Somewhere in Time. I'm Jason Horton.

I'm Rebecca Leap.

And this is Ghost Town.

I'm going to show you a clip and I want you to describe what you see. Okay. Okay. So I see where it was a zebra, like a zebra, and there's a woman. It looks like she's on a cell phone. Yes. Yes, she does. Strange, right, considering... Oh, well, it was the old days.

It might have been the iPhone, too.

Oh, just the two?

Yeah. Oh, it's so bad for her, you know? It's like technology has come a long, long way. That's true. Well, what you just saw, we'll start with the facts for now. Was a short piece of footage from the extras section of a Charlie Chaplin DVD, specifically the Charlie Chaplin Collection, Volume 2.

You're listening to this, so I'm going to describe exactly what Jason saw. It's a moment at the

premiere of Chaplin's 1928 film The Circus at the historic Gromens Chinese Theater. There's a big

kind of statue of a zebra to promote the film, and behind it people are walking.

One woman in particular walks by, kind of aware of the camera. This woman is unlike the rest.

Why? Because it appears back in the year of our Lord 1928 that as she walks by, she's having a conversation on a small, sleek, modern cell phone,

a strange piece of tech, a surrealist misunderstanding, or perhaps a figure from the future

caught on tape? Today on Ghost Town, we're discussing what people call Chaplin's time traveler.

All time traveling aside, it's important to note that the production on the circus was notoriously difficult for Chaplin's Time Traveler. All time traveling aside, it's important to note that the production

on the circus was notoriously difficult for Chaplin, which made the premiere more of a triumph,

a moment to be celebrated and perhaps to be seen. Premiering, like I said in 1928, the film is a silent

romantic comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The film isn't

exactly reinventing the wheel. The ringmaster of a down-and-out circus hires Chaplin's

iconic little tramp character as a clown, but discovers the tramp isn't really much of a performer.

In fact, he's only really funny unintentionally. Filming, which began on January 11, 1926, was one of the most

difficult experiences of Chaplin's life. In the first month of filming, it was discovered that

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