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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

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

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

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

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 were are serious belief and he had been diagnosed with psychological problems related to it.

Stock-trading time traveler

Andrew Carlssin was a fictional time traveller who appeared in a 2003 news story on Yahoo!. The article claimed that a man named Andrew Carlssin had been arrested for SEC violations for making 126 high-risk stock trades and being successful on every one. It was said that he started with an initial investment of $800 and made a fortune of over $350,000,000. Apparently, he had claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2256 and upon making bail, he had promptly disappeared. The news article was originally published 25 February 2003 in the Weekly World News, a popular satirical news-paper known for making exaggerated or fabricated claims, and later was reprinted on Yahoo! News's Entertainment and Gossip section.

The story was also included in the book Pedestrian safety expert gets hit by bus by Huw Davies and Another Weird Year 2004.

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.

1928 cell phone user

Irish filmmaker George Clarke posted a YouTube video in October 2010 in which he suggested that footage of the film's premier in 1928, contained in a DVD release of the Charlie Chaplin film The Circus, may have depicted a woman talking on a cell phone, and theorized that she might be a time traveler or a lunatic. The clip received millions of hits and became the subject of widespread internet discussion and media coverage..

Nicholas Jackson, associate editor for The Atlantic, theorized that the supposed cell phone 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, theorised that the woman in the film clip might have been holding rectangular-shaped ear trumpet

It has also theorized that it may have been a hearing aid of the kind manafactured by Acousticon.

External links

• snopes.com article describing Andrew Carlssin hoax
• the original Andrew Carlssin article

References

1. Carroll, Robert Todd (2007-12-03). "Philadelphia experiment". The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
2. Dash, Mike (2000) . Borderlands. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 9780879517243. OCLC 41932447.
3. Adams, Cecil (1987-10-23). "Did the U.S. Navy teleport ships in the Philadelphia Experiment?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
4. "The "Philadelphia Experiment"". Naval Historical Center of the United States Navy. 2000-11-28. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
5. "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later" by Jacques F. Vallée, URL accessed January 13, 2010
6. Full story in Chris Aubeck Blog
7. Karl Simanonok (2003-05-19). "JOHN TITOR VALIDITY TEST BASED ON PREDICTION OF CIVIL WAR BY 2004-2005". Johntitor.strategicbrains.com. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
8. "John Titor, Recap". Coasttocoastam.com. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
9. Museum of Hoaxes - Time Traveller Spam
10. Grapefruit Utopia -Time Traveller Spam
11. Wired, Turn Back the Spam of Time -08.29.03 Brian McWilliams
12. Brian S. McWilliams, Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements, (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2004) page 247
13. Davies, Huw, and Ebury Press. Pedestrian Safety Expert Gets Hit by Bus. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0740754645
14. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/1028/Time-traveler-caught-on-film.-Hey-why-not
15. http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewnews.php?id=180417
16. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/28/2010-10-28_time_traveler_caught_on_film_in_1928_filmmaker_claims_find_in_charlie_chaplins_t.html
17. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/time-traveler-1928-charlie-chaplin-film/story?id=11992878
18. Jackson, Nicholas (Nov 1 2010). "Debunking the Charlie Chaplin Time Travel Video". The Atlantic Monthly. The Atlantic Monthly Group. Retrieved 1 November 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Jackson, Nicholas. "Debunking the Chaplin Time Travel Video". Technology. The Atlantic. Retrieved 4 January 2011.
20. Hsu, Jeremy. "Time Traveler' May Just Be Hard of Hearing". Strange News. LiveScience. Retrieved 4 January 2011.
21. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/28/2010-10-28_time_traveler_caught_on_film_in_1928_filmmaker_claims_find_in_charlie_chaplins_t.html

• Urban legends