It would suck if one day you found yourself walking along, perhaps somewhere familiar like in your home town, when suddenly, you got sucked into another dimension or time warp, ending up someplace unfamiliar or even a different century all together. On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, considering the way things have been going in this foul year of our Lord 2020?
That is the topic under consideration, as the title for the article indicates – cases of parallel universes, time slips and wormholes. As unusual, far-fetched or fantastic as the notion may sound, there are documented instances of just such a thing happening to people throughout the ages.
Before dismissing the notion outright, let us consider the files on such cases. We may be surprised to find that there are many more mysteries to this world than we have imagined possible. And really, what do we know as a species? In the big picture, are we not but a flea sucking off the blood of this planet which itself is but a microscopic speck in the endless ocean of reality?
Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We were considering time slips and even, some kind of strange passport that could deliver us from this COVID ridden nightmare. Perhaps, a passport not unlike that possessed by a passenger who has come to be known as the Man from Taured.
Let’s travel back to the year 1954. You remember that year don’t you? Here, let me refresh your memory. Marylin Monroe married baseball great Joe DiMaggio. The Việt Minh kicked the French military’s ass in the Battle 0f Dien Bien Phu. Eisenhower gave his “Domino Theory” speech, setting the stage for the coming Vietnam War. And Bill Halley & The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” became the first rock and roll song to reach number 1 on the Billboard charts.
It was a hell of year and little surprise that a strange incident involving a man flying to Tokyo with a passport from an unknown country did not make headline news. Let’s look at the peculiarities of this case to try and determine wether we are dealing with an urban legend, a case of espionage, or a true fortean event.
According to the story, in July of 1954, a man landed at the Tokyo International Airport ( aka Haneda Airport) and presented the customs agents with a passport issued from Taured – a country that, to no one’s knowledge, even existed.
Aside from his strange passport, there was nothing unusual about him. He was described as well-dressed and caucasian. By all appearances, a typical businessman. When the agents pressed him for details, the man answered in fluent Japanese, “That’s nonsense! Is this some kind of joke? Taured has been there for 1,000 years!”
Asked to show it on a map, the man pointed to an area on the border between Spain and France. The place does indeed exist, but we know it as the Principality of Andorra.
The Principality of Andorra is a landlocked microstate located in the Iberian Peninsula. It is rumored to have been established by Charlemagne himself. The current principality was formed by charter in 1278 and is ruled by two princes: the President of the French Republic, and the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain.
Taured, on the other hand, does not exist on any map nor in any history book.
The Japanese customs agents were, naturally, perplexed. The passport itself looked official enough. It even bore stamps from previous travel destinations in Europe and Japan itself. The agents requested more documents. The man presented them with a driver’s license, bank checks and even an insurance policy, all issued in the United Kingdom of Taured.
The agents called the company that the man said he worked for. It did not exist. They tried to contact his bank. It too did not exist. The man said he had a reservation at a local hotel, but when they checked the hotel said no.
Aghast, the Man from Taured told the agents that he had never had such difficulties with customs before, in all his travels around the world. Nonetheless, the agents were obliged to take the man into custody. They held him in a room for the night, guarded by two agents, while he awaited interrogation by national security agents on suspicion of espionage.
The following day, when two agents came to question the man, they found his room empty. The man, along with his luggage and all his belongings were gone. Accordant to the guards, no one had entered or left the room for the entirety of his stay. In addition, there was no other exit by which he could escape from his room.
So who or what was this Man from Taured? More significantly, where did he really come from? Many theories, naturally, are being bandied about on the internet. A popular theory contends that Taured is an actual country that exists, though in a parallel universe. It was by way of some glitch in the matrix, or wormhole, that the passenger made his way to the Haneda Airport on that faithful day in July, 1954.
What about his strange disappearance? Was this further proof of a parallel universe? He seemed to have vanished into thin air . . . or perhaps he just re-enterd the wormhole from which he emerged.
Another theory asserts that the Man from Taured was in fact a time traveler. But from what time? Since there is no reference to Taured as a country in our history books, one could contend that the passenger is from the future, when a country with that name would be established.
One of the first references to the story about the Man from Taured can be found in a book edited by Colin Wilson & John Grant entitled The Directory Of Possibilities (1981). The Man from Taured is not discussed here in great detail but rather, referenced in a section on Appearing People, about people who mysteriously appear out of thin air. The reference reads:
Other people have claimed to come from lands not known to exist. In 1851 a certain Joseph Vorin came to the attention of the German authorities; he said he was from Laxaria, in a country called Sakria.
In 1905 a young man was arrested in Paris; he spoke an unknown language but managed to convey that he was a citizen of Lisbian – not, it should be stressed, Lisbon.
And in 1954 a passport check in Japan is alledged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Taured.
– Colin Wilson & John Grant
In this book, Colin Wilson recommends in the section “further readings,” the book Out Of Thin Air: People Who Appear From Nowhere, by Paul Begg, described as “forthcoming.” It appears that Wilson himself may have sourced the Man form Taured information from this book, but a search on the internet by this author came up with nothing. Paul Begg did indeed publish a book entitled Into Thin Air: People Who Disappear (1979), by Paul Begg, and it seems the two work would well as companion volumes, though the former never did manifest.
At the end of the day, we find there are way too many assumptions and little in way of evidence to support the veracity of this story. Until further developments, we will have to relegate this story to the overcrowded bin of urban legends. Nonetheless, the popularity of the notion of time travel and parallel dimensions speaks to an abiding fascination and maybe even, an archetypal memory, of the existence of such realities, yet to be re-discovered by humans.
ARNETT FILES 