sort of romantic image I had of life and how life changes and how new generations come forward.” She added, “I remembered who I was back then. That house is a fundamental part of my life and I’m really glad they saw it and glad it brought back so many memories for me.”