Mystery: The Man from Taured

*Looks at Butterfly* Is this Taured?

Reading like the start to a science-fiction novel, The Man from Taured is a brilliant tale that's somehow not a work of fiction. It happened, though exactly what the reality behind it is ranges from the outlandishly fantastical to the completely mundane.

Our story takes place in 1954. The location: Tokyo, Japan. It was a day like any other for air transit employees. Planes taking off and coming in, stamping passports, and waiting for night to fall so they could go home to sleep.

At some point during the day, a European plane landed at the airport. Passengers got off and made their way through customs, one man caught their attention. A well dressed, well kempt Caucasian male. He told them that he was there on business and was a native French speaker, though he was also capable of speaking Japanese. His wallet contained a variety of foreign currencies, which verified his claim of business travel.

Customs officials asked the man where he was from, to which the man replied Taured. He said it was a country on the border in between France and Spain. Flabbergasted, officials told the man that Taured didn't exist. Then, to their complete bewilderment, the man presented to them his passport. It was issued by Tired and even had visa stamps from the countries he'd traveled, including Japan.

Their curiosity piqued, the officials called the company the man claimed he was having a meeting with, to which they said they'd never heard of the mysterious man or his company until then. Even stranger, the hotel that the man had supposedly reserved a room at had no record of such a reservation, and the bank that was listed within his checkbook didn't exist

The mysterious man was shown a map of the world and asked to point where “Taured” was. When he pointed, it was to the country of Andorra. This set the man off. He said that there was no country called Andorra and that Taured should be there as it had exists for one thousand years.

Out of ideas, customs took the man  away and gave him a hotel room to stay in while they attempted to figure out what exactly was going on; two immigration guards guarding the door outside. When customs when to check on the man the next morning however, they discovered he'd vanished, along with all of his documents; his passport and driver's license, which were kept in the airport's security room having disappeared too. While law enforcement searched far and wide, the man had vanished off the face of the Earth.  

But while the man from Taured may have vanished, theories about him have not. Our first theory is that the man was a time traveler. This is something that I’ve really wanted to talk about for a while, and was very close to doing so last month with the Decemystery series in the form of John Titor. We'll discuss him another day though and I'll be sure to be sufficiently drunk enough to endure it.

This theory claims that our mystery man time traveled back to 1954 for some reason—either as a vacation or for some business purpose—and either mistakenly claimed to be from Taured, which existed in his time period, or did so as a part of a plan. When I'm the hotel room, he either fled either through the door thanks to an invisibility whatchamacallit, or through the window. That, or he went back to his time period where he told his boss, “mission failed. We'll get 'em next time”.

Time travel has been the focus of government conspiracies for decades. It's been an extremely popular science-fiction plot device. YouTube has a laughably large amount of videos on time travelers (I'm looking at you, ApexTV). It's one of the most popular ideas in history—and has led to an immense amount of speculation. That said, without proof that it exists, this theory is more than likely bunk.

Theory number two is that the man was from another reality or dimension; his world somehow crossing paths with ours so that he was in ours for a bit before being whisked away back to his. Someone call nasajim108, he’s once again right.

In the case of this theory, the idea is that our mystery man came from a reality where Andorra was actually Taured. This happened due to our dimension/reality passing over or by this man's own reality. Thus, they were close enough they sort of overlapped, and this poor guy happened to enter ours briefly before returning his own dimension.

Alternate dimensions are a common concept, and have been the subject of many theories. They're something I'll cover in the future. That said, while there are believers of this theory, most cannot back up said beliefs as there's no evidence of alternate dimensions/realties. Even then, how exactly the passport and driver's license vanished is a mystery. Perhaps the DMV confiscated one and took the other for good luck.

Our third theory is that it was a hoax; a trick perpetrated by a rascal wanting to stir up some mischief. The idea is that the man forged the documents and passport—perhaps being employed at a an airport and traveled to Japan. After having gotten into the hotel, he may have fled through a window with said documents, broke into the security room, and retrieved his items. Or, perhaps, they were thrown out by a clumsy janitor.

This theory requires a lot of logic leaps, but it's not impossible. However, if no janitor or security official who had room temperature IQ threw out the passport and driver's license, the chances of a random man getting into a security room is slim.

There’s a minor variation to this theory however, and it’s one that I originally saw on Reddit I believe. It’s that the man was a prankster from Andorra who wanted to give his country more recognition, or to simply pull an outlandish prank. While more or less the same as it being a hoax, the thought that it could have been someone trying to draw attention to their country is one that I find strangely wholesome. Though still unlikely.

The fourth theory is that he was an alien; one looking to learn more on humanity, or to study them for their upcoming highschool test. Thanks to their special shape shifting technology, the alien took on the guise of a man from Andorra. After being detained for acting strangely, the alien panicked and said he was from Taured when he meant Andorra. A common mistake to be sure. When I’m asked where I'm from, I often say “Sakria” instead of “United States of America”.

Well, when our alien friend was brought to his hotel room, he seized the opportunity to call his ship and went back to his home world and got a B+. Then he went ahead and drank the night away with some alien hotties. I don't think it's believable.

Theory five—and my personal favorite—is that he was a spy.

The idea here is that Europe sent a spy to, well spy on Japan. Consider it was 9 years after World War II ended, there may have been some fear of Japan trying to return to its former ways. So, with a made-up country, the spy went there and then escaped into the night. Perhaps another soy was impersonating a security guard and stole the other documents from the security room.

The likelihood of this is slim to not, but the inner spy thriller lover inside of me loves this theory. You be the judge.

The sixth and final theory is that this entire story is a work of fiction. A comment on the website “Quora” states that an author by the name of Colin Wilson wrote a book entitled “The Directory of Possibilities” in 1981. As it turns out, this book also has the very first mention of the Man from Taured. It took 27 years for any publicly available mention of this bizarre occurrence to reach the, well, public. This has led some to believe that Wilson made the entire story up for his book. Some of those that believe this also point to another book entitled “Strange But True: Mysterious and Bizarre People” by an author named Tom Sleman was published. In it, Sleman covers the Man from Taured, but in spite of a 16 year gap, the book contains no new information.

Could it have been a hoax? Possibly. It'd explain why there's never been a mention of it (from what I can tell anyways)  It should be easily provable or disprovable through some sort of Freedom of Information Act. The fact there’s been no such request—should Japan have one at least, is questionable. However, without some sort or solid proof, it's also plausible that the author was given some sort of documents that revealed the event to him.

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to figuring out what happened here. The Man from Taured is a very strange little mystery that I don't believe gets talked about enough. Although the truth is almost certainly mundane, that doesn’t make me not want to know the reality behind it any less. Even if it was all made up.