7 Unexplained Parallel Universe Stories

It was July 1954, a scorching hot day: a man arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. He had recently landed from a plane flying over from Europe. There was nothing unusual about him at first glance: he was elegantly dressed, with no distinguishing features.

He was just a simple man sporting a beard. He made his way to customs, just as all the other people surrounding him. The customs officer picked up this man’s passport. As soon as he started to browse through its pages, the officer immediately noticed something was wrong.

The traveler reassured him: “Oh, I come from a faraway country, but this is my third time visiting Japan!” What was it with that man’s passport that was so unusual, that they thought he was a fraud? Or a spy? Or, most intriguing of them all, a time traveler?

The man’s passport did look authentic. The problem was it claimed he came from a country no one had ever heard of: Taured. So, he was immediately taken for interrogation. The traveler then tried to convince the Japanese authorities that his country was real. He even pointed to its location on the map: a small territory located between Spain and France. Since his primary language was French, it did make sense.

However, the area he pointed out on the map was actually the Principality of Andorra — a microstate located between France and Spain of only 180 sq miles. When seeing the map himself, the traveler was also puzzled that his country was called Andorra. He claimed Taured had been there for over 1000 years.

Customs officers saw he also had money from several different European countries on him. His passport also had stamps from many airports around the world, including previous visits to Tokyo. Obviously, the Japanese officers insisted that Taured did not exist, and decided he needed to be taken into custody overnight for further investigation.

Officers initially tried to contact the company he said he was working for. He even had a lot of company documents on him to prove his point. But to their surprise, none of the people from that company had ever heard of him! They then tried to contact the hotel he claimed he had reservations in. You guessed it, they hadn’t heard of him either. The bank that issued his checks? Didn’t exist.

The traveler was set up in a nearby hotel and to ensure he would not get away, two guards were placed outside his room. The next morning, when entering his room, officers were astonished to see he’d simply vanished! The local police established that he couldn’t have escaped out of the window. His room was several floors up, and there was no balcony either.

Initially, Japanese officials were confident they would still be able to find him quickly and solve the mystery. They had confiscated his paperwork the day before. But, to their shock, all his personal belongings, including the documents mentioning his mysterious country of Taured, had vanished too and were nowhere to be seen. Some thought he must have been some sort of government secret agent.

His documents looked authentic, so they must have been forged by professionals. To protect his identity and that of his country of origin, his superiors probably came up with this imaginary country of Taured. They hoped airport officials would simply look at the papers without raising any concerns. His mysterious disappearance was also explained by some high-tech extraction operation, performed by an intelligence service.

Others thought the man from Taured must have been from another dimension. Voilà, the multiverse exists! They claimed that the country of Taured probably existed in his version of the universe since he did say it was founded over 1,000 years ago. Andorra was just our version of that specific territory. When he figured out he was in trouble, he simply passed into his original dimension. How did he manage to get back his documents too, that’s still up for debate.

He was even thought to be a time traveler, coming all the way from a future where the Principality of Andorra somehow becomes Taured. The simplest explanation of them all is that probably this was all made up. Or at least blown out of proportion. The source of this urban legend was eventually figured out to be a man named John Zegrus — An American-born man who traveled the world using a fake passport of a country he simply invented.

This may sound a bit unbelievable these days when we live in a fully digital age, but back then people using fake passports were quite a common thing. You just needed to be sufficiently confident — and dressed for the job — to pass off as someone VIP. Even from a made-up country! Remember when he claimed he had visited Japan before? He didn’t lie!

John did apply for a Japanese visa under a Taured passport, and it got approved! After that, he had no problems entering Japan. We do know today that this man traveled the world with fake documents and IDs and was involved in financial scams. On 10 August 1960, a Japanese Court sentenced Zegrus to one year in prison. He was then released and deported from Japan to Hong Kong.

John Zegrus wasn’t the only urban time travel legend. One video that surfaced in 2006 showed a Swedish man claiming that he had accidentally traveled to 2046 as he was trying to fix his kitchen sink. While in the future, he stumbled upon someone who claimed to be his 70 years old self!

They had a great time together and even filmed short footage. In it, they showed a tattoo they shared to prove they were the same person! Sadly, the story was nothing more than a marketing campaign to promote pension plans.

Back in 1995, a man named Mike Marcum tried to build a time machine in his house in Stanberry, Missouri. He named this project the Jacobs Ladder. It’s said he vanished in 1997 and hasn’t been seen ever since. There’s still no explanation for his disappearance.

Then there’s the story of the 1860 painting by Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Called “The Expected One” it seems to depict a woman holding and looking down at an iPhone! On a closer look, art experts revealed that the alleged iPhone in the painting was just a book, painted from a very misleading angle.

The story of Rudolph Fentz is another one of those urban legends that goes back to the 1950s. It claims that in 1951, in New York City a man dressed in 19th-century clothes was hit by a car. He was identified as Rudolph Fentz, but the problem was, that he was reported to be missing since 1876!

The items he was carrying also suggested he jumped from 1876 to 1951 directly. Sadly, for this one too, these events never actually happened in real life. They just originated from a science fiction book of the 1950s.

A genuine photograph from 1941 of the re-opening of the South Fork Bridge in Gold Bridge, British Columbia also sparked some debate. It appeared to show a time traveler. That was because his clothing and sunglasses were not of the time. They looked more like what a young man might wear these days. Further research showed that it wasn’t the case though.

Let’s take his sunglasses as an example: their style first appeared in the 1920s. Then, he seems to be wearing a printed T-shirt. If we look closely though, we can notice he’s actually sporting a sweater with a sewn-on emblem. These kinds of garments were actually in style at the time. The remainder of his clothing is appropriate for his time. His clothes are a bit more casual than those worn by the people around him in the photograph, which does make him stand out a bit.

Another 1940s photo sparked intrigue online as it appeared to show a man holding an iPhone! The picture, taken on a beach, shows a man — dressed in time-appropriate clothing walking through the crowd and looking at some sort of device in his hands. People were fast to assume time travel was the only possible explanation, but that’s not the case. He was most likely looking down at another object, but it’s difficult to see because of the quality of the picture.