Time travel claims and urban legends

Time travel urban legends are accounts of persons who allegedly traveled through time, reported by the press or circulated on the Internet. Often these have turned out to either be hoaxes or to be based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information or interpretation of fiction as fact, while others remain mysterious and have yet to be fully explained.

Alleged experiments in time travel

The Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk Project

Main articles: Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk Project

The Philadelphia Experiment is the name given to a naval military experiment which was supposedly carried out at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, sometime around October 28, 1943. It is alleged that the U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was to be rendered invisible (or "cloaked") to enemy devices. The experiment is also referred to as Project Rainbow. Some reports allege that the warship travelled back in time for about 10 seconds, however popular culture has represented far bigger time jumps.

The story is widely regarded as a hoax. The U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment occurred, and details of the story contradict well-established facts about the Eldridge, as well as the known laws of physics. Nonetheless, the story has captured imaginations in conspiracy theory circles, and elements of the Philadelphia Experiment are featured in other government conspiracy theories.

The Montauk Project was alleged to be a series of secret United States government projects conducted at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station on Montauk, Long Island for the purpose of exotic research including time travel. Jacques Vallée describes allegations of the Montauk Project as an outgrowth of stories about the Philadelphia Experiment.

Chronovisor

Main article: Chronovisor

Chronovisor was the name given to a machine that was said to be capable of viewing past and future events. Its existence was alleged by Father François Brune, author of several books on paranormal phenomena and religion. In his book The Vatican’s New Mystery he claimed that the device had been built by the Italian priest and scientist Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti (1925-1994). While Father Ernetti was a real person, the existence (much less the functionality) of the chronovisor has never been confirmed, and its alleged capabilities are strongly reminiscent of the fictional time viewer which features in T. L. Sherred's 1947 science fiction novella "E for Effort".

Hit and run victim from the past

Main article: Rudolph Fentz

Rudolph Fentz is an urban legend from the 1970s and has been repeated since, as a reproduction of facts and presented as evidence for the existence of time travel. The essence of legend is that, in New York in 1950, a man, wearing 19th Century clothes, was hit by a car and killed. The subsequent investigation revealed that the man had disappeared without trace in 1876. The items in his possession reveal that the man had travelled through time from 1876 to 1950 directly. The folklorist Chris Aubeck investigated the story and found it originated in two science fiction books of the 1950's 'A Voice from the Gallery' by Ralph M. Holland which had copied the tale from 'I'm Scared' a short story by Jack Finney (1911 - 1995), where the Fentz tale originated.

Bulletin board time traveler

Main article: John Titor

John Titor is the name used on several bulletin boards during 2000 and 2001 by a poster claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. In these posts he made numerous predictions (a number of them vague, some quite specific) about events in the near future, starting with events in 2004. However, as of 2010, these events appear not to have taken place; he described a drastically changed future in which the United States had broken into five smaller regions, the environment and infrastructure had been devastated by a nuclear attack, and most other world powers had been destroyed.

To date, the story has been retold on numerous web sites, in a book, and in a play. He has also been discussed occasionally on the radio show Coast to Coast AM. In this respect, the Titor story may be unique in terms of broad appeal from an originally limited medium, an Internet discussion board.

Time travelling spammer

Similar to John Titor, Bob White or Tim Jones sent an unknown number of spam emails onto the internet between 2001 and 2003. The subject of the emails was always the same, that the individual was seeking to find someone who could supply a 'Dimensional Warp Generator' on some instances he claimed to be a time traveller stuck in 2003 and in others he claimed to be seeking the parts only from other time travellers. In response several recipients began to respond in kind, claiming to have equipment such as the requested dimensional warp generator - one recipient Dave Hill set up an online shop from which the time traveller purchased the warp generator (formerly a Hard Drive Motor) Soon afterwords, the time traveller was identified as professional spammer Jamer R. Todino known as Robby. It turned out Robby's attempts to travel in time was a serious belief and he had been diagnosed with psychological problems related to it.

Stock-trading time traveler

Andrew Carlssin is a fictitious person who was reported arrested in January 2002 for SEC violations for making 126 high-risk stock trades and being successful on every one. Carlssin started with an initial investment of $800 and ended up woth of over $350,000,000, which drew the attention of the SEC. Later reports suggest that after his arrest, he submitted a four-hour confession wherein he claimed to be a time traveler from 200 years in the future. He offered to tell investigators such things as the whereabouts of Ossama Bin Laden and the cure for aids in return for a lesser punishment and to be allowed to return to his time craft. Although he refused to tell investigators the location or workings of his craft.

The Carlssin story originated as a fictional piece in Weekly World News a satirical newspaper, it was later repeated by Yahoo news where it's fictitious nature became less apparent. It was soon reported by other newspapers and magazines as fact this in turn drove word of mouth spread through email inboxes and internet forums leading to far more detailed descriptions of events.

Modern man at 1940 bridge opening

A photograph from November of 1940 was alleged to show a time traveller. It was claimed that his clothing and sun glasses were modern and not the style worn in 1940.

"Chaplins Time Traveler"

In October 2010, Irish filmmaker George Clarke uploaded "Chaplins Time Traveler", a video clip hosted by YouTube. In the video, Clarke discusses the bonus material contained in the DVD release of the Charlie Chaplin film The Circus (1928). This material contains footage from the film's original Los Angeles premier at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1928. In one scene, a woman walks by the camera talking into some type of device, held in her left hand close to her left ear. The clip received millions of hits and became an Internet meme.

Nicholas Jackson, associate editor for The Atlantic, said the device was either a Siemens or Western Electric brand hearing aid. Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis, thought that the woman might have been holding a rectangular-shaped ear trumpet. It is likely that he device is a hearing aid of the kind manufactured by Acousticon.

John Krasinski

Johanna Franzen and her boyfriend claim that an 1835 portrait painting by Christen Købke at the Statens Museum in the Kunstin Copenhagen is that of actor John Krasinski.. John Krasinski responded to the story by saying "Wow! Seems a little highbrow for NBC marketing. ... But I like it!"

The Painting actually depicts Carl Adolf Feilberg the Danish born Australian journalist, newspaper editor, general political commentator and human rights activist. The similarity of Krasinski and and Feilberg led to a viral campaign debating whether Krasinski had posed for the picture in 1835.

External links

• snopes.com article describing Andrew Carlssin hoax
• [2]the original Andrew Carlssin article