Bizarre Reality Shifts - The Mandela Effect

The shadow

The shadow knows!
nintchdbpict000280664697.jpg
is it...
Luke, I am your father?
or
No I am your father.
I clearly recall Luke, I am your father.
But every clip i have is No, I am your father
 
No, I am your father does not work nearly as well as Luke, I am your father when the line is borrowed and used in other contexts. Everyone knew it was a Star Wars reference when it was changed to Luke... plus it's a stand alone sentence, where the real line is all out of context by itself.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
in the movie Casablanca NO ONE says the line "play it again Sam. "
but the line has become iconic as being said by Bogart.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Globes got me thinking - this old atlas sits on a shelf nearby. It was one of my Mom's school books

upload_2019-12-11_11-18-59.pngupload_2019-12-11_11-19-13.png



Mandela Effect is fun and I really can't remember specifics about breakfast cereals or those friggin' bears. I am going to pick up a box of Fruity Pebbles or Captain Crunch some time soon. I saw the Berensteinberg (or whatever) bears in (I think) Six Flags Gurnee, IL. Maybe have an old pic around here somewhere.

Find me someone who remembers something significant, like WW2 ending very differently or who has utterly realistic docs and funny money in their pockets that doesn't connect to anything we would understand. A passport to ..... Magonia for example, maybe a US $10 bill with a picture of Ross Perot or pound note with an elderly Diana on it. I believe there was such a case - Asia, airlines, something like that. But names and monocles are fun, not overly compelling. Or better yet maybe someone will find an old newspaper in the attic that says Nelson Mandela died in jail.

Rather than proof of some multiverse effect this is probably just that we don't remember things too well sometimes. One of the reasons to tread very lightly when dealing with old cases and eyewitness testimony about other stuff and things.
 

wwkirk

Divine
Rather than proof of some multiverse effect this is probably just that we don't remember things too well sometimes.
I think you may be right. Skeptics even seem to be bored with this topic. For example, it doesn't have a separate entry in Wikipedia, although loads of paranormal topics do. Instead, it's just a sub-heading under False Memory.

I also agree with you that it's fun. Even though it's not evidence for the multiverse (which, by the way, some scientists regard as a genuine possibility), or time travel conspiracies, it's still entertaining to muse over the examples.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Rich Uncle Pennybags of Monopoly fame never wore a monocle.

I cannot remember either way, although I played monopoly many years ago I tried to get a picture from my memories of that character when I played the game but I'm coming up blank lol...

...
 
I have a sister who apparently grew up in an alternate universe, in the 60s and 70s and well into the 80s. She remembers all sorts of things that no one else in the family has the vaguest memory of. Her versions of events that everyone remembers are often very different than those of the rest of us. We tease her about it quite a bit. One time she was talking about a woman a few years younger than we are, and said something like, "She said when you and her were dating..."

She said what?

Said when you two were dating, you went to so and so.

I never went out with her.

You did too!

No I didn't!

Oh bullshit. She told me all about--

But she's crazy! Whole town knows that.

Well you went out with her.

I thought about it [she was hot] but she's nuts. Who needs that?

Admit it. You two dated for a while.


So that went on for a while until my brother in law, who had endured the whole crazy episode, looked at her and said, "Oh give it up!" That's the last I ever heard of that, but I'm sure Sis is still convinced beyond any doubt that I was lying. The batshit babe ended up marrying a friend of mine who was well used to living with crazy people, and they have done great.
 
Globes got me thinking - this old atlas sits on a shelf nearby. It was one of my Mom's school books

View attachment 8629View attachment 8630



Mandela Effect is fun and I really can't remember specifics about breakfast cereals or those friggin' bears. I am going to pick up a box of Fruity Pebbles or Captain Crunch some time soon. I saw the Berensteinberg (or whatever) bears in (I think) Six Flags Gurnee, IL. Maybe have an old pic around here somewhere.

Find me someone who remembers something significant, like WW2 ending very differently or who has utterly realistic docs and funny money in their pockets that doesn't connect to anything we would understand. A passport to ..... Magonia for example, maybe a US $10 bill with a picture of Ross Perot or pound note with an elderly Diana on it. I believe there was such a case - Asia, airlines, something like that. But names and monocles are fun, not overly compelling. Or better yet maybe someone will find an old newspaper in the attic that says Nelson Mandela died in jail.

Rather than proof of some multiverse effect this is probably just that we don't remember things too well sometimes. One of the reasons to tread very lightly when dealing with old cases and eyewitness testimony about other stuff and things.
Heh! When I saw that "Self Revising" I thought someone was having some fun with Photoshop or something.

You raise an excellent point about significance. No one seems to recall the Russians beating us onto the moon, or President Humphrey, or the coronation of King Charles in 1979. It's all New Zealand being in an odd place or some silly nonsense on a clickbait video.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
This was the story that was dancing around the edge of my spotty human memory that I couldn't pull out of my *** yesterday: The Man From Taured. Might even have been mentioned somewhere here at AE before. I doubt it actually happened as described, if it wasn't made up out of whole cloth entirely. Whatever is at the root of it is probably straightforward, maybe a customs officer bitching about a difficult passenger started this thing rolling. But it's cool ....

There are several links to what look like wacky sites to explain this. Rather than any of that I thought Scott and Forrest could do a creditable job

Man from Taured — Astonishing Legends
 

Toroid

Founding Member
This was the story that was dancing around the edge of my spotty human memory that I couldn't pull out of my *** yesterday: The Man From Taured. Might even have been mentioned somewhere here at AE before. I doubt it actually happened as described, if it wasn't made up out of whole cloth entirely. Whatever is at the root of it is probably straightforward, maybe a customs officer bitching about a difficult passenger started this thing rolling. But it's cool ....

There are several links to what look like wacky sites to explain this. Rather than any of that I thought Scott and Forrest could do a creditable job

Man from Taured — Astonishing Legends
The Man From Taured

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aal5VbLXfIU
 

wwkirk

Divine

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the first telling of this story was in a book published in 1981, co-edited by Colin Wilson (a famous writer on Forteana) and John Grant (aka Paul Barnett), a writer of both sci-fi and nonfiction, titled The Directory of Possibilities. If this is so, the first report appeared a full 27 years after it supposedly occurred. From a critical point of view, one could argue that even in the 1950s, such an incident would have garnered considerable attention in newspapers, if it really happened.

It has been suggested that perhaps it describes a real incident, but that it was all a misunderstanding due to difficulty in grasping the man's speech, because of his speaking French with an accent they weren't familiar with. This theory suggests that the man was actually from Andorra, but that the customs officials misinterpreted ‘terre d’Andorra’ as ‘Taured.’

But it has even been speculated that Colin Wilson may have simply made up the story, for the purpose of entertainment.

Note how barren the tale is of several of the details that would be needed to research and verify it, such as the mystery man's name and the names of the various customs personnel.

I've just come upon further information!

1954, July: The Man from Taured
provides many details about the first mentions of the story, as well as the way it has been expanded in the Internet era.

First the story as it is told today:

On a hot day in July, 1954, officials at the Tokyo Airport in Japan were confronted with a puzzling problem... a traveler from Europe with a passport for a country called 'Taured.' As the traveler looked European (not Japanese), claimed his country was in Europe, and carried money from several European countries, the airport officials felt that there had to be a simple explanation for why they didn't know the country on the official looking passport; so they pulled the traveler to a room, and started to make inquiries.

As they tried to locate information on 'Taured,' the traveler started to become angry. He stated this was his third trip this year to Japan for his company, and that he'd been making such trips for the past five years... therefore he couldn't understand what the delay could be with approving his trip. But the company he claimed to be coming to visit said they didn't know who he was... and the officials could find no proof of the existence of the company he claimed to work for. Nor did the hotel he claimed to have reservations with know who he was.

He could speak Japanese well, among other languages, which was seemingly further proof of his previous contact with Japan. He spoke French natively, and was genuinely shocked that he could not find his country on a world map presented to him. He stated that his country was located where the map showed the Principality of Andorra, along with parts of France and Spain, and that Taured had existed for almost a thousand years... so it should have been on the map! Not surprisingly, he soon demanded to talk to government officials to clear the matter up. Since he couldn't be detained in the airport's room forever, the airport authorities arranged for a room for the man at a nearby hotel that he could wait at while the matter was being handled.

Two immigration officials were set to guard the room; the unknown traveler was not to leave until authorities had made a decision on the whole problem. He was served dinner in his room, and soon went to sleep; it had been a long, perplexing day for him, after all. Though the door to the room was guarded all night, the strange man was gone when they checked in the morning. The only other exit from the room was a ledgeless window high above a busy street. The traveler was gone, never to be heard from again... which solved the immediate problem for the officials, but left a larger one for the world.

Next, an analysis:

Who was the man from Taured? Did he come from an alternative dimension, as some have guessed? As many websites pondering this event point out, the initial reports of the matter comes from Colin Wilson's book, The Directory of Possibilities, published well before the internet was a thing; so this is not some mere internet story, but a genuine paranormal mystery that may never be solved.

Possibly Possible?

While it's true that the strange event of the man from Taured was first published before the internet was a major factor in paranormal myth-making, it's not necessarily true that simply being published before the internet proves the event happened. As a matter of fact, most sites referencing the previous printed existence of the account, in both Wilson's Directory of Possibilities and later in Tom Sleman's Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People, fail to actually state exactly what these two books reported on the matter... so let's clear that up now.

The Directory of Possibilities was first published in 1981 -- twenty-seven years after the 1954 event would have happened -- and is essentially a collection of short articles on varying claimed types of paranormal events. Though the volume was edited by Colin Wilson, the entry that concerns us here, "Appearing People," was written by Paul Begg, who was well-known at the time for his book Into Thin Air, about mysterious disappearances... so he was a logical person to ask to write about the opposite effect. His statement regarding the incident of the man from Taured is just one sentence long:

"And in 1954 a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Taured."

As you can see, it's not the story above. Begg gave no sources for his article.

Tom Sleman's book Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People was published in 1999. Given the time between the two printings of the story, you might expect that some further information had been acquired; but Sleman covers the story in just one paragraph.

"There have been many reports of visitors from other planets dropping in on Earth. In 1954, the Japanese authorities detained a man trying to enter the country with a passport that revealed he was from an unheard of country named 'Taured.' A thorough check was made by the customs officials to see if there was such a place anywhere on Earth, but they drew a blank. The stranger refused to throw light on the whereabouts of the mysterious nation of Taured and quickly left Japan."

The additional information -- that the stranger offered no helpful information and left -- is hardly any sort of addition at all, and still a long way from the story above. And Sleman, too, gives no source for the story, so the simple suspicion is that he got the tale from Wilson's book.

Finally, the evolution of the story in the internet era:

Which raises the question: if the two earliest references to the man from Taured offer no information per se, then who first published the more detailed story, and where did they get their information from?

Newsworthy

While many internet sites had repeated the basic story of the man from Taured as laid out by Wilson and Sleman -- in fact, Sleman had published his short paragraph about it on his own webpage as early as 2001 to advertise his book -- the earliest occurrence of the extended version of the story is an April 2012 posting in the Before It's News website, by Terrence Aym... and it's from that posting that I summarized the account above. In presenting the longer account, Aym explained that "parts of the story were related in several books about the weird and strange published during the 1950s," and then implied he had gathered together the details from these accounts to garner the fuller story. He does not, however, name any of these 1950s sources for the story... the only source he actually mentions is an online 2007 posting of Tom Sleman's chapter on appearing people from his Strange but True book which includes the paragraph on the man from Taured.

This is a problem, of course, because every copy of the story that comes after Aym's article is just a re-telling or expansion on Aym's article; and since Aym doesn't state what his sources were, it implies he made the new story up. This conclusion is likely for another reason as well: I've been unable to track any mention of the incident earlier than Wilson's 1981 Directory of Possibilities... so the only real evidence that the incident might have occurred is the single sentence from that book.

The Directory of Possibilities, in its 'further readings' section, credits Paul Begg not just for his book on mysterious disappearances, Into Thin Air, but also mentioned he had an upcoming book tentatively called Out of Thin Air: People Who Appear from Nowhere. Obviously, any further reference to the man from Taured could have been found in said volume... except, ironically, the book itself never appeared. Begg went on to write many other books, largely based on true crimes and history, but he never published any books on mysterious appearances. Only Begg would know now if he had a valid source for his brief mention of the Taured incident; but perhaps the fact he never came back to the story is an answer in itself.


 

Toroid

Founding Member
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the first telling of this story was in a book published in 1981, co-edited by Colin Wilson (a famous writer on Forteana) and John Grant (aka Paul Barnett), a writer of both sci-fi and nonfiction, titled The Directory of Possibilities. If this is so, the first report appeared a full 27 years after it supposedly occurred. From a critical point of view, one could argue that even in the 1950s, such an incident would have garnered considerable attention in newspapers, if it really happened.

It has been suggested that perhaps it describes a real incident, but that it was all a misunderstanding due to difficulty in grasping the man's speech, because of his speaking French with an accent they weren't familiar with. This theory suggests that the man was actually from Andorra, but that the customs officials misinterpreted ‘terre d’Andorra’ as ‘Taured.’

But it has even been speculated that Colin Wilson may have simply made up the story, for the purpose of entertainment.

Note how barren the tale is of several of the details that would be needed to research and verify it, such as the mystery man's name and the names of the various customs personnel.

I've just come upon further information!

1954, July: The Man from Taured
provides many details about the first mentions of the story, as well as the way it has been expanded in the Internet era.

First the story as it is told today:

On a hot day in July, 1954, officials at the Tokyo Airport in Japan were confronted with a puzzling problem... a traveler from Europe with a passport for a country called 'Taured.' As the traveler looked European (not Japanese), claimed his country was in Europe, and carried money from several European countries, the airport officials felt that there had to be a simple explanation for why they didn't know the country on the official looking passport; so they pulled the traveler to a room, and started to make inquiries.

As they tried to locate information on 'Taured,' the traveler started to become angry. He stated this was his third trip this year to Japan for his company, and that he'd been making such trips for the past five years... therefore he couldn't understand what the delay could be with approving his trip. But the company he claimed to be coming to visit said they didn't know who he was... and the officials could find no proof of the existence of the company he claimed to work for. Nor did the hotel he claimed to have reservations with know who he was.

He could speak Japanese well, among other languages, which was seemingly further proof of his previous contact with Japan. He spoke French natively, and was genuinely shocked that he could not find his country on a world map presented to him. He stated that his country was located where the map showed the Principality of Andorra, along with parts of France and Spain, and that Taured had existed for almost a thousand years... so it should have been on the map! Not surprisingly, he soon demanded to talk to government officials to clear the matter up. Since he couldn't be detained in the airport's room forever, the airport authorities arranged for a room for the man at a nearby hotel that he could wait at while the matter was being handled.

Two immigration officials were set to guard the room; the unknown traveler was not to leave until authorities had made a decision on the whole problem. He was served dinner in his room, and soon went to sleep; it had been a long, perplexing day for him, after all. Though the door to the room was guarded all night, the strange man was gone when they checked in the morning. The only other exit from the room was a ledgeless window high above a busy street. The traveler was gone, never to be heard from again... which solved the immediate problem for the officials, but left a larger one for the world.

Next, an analysis:

Who was the man from Taured? Did he come from an alternative dimension, as some have guessed? As many websites pondering this event point out, the initial reports of the matter comes from Colin Wilson's book, The Directory of Possibilities, published well before the internet was a thing; so this is not some mere internet story, but a genuine paranormal mystery that may never be solved.

Possibly Possible?

While it's true that the strange event of the man from Taured was first published before the internet was a major factor in paranormal myth-making, it's not necessarily true that simply being published before the internet proves the event happened. As a matter of fact, most sites referencing the previous printed existence of the account, in both Wilson's Directory of Possibilities and later in Tom Sleman's Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People, fail to actually state exactly what these two books reported on the matter... so let's clear that up now.

The Directory of Possibilities was first published in 1981 -- twenty-seven years after the 1954 event would have happened -- and is essentially a collection of short articles on varying claimed types of paranormal events. Though the volume was edited by Colin Wilson, the entry that concerns us here, "Appearing People," was written by Paul Begg, who was well-known at the time for his book Into Thin Air, about mysterious disappearances... so he was a logical person to ask to write about the opposite effect. His statement regarding the incident of the man from Taured is just one sentence long:

"And in 1954 a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Taured."

As you can see, it's not the story above. Begg gave no sources for his article.

Tom Sleman's book Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People was published in 1999. Given the time between the two printings of the story, you might expect that some further information had been acquired; but Sleman covers the story in just one paragraph.

"There have been many reports of visitors from other planets dropping in on Earth. In 1954, the Japanese authorities detained a man trying to enter the country with a passport that revealed he was from an unheard of country named 'Taured.' A thorough check was made by the customs officials to see if there was such a place anywhere on Earth, but they drew a blank. The stranger refused to throw light on the whereabouts of the mysterious nation of Taured and quickly left Japan."

The additional information -- that the stranger offered no helpful information and left -- is hardly any sort of addition at all, and still a long way from the story above. And Sleman, too, gives no source for the story, so the simple suspicion is that he got the tale from Wilson's book.

Finally, the evolution of the story in the internet era:

Which raises the question: if the two earliest references to the man from Taured offer no information per se, then who first published the more detailed story, and where did they get their information from?

Newsworthy

While many internet sites had repeated the basic story of the man from Taured as laid out by Wilson and Sleman -- in fact, Sleman had published his short paragraph about it on his own webpage as early as 2001 to advertise his book -- the earliest occurrence of the extended version of the story is an April 2012 posting in the Before It's News website, by Terrence Aym... and it's from that posting that I summarized the account above. In presenting the longer account, Aym explained that "parts of the story were related in several books about the weird and strange published during the 1950s," and then implied he had gathered together the details from these accounts to garner the fuller story. He does not, however, name any of these 1950s sources for the story... the only source he actually mentions is an online 2007 posting of Tom Sleman's chapter on appearing people from his Strange but True book which includes the paragraph on the man from Taured.

This is a problem, of course, because every copy of the story that comes after Aym's article is just a re-telling or expansion on Aym's article; and since Aym doesn't state what his sources were, it implies he made the new story up. This conclusion is likely for another reason as well: I've been unable to track any mention of the incident earlier than Wilson's 1981 Directory of Possibilities... so the only real evidence that the incident might have occurred is the single sentence from that book.


The Directory of Possibilities, in its 'further readings' section, credits Paul Begg not just for his book on mysterious disappearances, Into Thin Air, but also mentioned he had an upcoming book tentatively called Out of Thin Air: People Who Appear from Nowhere. Obviously, any further reference to the man from Taured could have been found in said volume... except, ironically, the book itself never appeared. Begg went on to write many other books, largely based on true crimes and history, but he never published any books on mysterious appearances. Only Begg would know now if he had a valid source for his brief mention of the Taured incident; but perhaps the fact he never came back to the story is an answer in itself.
If it was fabricated the creator would have to give him a name and researchers would try track it down. I guess it works better without giving them names.
adcolor.gif
 
Ah, yes, the website known as Before It's (The Weekly World) News. Yeah, good solid source there!

This is another one of those stories where the more you look, the less you see.
 
Mandela effect...
When you swear the Green Giant was the choice of canned green beans in your home and your mom says no, I never bought that brand.... she opened the cabinet and pulled out a can... Del Monte. “This has Always been the one we get...”
LOL :lol3:
 
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