In the 1950s a mysterious man appeared at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. He looked normal enough, just a regular looking mid-thirties white guy in a suit there on a business trip. But when he presented his passport to airport officials, they were puzzled. The passport was unlike any they had ever seen before. It listed the man as being from a nation called Taured, a nation they had never heard of, a nation they were pretty sure didn’t exist. When asked to point out Taured on a map, the man became confused. He pointed to the Principality of Andorra on the border of France and Spain. “It’s supposed to be right here,” he said “it’s been here for over a thousand years.” He couldn’t understand why his country was no longer listed on a world map. Airport officials took the man to a hotel room for the night until they could interrogate him further the next day. They placed two guards outside the room to ensure he didn’t escape but in the morning, the mystery man from Taured was gone without a trace. In the years since, many have speculated that the man from Taured came from another dimension, an alternate reality in which Taured really did exist between France and Spain. But how much of this story is actually true and how much is just the product of the game of historical telephone? Let’s fix that.  

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something I talk about a lot on this show, the game of historical telephone. How simple details of a story, historical facts, get twisted as that story is retold over and over again. Someone misinterprets something that they’ve read or heard and then they retell that misinterpreted version and that’s the version that eventually sticks. Or they just don’t research it well to begin with or they forget the details and then just sort of fill in, embellish it to make for a good story. This is why primary sources are so important, original accounts from people who witnessed the event, photographs, or physical evidence of some kind. Because any secondary source, any retelling of history has likely been retold over and over again and each time it’s retold there is the potential for historical telephone to occur, to twist and embellish the story until it’s almost unrecognizable. 

 

I came across this recently. I had just emerged from deeply researching last week’s episode, the Dyatlov Pass incident, and I came upon an Instagram reel posted by another podcast that I sometimes listen to. It’s like an interesting stories podcast. So he covers some interesting history, mysteries, true crime, that sort of thing. And this was a reel of him telling the story of the 9 Dyatlov hikers’ deaths. And it had tons and tons of views and likes and comments and everyone is commenting “oh he’s such a good story teller, what a master storyteller, I was on the edge of my seat.” And since I had just been deep diving into this topic, of course I watched the reel. But the deeper I got into it, the more horrified I became. Because so much of what he was saying wasn’t true at all. And it became very clear to me that he either just wasn’t very familiar with this story and was just winging it or he was intentionally embellishing the story to make it more mysterious and intriguing. 

 

Here are some examples, and if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode about the Dyatlov Pass yet, this won’t make much sense and might spoil that one so, I don’t know, skip ahead or go listen to that one first or something. One false fact he shared that was just so blatantly false was that a body was found in a tree. Now, if you recall, two bodies were found near a tree by the remains of a fire and it looked like someone had climbed the tree to either break off branches for firewood or try to spot the tent. No body was found in the tree. There are photographs of where all 9 bodies were found, they’re in my instagram reel from last week. There was no body in a tree. So you can see how historical telephone twisted that one. He read “someone had climbed a tree” and assumed that that’s where their body was found. That they died there and were still there. Totally false. He also says that the hikers had quote “exchanged clothing” because the women were wearing mens clothing and vice versa. Eh, not really. They didn’t exchange clothing. They did take clothing off the dead. Lyudmila was wearing Yuri Krivonishenko’s pants because he had already died and he didn’t need them anymore. I wouldn’t exactly call that an exchange. He also said, okay so remember how Lyudmila and Semyon’s eyes were missing and Lyudmila’s tongue and part of her lips too, most likely from animal scavengers. He says that they had been removed with quote “surgical precision.” No, no. Not at all. That’s no where at all in the source material. We have photographs of the bodies. Nothing, nobody says they were removed with surgical precision. That is an embellishment. He also says that Russia closed the case after declaring the cause a quote “unknown unnatural force.” No guys. They declared it a quote “compelling natural force.” How many times did I say that in last week’s episode? A compelling natural force because it was everywhere, repeated over and over in all my sources. Unnatural and natural are straight up opposite conclusions. I’m getting heated as I’m listening to this because you can see how he’s setting it up to have some sort of paranormal explanation. He’s trying to make the story more interesting. Make it what he wants it to be. But you know what’s way more interesting than made up embellishments like surgically removed eyeballs and bodies draped in trees? Real true actual facts. The story is plenty interesting on its own and actually only interesting really because it’s true. So when you make it not true, not only is it really damaging to our knowledge of our own historical timeline and really irresponsible, it actually makes the whole thing less interesting because you don’t know which parts to believe and so you’re forced to dismiss the whole story. This really angered me more than I thought it would because I’ve listened to at least a handful of episodes of this guy’s podcast and I suddenly felt tricked. I listened to his podcast before this and was like “What? No way this is crazy. This is so unbelievable.” And then come to find out, it was in fact unbelievable, but he was passing it off as true. Just, grr. And no I’m not going to tell you the name of the podcast because I don’t want to publicly bash him even though that’s what I’ve been doing for the last several minutes.  

 

But, this realization, this revelation really of how stories get embellished and twisted and how that game of historical telephone happens so quickly and easily, made me think of another story, the man from Taured. If you listen to any kind of weird true stories podcasts, paranormal stuff, whatever, you’ve probably heard of the man from Taured. It’s a bit of an urban legend that’s usually passed off as a true story. So here’s how it goes. In July of 1954, a man arrived at Japan’s Haneda airport in Tokyo. He was just a normal looking white guy, average build, mid thirties. He’s wearing a suit. He speaks Japanese well enough to communicate but it’s clearly not his first language. He hands over his passport to airport officials. They take a look at it. It looks like a real passport. It’s in a language they don’t understand but it does look legit and it does have the guy’s picture on it. They take note of the name of the country. It’s called Taured. Now, these guys work in a major airport checking passports so they’ve seen most countries before. They have never heard of a country called Taured. This raises suspicion and the man is interrogated. He’s asked to point to Taured on a world map and he points towards the Principality of Andorra which is in between France and Spain in Europe. It’s a tiny little place on the border of France and Spain. But as he looks at the map, he becomes confused. Because it isn’t labeled Taured. It’s labeled Andorra. And he’s becoming agitated. He tells them Taured had existed in that spot for more than 1,000 years and something must be wrong with this map or else someone was playing a trick on him or something. It should be right there where it had always been. 

 

He had money in his possession from several different European countries and his passport had stamps from airports around the world including Japan on a previous visit. So clearly, it had worked at some point in time. He was traveling for business and he told them the name of the company he worked for, he even had documentation, papers to back it up. But when they contacted his company, they had never heard of him. He told them the name of the Japanese company he had come to Tokyo to meet with but they too had never heard of him. He claimed to have reservations at a Toyko hotel for his stay but, when they called the hotel, yeah they hadn’t heard of him either. They had no reservation for him on their books. So they decide, “okay, there’s clearly something super sus about this guy,” and they take him to a hotel and lock him in a room with two guards outside for the night until they can conduct a proper investigation the next day, it’s late or whatever. It’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. But the next day, when they open up the door to the hotel room, the guy is gone. He’s not in the room. He didn’t come out the door because there were two guards stationed there all night. He didn’t go out the window because it was several floors up and there was no balcony. The man was never seen again and the mystery of his identity was never solved. 

 

That’s the story that’s told. And the conclusion is, the conclusion that it leads people to is that the man from this nonexistant country of Taured actually came from another dimension. He came from another dimension in which there was a country called Taured that had existed for over a thousand years in the spot where Andorra is in our dimension. And that, somehow, while traveling, he had crossed over from his dimension into our dimension without realizing it. And this explains his confusion upon looking at the map and finding that his country was not there. And it explains why the companies he did business with had never heard of him, because they were the our dimension version of those companies. And then when he disappeared in the hotel room overnight, he had somehow been transported back to his own dimension and the tear in the matrix was repaired or whatever. This is the theory that the story of the man from Taured suggests, one of interdimensional travel. And it would be super interesting… if it were true. 

 

Unfortunately the man from Taured legend is just like the that other guy’s podcast version of the Dyatlov Pass story. It is based on true events. It is based on an actual guy who arrived in Tokyo with a suspicious passport in the 1950s. But the details have been twisted and embellished in an attempt to lead the audience to a paranormal conclusion, to make the story more interesting. But you know what’s actually interesting? The real story of the man from Taured. Because it actually happened. So let’s get into that now. 

 

But first, real quick, because y’all know I’m hustling to make History Fix a sustainable thing and so you might hear some sponsors pop up from time to time. I’ve had my eye out for sponsorship opportunities and I finally found one that I feel like I can really get behind and that was important to me. It’s called befree Adaptive Clothing and it’s a company started by two moms. One of them has a daughter with a medical condition that makes it really difficult to wear pants, right she’s had multiple surgeries that put her in leg casts for months at a time and something as simple as putting on a pair of pants was hard. So they came up with zipOns. These are pants that unzip completely from waist to hem so you can put them on over casts, braces, or other medical equipment. You can put them on and take them off while standing, sitting, laying, and so this provides people with mobility issues comfort and ease but also independence. Joanne and Nikki, the moms behind befree believe that “clothing is a basic human need, but for millions of people with temporary or permanent disabilities, getting dressed is a daily hardship.” With their zipOns adaptive pants, that doesn’t have to be the case. And you guys know this one speaks to me because, if you’ve been with me for a while, you know my husband suffers from chronic joint pain and mobility issues. And I see him struggle on a daily basis, to get dressed, to put on a pair of pants. It’s something we take for granted. So I love what these women are doing with befree adaptive clothing and their zipons pants. It’s a beautiful thing and if it’s something that would benefit you or someone in your life, you can visit their website at befreeco.com, it’s also linked in the description. Okay, back to the real story of the man from Taured. 

 

Now here’s the thing, and here’s part of the reason why this one got so horribly twisted and telephonized: the language barrier. This happened, the actual real life version of this story, happened in Japan and it was reported about in Japanese newspapers. When’s the last time you read a Japanese newspaper? Those aren’t exactly coming up in Google searches. Google’s smart enough to know I don’t speak Japanese. I don’t see Japanese internet. But, thanks to Reddit, we do get a glimpse at a legit Japanese newspaper article about the real man from Taured. And I love this. I wouldn’t typically use a Reddit post as a source for any topic. You’ve never heard me list Reddit as a source before but in this case, it’s actually solid. So there is a Reddit post from 4 years ago by a user named taraiochi titled “I am Japanese. I researched an old newspaper about “man from Taured.” It goes on to say quote “I want you to understand Zegrus's newspaper article, but I can't speak English. I don't have any friends who understand English. For now, paste the article as it is. Thank you!” and that’s followed by a bunch of Japanese text separated by 4 dates all from the early 1960s. So, from what I understand, this guy has found these newspaper articles about the real man from Taured but they’re all in Japanese and he can’t translate them and he doesn’t know anyone who can translate them into English and so he posts them on Reddit and just sort of crosses his fingers and hopes for the best. 

 

And the redditors do what redditors do, they come through for him.  A user named johnmasterof replies quote “Holy crap - this is that guy who some people say came from another dimension right? I would love to see the actual article if you don't mind.” And then he posts a translation using DeepL Translate, which, after Googling that I found out is like an online translator, right like Google translate but better, according to them. Their website claims to be the quote “world’s most accurate translator.” So here is what the Japanese newspaper articles say according to johnmasterof and DeepL Translate:

 

The first article is from August 10, 1960 and it’s titled “The "Mystery Man" Who Tried to Smuggle Themself Into the Country Attempt suicide immediately after sentencing Fictitious nationality, fluent in 14 languages.” It reads quote “A mysterious foreigner of unknown nationality and background, accused of illegal entry and fraud, tried to commit suicide in front of the judge who handed down the verdict, at the Tokyo District Court on April 10. The defendant, John Allen K. Ziegler (36), was sentenced by Judge Yamagishi to one year of imprisonment (he asked for a year and a half) at the sentencing hearing of the Tokyo District Court, Criminal No. 28, shortly after 10:00 a.m. on the same day, but when the interpreter told him of the sentence, the defendant suddenly stood up and grabbed his arms with pieces of a glass bottle that he had hidden in his mouth, and then he tried to kill himself. He slashed himself. Surprised by the bleeding, three attendant guards rushed to the scene, but there was a great commotion, shouting "I'm going to kill myself" in English, and the patient was admitted by ambulance to Kyobashi Hospital in the vicinity. The extent of his injuries is believed to have lasted about 10 days.

Zieglass and his Korean wife entered Haneda Airport with a forged passport from Taipei on October 24 last year, and in December of the same year, he stole about 200,000 yen and $140 in traveler's checks from the Tokyo branch of the Manhattan [Chase] Bank, and another 100,000 yen from the Tokyo branch of the Bank of Korea. The forged passport used to enter the country was handmade and the name of the country, Negusi Habesi Ghouloulouloul Esprit, was completely fictitious, and the characters written on it were also unclear, even after being authenticated by a specialist, as to what language it was written in.

The defendant spoke 14 [languages], and in response to the investigation, he stated that he had come to Japan on orders from an Arab-related agency and was working for a U.S. intelligence agency, but there was no such fact, and the district prosecutor, troubled by the fact that the nationality of the defendant was unknown, prosecuted the case. The identity of the riddle was not revealed at the trial, and the English newspaper reported that he was a "mystery man".

The passport of the nationality was the size of a weekly magazine and was recognizable at a glance as a fake, however, the Japanese Embassy in Taipei issued a visa on October 17 last year, and this is the first time that the defendant was able to enter the country with this kind of passport.

In addition, the defendant's wife, 30, also entered the country with the same passport and was repatriated to South Korea with her own passport.” end quote. 

The other three articles are from 1961 and they talk about how this guy, just heads up the articles call him either “Zieglass” or “Ziegler” but he’s usually referred to everywhere else as Zegrus so I don’t know what the confusion with the name is, but they talk about how he appealed the court’s conviction of him because the judge never finished reading the sentencing. And of course, if that’s true, if the judge never finished reading the sentencing, it was because the man had slashed his wrists with a piece of glass in order to attempt suicide and had to be rushed to the hospital. An article from April 1961 titled “Phantom foreigners are again a challenge” reads quote “You may remember the name of John Allen K. Zieglass, 33, the unidentified foreigner who claimed to be from a nationality of "Negusi Habesi," a nationality you've never heard of, and attempted suicide in the courtroom of the Tokyo District Court, embarrassing the authorities to no end. This time, however, Zieglass has come up with an unprecedentedly difficult legal issue on appeal to the Tokyo District Court, and is once again troubling those involved.

Zieglass entered the country illegally from Taipei in October 1959, using a "homemade" passport, and was unable to pay for his stay in Taipei, so he perpetrated a forged check fraud, but his background and nationality are still unclear, even in the investigation by the authorities in Yakki. He still insists that "Negusi Habesi Country" is real. The Tokyo District Court sentenced him to one year in prison last August without knowing the truth. As it was, there was no problem with the appeal, but at the time of the sentence, Zieglass attempted suicide by cutting both wrists with glass, and the sentencing ended in the middle of the sentence. This caused Ziegler to rewind. Although the Rules of Criminal Procedure state that "the declaration of judgment shall be accompanied by the main text and reasons," the defendant claimed that a judgment that was not read out in full was invalid. Of course, this kind of "suspension of judgment" is unprecedented. On April 26, Judge Shimomura of the Tokyo High Court called for the testimony of Tokyo District Public Prosecutor Tamura, who was present at the handing down of the verdict in this matter. The prosecutor testified that "after the defendant left the courtroom, the presiding judge said that he had read out all the remaining reasons for the case, or that the clerks who took the stand… read out only part of the reasons in front of the defendant. So what does that mean? Even if the prosecutor is right, the question arises as to whether the reading in the courtroom, where there is no defendant or clerk, is really valid. It will be a new precedent for the High Court to decide, of course, but even so, Ziegler is a man who has often eaten people,” end quote. And that last part has to be a mistranslation, or something, an idiomatic expression that does not translate. “Ziegler is a man who has often eaten people.” I feel like that’s like “maneater” like figuratively like the song “she’s a maneater,” right. Like he’s not an actual cannibal. Let’s not add that new embellishment to the game. 

So the guy is John Allen Zieglass, Ziegler, Zegrus, take your pick. And it sounds like he appealed his conviction for fraud by claiming that the verdict was never read to him in full, because he had attempted suicide and interrupted the reading of the verdict. An article from July 25, 1961, I’m just going to summarize it, it says that in an unprecedented move, the judgement was in fact declared invalid because the sentencing had not been read in full while he was still present. And then in the final newspaper article from December 22, 1961, they say that quote John A K Ziegler (and they list his age as 37 this time) who was quote “self proclaimed born and raised in the US” received a new trial and was resentenced to the same exact punishment - one year in prison. But, because he had already served a year during the trial and appeal and retrial, he was released on time served. According to the article, he said in court quote “‘from now on, I’ll start a new life in a new country’… thanking the court and immediately waived his right to an appeal.” 

Okay, so that is from contemporary Japanese newspaper articles thanks to taraiochi on Reddit and johnmasterof’s DeepL translation. Now when you dig into this John Allen Zegrus guy on the English internet, there’s not much out there and some of it contradicts the newspaper articles somewhat. A Snopes article written by Snopes creator David Mikkelson lists some other interesting tidbits and mentions of Zegrus, including a debate in the British House of Commons from July 1960, so just before the newspaper articles were printed in Japan. And this is recorded in the like meeting minutes from this House of Commons meeting. They are having a discussion about the quote “subject of frontier formalities” which is like, problems they’re having at their borders, admitting people to the country, checking passports and vetting people and whatnot, how to properly do that. Because this is a relatively new problem brought on by air travel. Before people could just hop on a plane and go wherever they wanted to go in a matter of hours, travel was a much bigger ordeal. You had to get on a boat for like weeks and getting into the country you were going to wasn’t a big deal at all. You showed up on your boat and they were like “welcome.” It says in the meeting minutes quote “In 1914, it was possible to travel without documents throughout most of the world, and currency restrictions were virtually unknown,” end quote. But now they’re having these issues and so the case of John Allen Zegrus gets brought up. 

It reads quote “My hon[orable] Friend may know the case of John Alan Zegrus, who is at present being prosecuted in Tokyo. In evidence, he describes himself as an intelligence agent for Colonel Nasser and a naturalized Ethiopian. This man, according to the evidence, has travelled all over the world with a very impressive looking passport indeed. It is written in a language unknown and it has remained un-identified although it has been studied for a long time by philologists.

The passport is stated to have been issued in Tamanrosset, the capital of the independent sovereign State of Tuarid. Neither the country nor the language can be identified, although a great deal of time has been spent in the attempt. When the accused was cross-examined he said that it was a state of 2 million population somewhere south of the Sahara. This man has been round the world on this passport without hindrance, a passport which as far as we know is written in the invented language of an invented country. I would stress, therefore, that passports are not very good security checks,” end quote. 

Okay, so here, we see a weird mix between what’s reported in the Japanese newspaper articles and the fictional interdimensional travel story of the man from Taured. The Japanese reporters said the passport was not very convincing, it was obviously a fake even at a glance. It wasn’t even the right size. This British guy says quote “a very impressive looking passport indeed.” But then again, he’s trying to prove a point. He’s debating that passports are not a good way to do security checks. So he would want it to be convincing, right, tricky. An obviously bogus passport wouldn’t prove his point. So we see the first twist in the game of telephone. Another obvious difference here is the country that the man, Zegrus, said he was from. In the Japanese articles its called Negusi Habesi something. Here we see the first mention of Taured. The next twist in the game of telephone. He also mentions the capital city of Tamanrosset. 

An article in a Canadian newspaper called “The Province” from August of 1960 closely follows the story told by this British House of Commons guy with some other slight telephone twists. It reads quote “Everyone who has run into officialdom to his cost and wondered at the ridiculous questions asked of tourists will have sympathy for a man sonorously named John Allen Kuchar Zegrus. Mr. Zegrus wanted to travel round the world. To impress officials, he invented a nation, a capital, a people and a language. All these he recorded on a passport which he made himself. Victims of bureaucracy all over the universe will be delighted to hear that he was wonderfully received everywhere -- well, almost everywhere. John claimed to be a “naturalized Ethiopian and an intelligence agent for Colonel Nasser.” The passport was stamped as issued at Tamanrasset, the capital of Tuared “south of the Sahara.” Any places so romantically named ought to exist, but they don’t. John Allen Kuchar Zegrus invented them. Armed with this wonderful document, Mr. Zegrus travelled royally through the Middle East, accepting homage as he went. And if there were any doubters, they were invited to read a kind of proclamation beneath the national Tuared stamp. It read: "Rch ubwaii ochtra negussi habessi trwap turapa." That was the clincher, but didn’t mean anything in any language. The gallant gesture for the individualist, unfortunately, ended with the Japanese in Tokyo. They began looking up maps. John Allen is in court, a martyr to Japanese thoroughness. His action takes precedence, we think, over the American citizen who flew his own plane round the world wearing his own uniform, receiving homage from all and sundry. But the more we ponder on Mr. Zegrus, the more we wish there were really a capital called Tamanrasset, in the delectable county of Tuared south of the Sahara, with a language like the one Zegrus invented. All its citizens would be blessed with John Allen’s sterling attitude towards collectors of useless information,” end quote. 

This article notes on two occasions that Tamanrasset and Taured are both made up places which helps lead down the road toward the other dimension theory, right, that he comes from a country that doesn’t exist. But, I want to point out, that Tamanrasset is not actually a made up place. It’s the name of a province and city in Algeria, in Africa. And, also in Algeria, there is a group of people and languages called Taureg with a g instead of a d but very similar to Taured. And so they weren’t even really totally made up places. They were, at the very least, inspired by actual people and places in Algeria. I also find it interesting, that article talks about a proclamation beneath the national Taured stamp that reads “Rch ubwaii ochtra negussi habessi trwap turapa.” Negussi Habessi, that was the name of the country from the Japanese newspaper articles. So I’m not totally sure what the actual name of the country he proclaimed to be from was but it doesn’t really matter, because the passport and all of the information on it was fake. The guy was a con artist, not an accidental interdimensional traveler. But that doesn’t make the story less interesting. I actually think it’s more interesting, because it’s true. 

Wikipedia goes deeper into the depths of Zegrus’ grift citing a book written by a Japanese author named Atsuyuki Sassa with a title that translates to “Spies who passed me.” Sassa says that, according to records, Zegrus said he was quote “born in the US, moved to the UK through Czechoslovakia and Germany, and attended high school there. During World War II, he was a pilot of the Royal Air Force, and was once captured by the Germans. After the war, he lived in Latin America. Later, he became a spy for the Americans in South Korea, served as a pilot in Thailand and Vietnam, and after that, he was assigned by the United Arab Republic. He arrived in Japan for a secret mission, which included recruiting Japanese military volunteers for the United Arab Republic,” end quote. And, while that rather impressive background story would explain how the man supposedly spoke 14 languages, none of it could be corroborated. They contacted these countries, like “did a John Allen Zegrus live here, did he serve in your air force, did he work for you as a spy.” No, no, no. But also, if he was a spy for various countries, I mean would they tell Japan that? Probably not. Also, there’s a good chance John Allen Zegrus isn’t his real name. Everything else on the passport was fake. Why would he put his actual name on there? What is the point of a fake passport if you don’t even change your name? So of course these countries don’t have records of a John Allen Zegrus. John Allen Zegrus doesn’t exist. 

But the physical man was real. He was prosecuted in Japanese courts for fraud, hospitalized when he tried to commit suicide, appealed his conviction, and was resentenced but released on time served. That actually happened. It’s a documented court case. We just don’t actually know who it happened to. A mid thirty something year old white man who spoke a bunch of languages with some kind of ties to Africa but we never got to find out his true identity. He left Japan and, I assume just like he said he would, started a new life in a new country. Who knows where he went or what he did or what identity he assumed next. 

It sort of reminds me of the movie “Catch me if you Can” where Leonardo Dicaprio’s character pretends to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pilot. He’s just conning everyone and he’s like a 17 year old kid. Great movie. It reminds me of that. And maybe the man from Taured was just a con man. Or, maybe there was more to it. Maybe he really was a spy on a secret mission. I kind of think a spy would have a more convincing passport but then again so would a halfway decent con man. So, I don’t know, maybe he was just some crazy guy trying to get away with something he was utterly unqualified to pull off. But with the actual legit information we have about him, I think we can say with some certainty that he was not from another dimension where a country called Taured had existed for over a thousand years in the location of our Andorra. If we follow this story to its root, we can even see where each of these details was twisted and embellished through historical telephone from the real life story of a fake passport toting check fraudster to the paranormal legend of a mysterious interdimensional traveler. And we can see it happening with the Dyatlov Pass incident, these little changes, these little inaccuracies, eventually, change it from one thing into something else entirely, into a reality where aliens and yetis and alternate dimensions become the logical explanation.

And both of these stories are especially vulnerable to this happening. They both happened and were reported on and officially recorded in languages that are not English - Japanese and Russian. So the English speaking world, the English speaking media just has or has had limited access to accurate information about both of these incidents. And so with this limited and often inaccurate information, imaginations start to go wild. And they're fueled by uncertainty. Take the man from Taured incident which happened in the 50s and involved air travel. If you recall from episode 92 about the first flight, airplanes weren’t even a thing until 1903. And normal people, tourists, civilians traveling by airplane wasn’t common at all until around the 1950s. This is when it first started really taking off. So there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding air travel still. It’s new, it’s cutting edge, it’s kind of crazy. It’s new technology. People don’t really understand it. And so you can see how that uncertainty might lead to this mysterious airplane traveler getting twisted into something paranormal, a man from another dimension. Can you cross over into different dimensions on airplanes? 50 years ago, most people didn’t believe flight was even possible. Interdimensional travel isn’t that far of a cry in the grand scheme of things. 

And then we have the Dyatlov Pass incident which happened in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union was notoriously secretive about everything, the iron curtain. We have the meltdown at Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant in the 1980s when the Soviet Union almost ruined the entire Earth for everyone and lied about it, pretended like everything was fine, like nothing had happened. So you can see how one might assume that some conspiracy went down with Dyatlov Pass. That it was more than a “compelling natural force” that killed the hikers and that explanation was just the Soviet Union covering things up again. 

Both of these scenarios lend themselves to fantastical retellings. But fantastical retellings aren’t doing us any favors as seekers of truth. We can’t change the facts to fit the theory. We have to form the theory based on the facts. And every time the story is retold, the game of historical telephone twists it more and more away from truth. And those facts become increasingly harder to grasp, like an interdimensional traveler vanishing from a Tokyo hotel room in the dead of night. 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from Snopes, All That’s Interesting, Reddit, Wikipedia, and the UK Parliament. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.