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John Zegrus, the mysterious story of the man who claimed to come from a parallel universe

2023-09-05 09:22:00, Blog CNA

John Zegrus, the mysterious story of the man who claimed to come from a parallel

On a hot summer day in July 1954, a man arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. He was white, bearded, and wearing a suit. It is believed that he may have spoken French. But he also knew a little Japanese. Basically nothing out of the ordinary, until the moment he handed over his passport to the counter. The passport appeared to be legitimate, but it contained a strange fact. It was issued from a place called Taured. As far as the immigration officers at Haneda Airport were aware, Taured was not a place that existed anywhere on Earth. When they accused the man of fraud, he was disappointed.

He continued to insist that the Taured had existed for nearly 1,000 years. Believing that this strange man might be a criminal, the authorities sent him to a nearby hotel to spend the night, pending a more thorough investigation into the case. Two guards were stationed outside the strange man's room to prevent him from escaping. But when the next morning came and police officers entered the room to question the man, they were shocked to find that he had disappeared without a trace. For some, the story of the Taured Man, as it became known to the media and the public, serves as evidence that there really are parallel universes to our own, and that man may have accidentally slipped into our dimension, where no place ever existed. the name Taured.

Others think the whole story is nothing but fiction. However, the truth lies somewhere in between. Andorra is thought to be the possible location of Taured's alternate dimension. When presented with a map and asked to indicate the country, the man is said to have pointed to Andorra, between Spain and France, after quickly becoming angry and confused.

Why wasn't his home country Taured on that map? It is also said that he had with him coins from several European countries and stamps from numerous airports around the globe. He even visited Tokyo several times. However, the company he claimed to work for had never heard of him. Not even the hotel where he allegedly had a reservation or the company officials in Tokyo he was supposed to be meeting with. Despite this, the man allegedly had various documents to support his story. Then there was his enigmatic disappearance from the hotel room. The room was several floors up, and had no balcony.

According to the police, it was impossible for the man to have escaped through the windows. Even the guards never saw the man as he left. These circumstances have led many to conclude that he had accidentally crossed into our dimension from a parallel dimension. In this parallel universe, they say, Taured really existed, and the man was telling the truth.

His disappearance is often attributed to returning to his own universe. There are then claims that that real incident inspired the story of the man from Taured. According to them, the "Taured Man" is just a fraud. There is much evidence to suggest that the Taured man's true identity was John Zegrus, who was arrested in Tokyo in 1960 for attempting to forge checks after using a forged passport to enter the country.

John Zegrus, the mysterious story of the man who claimed to come from a parallel

Customs service at Haneda Airport in the 1950s

On 29 July 1960, a debate in the House of Commons in Great Britain referred to the case of John Zegrus, who was said to have described himself "as an agent on behalf of Colonel Nasser and as a naturalized Ethiopian". According to evidence, he had traveled all over the world with a truly impressive passport. It is written in an unknown language and has remained unidentified, although it has been studied for a long time by experts.

The British parliamentarian said Zegrus' passport was issued in the city of Tamanroset, the capital of Taured state, which the man claimed was an independent state of about 2 million people south of the Sahara.

The debate aimed to show how easily passports could be forged. The Canadian newspaper "The Province" in Vancouver also reported on the Zegrus case at the time, writing: "Mr. Zegrus wanted to travel the world. To impress the officials, he invented a nation, a capital, a people and a language. He recorded all this in a
passport which he created himself".

According to the report, Zegrus was able to travel around the world successfully, using this fake passport, especially through regions of the Middle East. When people doubted his means of identification, he invited them to read a small proclamation stamped below the Taured's national symbol, which read: "Rch ubwaii ochtra negussi habessi trwap trapa.
"

This sentence means nothing in any language of the world. It wasn't until Zegrus tried to visit Tokyo that his passport was finally scrutinized and his story unmasked. Japanese officials studied the maps, saw that there was no country named Taured, and began taking steps to prosecute Zegrus.

Several Japanese newspaper articles from the summer of 1960 to the winter of 1961 provide even more clues to the truth behind this legend. According to their reports, Zegrus attempted suicide shortly after he was sentenced to a year in prison by the Tokyo District Court on charges of illegal entry into Japan and fraud. Zegrus had entered Japan using his fake passport in October 1959 with his Korean wife. He cashed forged checks worth about 200,000 yen ($1,406) at various Tokyo banks, and claimed to be on a mission from the CIA and FBI, working in Japan on behalf of an "Arab organization."

John Zegrus, the mysterious story of the man who claimed to come from a parallel

The papers also noted that Zegrus' passport "was about the size of a weekly magazine and was clearly fake." But the most surprising aspect of Zegru's story is that he never spent a single day in jail. When the verdict was announced, the number of days he had already spent in custody exceeded his sentence, so he was released.

Zegrus said he was leaving Japan to start a "new life in a new country". No one learned where he came from or who he really was. After he left Japan, his name never reappeared in any significant event./ Adapted in Albanian by CNA