The Man From Taured

It’s a hot day at Haneda airport Japan in July 1954, and a plane inbound from Europe lands, the passengers disembark and make their way towards the terminal, the humidity high around them, amongst them a man, a mysterious man, a man from Taured…

As he approaches the check in terminal he shows his passport, issued by the country of Taured, while baring many travel marks the Japanese airport officials are confused, understandably so as the country of origin as listed, does not exist.

Quickly swept aside for further questioning, the mysterious man from Taured speaks fluent Japanese and French and when called upon to point to his country of origin points to the area that we know of as the principality of Andorra, but insists that this is actually Taured, a country that has existed for over a thousand years.

The mans passport appeared genuine baring regular travel marks to and from Japan, while supporting documents such as his driver’s license, also issued from Taured appeared genuine, not to mention his native currency which appeared by all accounts to be genuine, yet he was a man, that should not exist at all, and where did he come from?

Was this an American hoax? Designed to test the strength of Japanese airport security not so long after the end of WW2, was this individual a drug smuggler, producing false documents in the hope of smuggling opium back to Europe, or simply a delusional madman arriving on oriental shores, no one knew then, and no one knows now.

As the questioning continued, the mysterious man from Taured became more irate, insisting his origin was the truth, with no point of reference understandably, airport officials became more and more skeptical, eventually detaining the man for a series of hours before eventually the man petitioned that he could resolve this matter by appealing to the government.

Unlike today, suffice to say, airport detaining rooms in 1954 were significantly different from today, so as the questioning resulted in nothing but further confusion, it was eventually decided that the man be transported to a local hotel for the night by two guards, who would stay outside the door for the duration of the night leading to further inquiry the next day.

The only catch being, when the next day came and the guards opened the door, the man was gone, his possessions were gone, and every trace of him seemingly vanished from existence, even the personal belonging’s confiscated from him at the airport and kept there in security vaults just vanished in to thin air.

There was no balcony for the man to climb down, no way he could have jumped without death or serious injury, and certainly no way at all he could have removed his stored personal affects stored in the airport, so where did he go?

No investigator ever, has ever been able to find any substantiating evidence that the story of the man from Taured in-fact ever happened, its first sources appear to emerge from The Directory of Possibilities 1981 by Colin Wilson and edited by Paul Begg.

But were these original sources destroyed? Confronted with the paradigm of an inter-dimensional traveler? Or simply made top-secret by the Japanese government? No one will ever know, but one thing remains for certain in that it is an amazingly interesting urban legend of inter-dimensional traveler.

But personally, I think that’s all it is, just a story, but like ghost stories around a camp fire, its still interesting all the same, what do you think?