11 Time Traveler Urban Legends That Pretty Much Debunk Themselves

Despite photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts, these tales of time travel were too good to be true.

1. Billy Meier and the Plejaren

Not many time travelers have photo albums with snapshots of their journeys. Meet Billy Meier. In the 1970s, the Swiss-born Meier was taken on a few chronological joyrides by a race of extraterrestrials called the Plejaren. They showed him prehistoric earth with dinosaurs, the surface of ancient Mars and even introduced him to Jmmaneul, the real Jesus.

Meier’s holiday pics of the Plejarens’ spacecraft turned out to be an inventively decorated garbage can lid. The dinosaurs were blurry shots of illustrations from a book called Life Before Man. And the pretty Plejaren girls? Photos that Meier had taken of dancers from The Dean Martin Show on his TV screen.

2. Rudolph Fentz

In 1950, a man with mutton chop sideburns and Victorian-era duds popped up in Times Square. Witnesses said he looked startled, and then a minute later, he was hit by a car and killed.

On his person, the police found 19th-century money, a letter dated 1876 and business cards with his name – Rudolph Fentz. None of these items showed signs of aging. A Mrs. Rudolph Fentz was tracked down. She was the widow of Rudolph Fentz, Jr., and the story went that junior’s dad disappeared mysteriously in 1876. Weird, right? Eventually it was discovered that this urban legend originated from a 1950 short story written by Jack Finney. Finney would go on to write the classics Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Time and Again.

3. John Titor

How’s life in the year 2036? “Food and livestock is grown locally. People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Religion is taken seriously and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.” That’s an entry from John Titor. Titor, a traveler from the future, first showed up on internet discussion boards in the 2000, making predictions about the years ahead. In 2001, he returned to the year 2036. Most of his predictions did not come true.

4. The Chronovisor

Not so much time travel as time voyeurism. The Chronovisor, a magic television/camera that could tune into times and places from the past, was invented in the 1950s by a Benedictine monk named Father Pellegrino Ernetti. He used it to film the crucifixion, and that footage, along with the Chronovisor itself, is now reportedly hidden away in the vaults of the Vatican.

5. Henry Fonda

In the 1948 movie Fort Apache, there’s a brief moment when Fonda’s character appears to be checking his stagecoach route on an iPhone.

Well, notepads can sometimes look like iPhones.

6. Andrew Carlssin

The alarm bells went off on Wall Street and with the SEC in 2002 when unknown investor Andrew Carlssin quickly parlayed $800 into $350,000,000 via some high-risk stock trades. Carlssin was arrested. He confessed that he was from the year 2256. It turns out the story originated from that ever-sensational source of fakery, The Weekly World News. Ten years on, the story is still being reprinted and circulated.

7. 1941 Hipster

In the midst of a hat-and-suit crowd shown in a photograph from 1941, there’s a young man who seems wildly out of place. He’s wearing new wave sunglasses, what appears to be a T-shirt and he’s holding a portable camera. Turns out the sunglasses were unusual but not unknown at the time, the Tee was a letter sweater, and the camera was a Kodak Folding Pocket model. Still, that was ten years before the concept of the teenager was born, so give the young dude props for being ahead of his time in self-expression.

8. John Krasinski

Could Jim from The Office be a time traveler? Or maybe a vampire? When an 1835 portrait painting by Danish artist Christen Købke was noted to bear a striking resemblance to actor John Krasinski, the story went viral. "Wow! Seems a little highbrow for NBC marketing," Krasinski said. "But I like it!”

9. 1928 Cell Phone Lady

A woman walks through a film premiere crowd in Los Angeles talking on her cell. Not so remarkable. Until you consider the year is 1928. The clip, from bonus material on a DVD of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, hit the internet in 2010. Never mind the obvious questions about non-existent satellites and cell towers back in the jazz age. The device was most likely an early hearing aid. Still, the clip is mind-teasingly fun to watch.

10. The Philadelphia Experiment

According to legend, in a secret experiment done in 1943, the US Navy was able to render the destroyer USS Eldridge invisible, then dematerialize it and transport it from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, and back again. One account insists the ship went backwards in time by a full 10 seconds (though how that was determined is still sketchy). The experiment reportedly had terrible side effects, such as causing sailors to remain invisible. Secret government projects often foster all kinds of fanciful tales, but this one has endured, and was even the basis of a 1984 movie.

11. Hakan Nordkvist

Talk about pipe dreams. While doing a little DIY plumbing, Nordkvist slipped through a wormhole in time and was suddenly confronted by an older version of himself. The two talked. They compared tattoos. They bonded. And Nordkvist filmed it on his phone. Reportedly, it was all part of an advertising campaign by an insurance company to promote the benefits of pension plans.