The Man from Taured
A traveller landed in Tokyo with a passport from a country that doesn't exist, the story goes, then vanished from a guarded room.
What was reported
The story, told in books on the paranormal since the 1980s, says a man landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in 1954 with a passport from Taured, a country he said lay between France and Spain. Shown Andorra on a map, he was baffled. He was put in a hotel room overnight under guard, and by morning he and his papers were gone.
It's often retold online as proof of travellers from a parallel world.
Explanations offered
No record of the event has been found in Japanese archives or newspapers, and the story first appears decades later. Researchers have traced parts of it to earlier tales, including the case of John Zegrus, a man held in Japan in 1959 with irregular papers. It's generally regarded as an urban legend.
- When
- Said to be 1954
- Where
- Haneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan
- Witnesses
- None that can be traced
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.