The time traveler from Taured

5 min readApr 20, 2021

In the summer of 1954, a handsome and well-dressed man arrives at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Like many other passengers who are visiting Japan, he walks to the border checkpoint. His conversation with the custom officials is absolutely mind-boggling. The passenger says in French that he is from Taured. But this country does not exist…

A passport from a country that doesn’t exist

The customs officials take the man to an interrogation room for more explanation. The passenger is white, wears a beard and says that besides French he speaks Japanese and several other languages. He speaks calmly, does not appear confused and claims to have visited Japan several times. The traveler shows a passport issued by Taured. It looks authentic, but the man’s place of residence does not exist. In the interrogation room you could hear a pin drop by now. The officials are completely stunned because they’ve never heard of Taured.

Andorra

One of the men working at the border checkpoint decides to give the passenger a card to point out his country. Without thinking he points to Andorra, a country that lies on the border of France and Spain. The mysterious passenger tells that his country already exists for a thousand years and does not understand why the other people in the room call his country Andorra. He gets annoyed and starts arguing with the customs officials.

A hotel in Tokyo

And it’s getting weirder and weirder: the traveler from “Taured” is carrying currencies from different countries. He appears to be a businessman who regularly travels the world. But which world is that? The man tells details about the company he works for and the hotel in Tokyo where he is staying. This company did indeed exist in the past, but no more. The hotel he mentions also exists, but no booking has come in from the mysterious traveler.

Taken into custody

Police agents arrive at the airport. They suspect that the strange traveler is a criminal or con man and confiscate his personal belongings and documents. He is also taken into custody. The agents bring the man to a nearby hotel while they continue their investigation in the meantime.

Disappeared without a trace

The traveler is staying on a high floor in the hotel without a balcony. Two guards stand in front of the door of the hotel room to prevent him from escaping. Besides that, the hotel room has only one entrance and exit. Then the next weird thing happens. To everyone’s amazement, the mysterious man disappears without a trace the next morning. His documents have also disappeared into thin air…

Time traveler or hoax?

The strange event from 1954 remains fascinating to this day. Was this man really from Taured and perhaps a time traveler? Did he travel from another universe and accidentally ended up in our dimension? Some people claim it was a hoax. Wouldn’t this event have been world news? And there’s no direct evidence of the incident at all, such as notes from customs officials. There’s also no record of which plane the man came from and no newspapers from 1954 reported the strange incident.

Only two sources

When it comes to the story about the ‘time traveler from Taured’, there seem to be only two sources. In 1981, the short story collection The Directory of Possibilities was published and included the mystery of the passenger from Taured. Author Colin Wilson wrote more frequent (fictional) stories about the paranormal though. In 1999, the story came to attention again when author Tom Sleman wrote about the incident in his book Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People:

There have been many reports of visitors from other planets dropping in on Earth. In 1954, the Japanese authorities detained a man trying to enter the country with a passport that revealed he was from an unheard of country named ‘Taured.’ A thorough check was made by the customs officials to see if there was such a place anywhere on Earth, but they drew a blank. The stranger refused to throw light on the whereabouts of the mysterious nation of Taured and quickly left Japan.

Man suddenly appears in Times Square

The weird story above is reminiscent of another incident involving a confused man who appeared in the middle of Times Square in New York in 1950. Witnesses claimed that he appeared out of nowhere. The man wore old-fashioned clothes and was completely confused. He seemed to have no idea what cars were, as he was walking in the middle of the road.

Unfortunately, the confused and mysterious man was hit by a cab as he crossed the road and died. A witness to this weird incident in New York said the following:

This guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he’d never seen them before

To make things even crazier: the police searched the pockets of the deceased man and discovered coins and banknotes from the 19th century. They also found a letter from 1876 and a document that allowed one to order a carriage.

No matching fingerprints

The deceased’s fingerprints did not match any of the records and he was not listed as missing anywhere. Besides that, his clothes appeared to be about 75 years old and his hat bore the name of a store that no longer existed.

Disappeared without a trace during an evening walk

On the document to order a carriage was the name Rudolph Fenz, Sr. He could not be found in the New York phone books. However, the police did come across the name “Rudolph Fentz, Jr”. It turned out to be the now deceased son of the mysterious man. His widow had since moved to Florida, but she did manage to tell them that her husband’s father had disappeared around 1870. He had never returned from an evening walk.

Coincidence or not?

Amissing persons file around 1870 showed that a Rudolph Fentz had indeed disappeared during that time period. Coincidentally, he lived at the same address and wore the same clothes as the man killed in Times Square in 1950….

Short story by Jack Finney

There seems to be an explanation for the story of Rudolph Fenz. Eventually, it turned out to be based on the short story I’m scared written by Jack Finney in 1950. Finney also ended up writing the classics Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Time and Again.

News Nation Bureau, 14 februari 2020. ‘Taured Mystery: The Man Who Vanished As Mysteriously As He Came’

Reading tips

~ C. Wilson and J. Grant. The Directory of Possibilities. Smithmark Publishing: 1982.

Originally published at https://weirdhistoryjournal.substack.com on April 20, 2021.