Many believe humans haven’t figured out how to time travel yet. But after doing some probing, we’ve uncovered compelling evidence that back in 2006, a genuine time traveler appeared from all the way back in the 1950s. And he’s not the only one to claim such a miraculous feat. So, start up your TARDIS and get ready for a mind-bending look at some of the most convincing and bizarre tales of time travel!
Time Travel & The Theory Of Relativity
Time travel is 100%, definitively, possible. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time and space are intrinsically linked, and the faster you travel, the slower you experience time. But don’t take his word for it, scientists tested the theory by putting one clock on a fast-moving airplane and another on the ground. After the plane completed a trip, they compared the two. The clock in the plane ended up slightly behind the one on the ground!
This doesn’t mean we’ve got the technology to jump hundreds of years into the future right now, but it sure makes you think about the future possibilities of time travel. And with that in mind, let me tell you the remarkable case of Sergei Ponomarenko.
Sergei Ponomarenko, The Time Traveler From Kyiv
April 2006. In the Ukrainian city of Kyiv, a man dressed in an old timey outfit carrying a retro camera was spotted wandering the streets looking utterly confused. The mysterious stranger stumbled around for a while, seemingly in shock, before bumping into a couple of police officers.
Nervously, he asked them for directions, only, the place he asked about no longer existed. Then, he followed up with a question that would make their heads spin, “what year is it?” He asked again, and again. Growing tired of his incessant ramblings, the policemen arrested the strange man on the spot.Some time later, our enigmatic gentleman was sat in police custody being questioned. He identified himself as one Sergei Ponomarenko, and claimed he was from the year 1958! Obviously, the cops didn’t believe him, but then he handed them his ID, and things got much, much weirder.
The identification had been issued by the Soviet Union, which Ukraine hadn’t been a part of since 1991, 15 years before. But Sergei looked no older than 30, and the birthdate on the ID card read 1932. Something was very, very wrong. According to Sergei, he’d been on a walk with his fiancé, Valentina Curish when he noticed a strange, bell-shaped object in the sky. Mesmerized, he grabbed his camera and took a snapshot of the erratically flying object. Only, immediately after the flash, he found himself transported forward in time to the same spot in 2006. And that’s when the officers had found him. Well, safe to say, they were having none of it and Sergei was sent to a psychiatrist for a proper evaluation. His claims definitely sound crazy, but did he have any proof? Well, actually, yes!Sergei’s psychiatrist, Dr. Kutrikov, took his camera and called a photography expert in to see if there really were any photos of this “strange bell-shaped object” on there. First off, the camera itself was found to be totally, authentically vintage. Secondly, the film inside was in near perfect condition, despite being so old that it couldn’t easily be developed with contemporary technology. Indeed, it’d gone out of production back in 1970! And when the guy did manage to develop the film, he was even more flabbergasted! The photos were indeed of Kyiv in the 1950s. One showed Sergei posing in the same outfit he was arrested in, another with a young woman, and another of, there it was, the infamous bell!
Was Sergei telling the truth? Was he really a time traveler? To find out, Kutrikov brought him in for yet another interview. He slid the photos across the table and asked him to explain them. Sergei simply glanced at them and said “See, I told you so!” He went on to say that he had no idea what the strange bell-shaped UFO could’ve been, or what happened to him. He simply reiterated that he took the photo, wound up in the future, and had literally no clue what was going on. Unable to get anything more out of him, the psychiatrist sent Sergei back to his room at the clinic. And well, that was it. He was never seen again. That’s right! Sergei was confirmed via CCTV to have returned to his room as normal, but once inside he completely vanished. Seriously, the door never opened again, yet bars on the window should’ve made escape impossible. Regardless, when he was next checked up on, he was gone. Was he a time traveler and a magician!? Now the police had a missing person case on their hands. In an effort to learn more about the mysterious character, they looked up old records from Soviet era Ukraine. Lo and behold, there had been a Sergei Ponomarenko living in the country at the time, and he’d been declared missing! In 1960 rather than 1958, but the coincidence was still very spooky. At a dead end but determined to find answers, the officers decided to look up Sergei’s supposed fiancé, Valentina Curish. Some hardcore sleuthing later, they couldn’t believe their eyes when they eventually located just such a woman. It was time to pay her a visit. After knocking on the door, they watched with amazement as a 70-year-old woman answered. Could it really be her? She explained that her fiancé Sergei did go missing in 1958 but that he’d returned to her a few days later, saying he’d seen into the future. It was her!
Apparently, Sergei had become a bit of a local celebrity after his time jump, telling stories of future tech he spied during his trip. But he didn’t stick around forever. He vanished again in the 1970s, this time never to return. Following this reveal, Valentina provided the investigators with some new photos, one of which supposedly showed Sergei stood in Kyiv in the year 2050! Check out the skyline, that’s way more advanced than it is in present day. This guy sure got around. Was that where he went when he disappeared for good? If so, how did Valentina get hold of the photo? Or did he time travel more than twice? How had he even time travelled in the first place? Where was he now? He could be literally anywhere, hundreds or even thousands of years into the future! So, the mystery was never solved, Sergei was never seen again, and the story became legendary. So, legendary that it was even featured on a Ukrainian TV show named Aliens, where the events were recreated. That’s where that CCTV footage came from! But that leaves us with a question, where’s all the actual evidence? The CCTV footage, the photo of his ID card, the photo of Sergei from 2050, shock horror, they were all just recreations. And not even particularly convincing ones. The CCTV feed displays the date Wednesday 23rd April 2006, but if you check that date, it was actually a Sunday! The real footage is suspiciously nowhere to be found. As well as this, the ID card has several inaccuracies, and as for that image of Sergei in 2050? Well, several of the skyscrapers are just cloned through photoshop!
But hold on, they were only ever supposed to be recreations, right? So this crazy tale could still be true. Technically, yes. But there’s a chance the Ukrainian show didn’t “recreate” the events at all, and actually just invented the whole affair and presented it as fact. They’re not exactly the most reputable source, and any real evidence for the story is yet to show up.
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
Sir Victor Goddard's Time Travel
In 1935, a British Air Marshal named Sir Robert Victor Goddard was out on a routine flying mission. But it would wind up being anything but routine! Goddard was travelling from Scotland back to his home base in Andover, England. While soaring back home, he flew over a derelict airbase near Drem.
This once bustling military station had long ago been converted into farmland and was now overgrown and largely abandoned. While he was glancing at the hangars below, Goddard was shocked to see a storm rolling in out of nowhere! But not just any storm! These clouds were an otherworldly brown and yellow color, with violent winds blowing from within them. In an instant, Goddard lost control of his plane and plummeted down through the clouds. But the faster he careered through them, the deeper he seemed to go. Eventually, he emerged, panicked and sweating, but very much alive. Managing to wrestle back control of the plane, he found himself face to face once again with the airbase. Only this time things were a little different; it wasn’t abandoned. In fact, far from the derelict field he’d seen before, there was now a fully functioning air base, bursting with activity and workers assembling strange planes that Goddard had never seen before! The planes were yellow, not the color of RAF planes, and the pilots wore blue overalls rather than the standard issue brown. Where had he gone? When had he gone? Then, Goddard was abruptly flung into another tumultuous storm cloud and emerged back at home base!
Seemingly, everything was normal again. Bewildered and in shock, he told everyone he could about the incredible experience. Years passed, and Goddard’s story became well known. But why would anyone believe it? Well, by 1939 something wild happened. The airbase near Drem was renovated, and not only was it back in action, but yellow planes and blue overalls became the RAF’s norm!
Everything that Goddard saw came true. So, back in 1935, had he briefly jumped forward in time? The pilot himself claims he must’ve flown through a “time slip”, which is kind of like a blip in space-time that can send you to another point in history. If that sounds unbelievable, it’s because it is, and many people reckon he was either hallucinating or made the whole thing up for attention. However, it’s doubtful an RAF pilot would make silly things up like that, let alone one as celebrated and respected as Victor Goddard. A random hallucination seems equally unlikely. And how do you explain what he saw actually coming true? Goddard went on to become a firm believer in the paranormal, and he even wound up writing books on the subject. Whether what he saw was real or not, it's believable that he at least thought it was.
Dziga Vertov: Interview With A Time Traveler
There’s been a whole host of people who’ve claimed to be the very first time traveler captured on film. But this next guy, known under the pseudonym Dziga Vertov, has actually developed a following of true believers. In a YouTube interview from 2014, he shared his story.
thetimeauthority.com Full Interview with a time traveler by thetimeauthority He said he was from “the thirtieth” century, so it would be around the year 3000. Unfortunately he doesn’t confirm if they live underwater, but goes on to say he concealed his identity during the interview to keep off the radar of an organization called The Time Authority. According to Vertov, The Time Authority is incredibly powerful and works to ensure time travelers, and ordinary people, don’t change the set path of history. To achieve this, they can wipe your memory or even trap you in a perpetual cell while a clone is sent out to replace you. So, if he can be believed, Vertov risked a lot to do the interview. And it wasn’t for anything positive.
He came with a warning that the society would collapse in near future and money would cease to exist. However, Vertov also assured us that eventually we’ll rebuild and learn how to harness limitless resources. The interviewer was understandably skeptical of these claims, especially when our future friend refused to offer any proof. Vertov didn’t exactly take this skepticism well though, and stormed off set, never to be seen again. Did he jump back into his time machine and decide the past wasn’t worth revisiting? We may never know. Without proof, it’s hard to believe anything this man said. But then again, would bringing proof have altered the timeline and angered the so-called “time authority”? However, it's worth noting that his language and pattern of speech doesn’t appear to be any different to ours despite living 10 centuries in the future.
Paul Amadeus Dienach, The Man Who Woke Up In 3906
Ever heard a story of a coma patient waking up and being amazed by how much the world has changed? As crazy as it must be to wake up 20 years later, Paul Amadeus Dienach can one up that feat. In 1921 he fell into a coma only to wake up in the year 3906!
Dienach was a Swiss teacher born in 1884. He fell madly in love with a woman who ended up leaving him for a rich man, sending him into a deep depression. Then, in 1917 he was diagnosed with
Encephalitis lethargica, the sleeping disease. Because of the disease, he found himself randomly falling unconscious for long periods of time, culminating in the infamous coma of 1921.
This time, when Dienach awoke he was in a hospital, but one completely unlike the Zurich hospital he’d been comatose in. And the location wasn’t the only thing that’d changed, he was in a completely different body! Dienach found himself inhabiting the form of a physicist named Andreas Northam, who was recovering from an accident.Dienach, in Northam’s body, couldn’t understand the language that the hospital staff spoke but could see past events through Northam’s memories. Because of this he learned that he was in the year 3906, and that after our time, violence, poverty, and overpopulation had crippled humanity to the point a catastrophic nuclear war had broken out.
But it got better! In the aftermath, our species rebuilt under a new world government, one with true equality and prosperity. Then, it got really weird. Strange spiritual entities visited Earth and brought enlightenment to humanity. Humans even learnt how to control the chemicals in our bodies!
Sounds pretty fantastical, but this is almost 2,000 years into the future. It’s safe to say that, after centuries of turmoil, the world of 3906 was essentially a utopia! People only worked for 2 years and then retired! While living in the future, Dienach fell in love with a woman who he believed was the reincarnation of his lost love. But it wasn’t to last forever. Finally, after a year of utopia, he suddenly awoke back in the year 1922. That must’ve been a culture shock. Being an intellectual, Dienach didn’t tell anybody about his experience for fear of being called crazy. So, how did we ever find out? After he awoke, he wrote all of his experiences down in a diary then moved to Greece and started teaching there. While there, he passed on the diary to his favorite student, George Papahatzis, for him to read over. Despite being told never to share the work however, Papahatzis ended up betraying his teacher and publishing it in 1972. Whether you agree with his decision or not, we’d never have heard about it otherwise!
Which is precisely the problem. Some claim that Papahatzis had actually just written a work of fiction and framed it as fact for publicity. In which case, Dienach was never real, just a literary device. And sure enough, there are no records of Dienach ever actually existing. Indeed, a photo commonly associated with the guy was found to just be a criminal from New Zealand.
Others think that Dienach did exist, and he did have that wild experience. But it wasn’t time travel, it was just an incredibly vivid dream. Coma patients have been known to have these larger-than-life dreams, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. But what about the more interesting option? Could Dienach have actually seen the world of tomorrow? Did he even exist? There’s only one way to find out: wait and see if his predictions start coming true! We might be waiting a while though.
Alexander Smith, The Man From 2118
We might need to be wearing our tin foil hats for this next one! Back in 2018, a man named Alexander Smith appeared in a handful of videos on the YouTube channel Apex TV, and he had a confession. Alex claimed he was a time traveler!
Supposedly, the CIA had sent him on a top-secret mission back in 1981, when he had to travel through time to the year 2118. What that mission was exactly, he was tight lipped about, but when he returned, the CIA weren’t happy. The traveler claimed he had to go into hiding and they’ve been hunting him down ever since!
So what do we have to go on here other than his word? Smith produced a photo from his pocket that was apparently a copy of one confiscated from him by the CIA. When he was in 2118 he’d snapped the futuristic cityscape. At least, that’s what he says; that pic is far too blurry to really see anything of note!
Regardless, he claimed that he’d been sat on this evidence since way back in the 80s, as he didn’t think the world was ready to see it. No idea why he thought 2018 of all years was the right time, but whatever. He went on to urge humanity to deal with climate change, implying he’d seen a future where it ravaged the globe. Wouldn’t you want to tell people that as soon as possible rather than hanging around? However, that photo doesn’t look like it depicts a ravaged city. Supposedly it’s only blurry though because that’s what happens when you travel through time. On top of that, the guy does a constantly wavering American accent that I’m wholly unconvinced by.
APEXTV Alexander Smith Time Traveler Took This Picture in The Year 2118 by Apex TV The accent alongside that weird mask thing he’s wearing, it’s pretty safe to say old Alexander was just a chancer looking for his 15 minutes of fame. Unless that’s just what happens to your face when you travel through time of course.
Håkan Nordkvist, The Swedish Time Traveler
In a 2006 documentary, a Swedish fella named Håkan Nordkvist regaled the world with his own insane time travel experience. Supposedly, one day he’d noticed a leak underneath his sink. So, he’d promptly grabbed his tools and got to work. As he reached in to fix it however, he was confused to find the back of the sink seemed to move away from him, as if by magic!
Further and further he reached, until he realized he’d have to crawl under it to get to the leaky spot. So, down he went, but suddenly a blinding white light erupted from out of nowhere and rapidly engulfed him. When it faded away, Håkan wasn’t in the kitchen anymore!
Our guy was now outside, and somebody was standing in front of him, someone he recognized. With a lurch in his stomach, Håkan realized he was staring at himself! Only, an older version. This “other him” was delighted to see his former self, and although young Håkan was incredibly confused, the duo quickly got to chatting. Knowing nobody would believe him, the younger man took his cell phone out and filmed the interaction:
I have met myself in the future!! by hakannordkvist123 They even had matching tattoos! After having the time of his life though, Håkan had to return to his own time to share his story. And since the documentary first aired it’s been causing a stir on the internet ever since, with many people utterly convinced. Only, is everything as it seems? In the doc, he never actually says how he returned. And it seems pretty convenient that the footage we have is just blurry enough that you can’t properly make out the future fella’s face, doesn’t it? True, cell phone cameras were pretty poor back then, but he could’ve got a better angle. What’s more, sceptics were quick to point out that the matching tattoos both look far too fresh, wouldn’t the older man’s be more worn? These are all valid questions because it was eventually revealed that this whole thing was just one big publicity stunt. It was run by insurance company AMF for their pension plans, because nothing sells insurance like time travelers, supposedly.
Dodleston Messages From The Past
Back in 1984, a dusty old cottage in the English village of Dodleston was about to play host to one of the wildest accounts of time travel ever. Teacher Ken Webster was living there with his girlfriend Debbie and their long-term guest, Nicola. They were renovating the property when they noticed some strange, 6 toed footprints on the floor and walls.
Dismissing it as a prank, they ignored the odd footprints. But things got weirder. Inexplicable cold spots started appearing throughout the cottage, the trio noticed strange shadows flickering across the walls, and on several occasions they walked into a room to find tins of cat food stacked neatly in a pyramid.Doing their best to ignore the strange happenings, they soldiered on. Until one day, everything changed. Ken was teaching at a local school and managed to get permission to bring a then-state of the art computer back with him. Excitedly, he booted it up, and was shocked to see strange text appearing on the screen.
It was some kind of creepy poem about nightmares and withering flowers, but Ken couldn’t make much sense of it. And it didn’t stop there. Before long, a second even weirder message appeared. This one was written in an old dialect and directly accused Webster of stealing the house from them. It was enigmatically signed “L.W.” At first, Ken thought it must’ve been some kind of prank. But remember, this was 1984, when the internet was supremely primitive, and Ken’s computer wasn’t connected to any network. So, it couldn’t have been. On a whim, Ken tentatively typed a message to L.W. back. And incredibly, he got a response! And another. And another. Slowly, surely, L.W. and Ken got to know each other.L.W. was actually called Lukas and he claimed to be living in the 1500s, which explains the dialect, on the same plot of land that Ken’s cottage now occupied. It was Lukas that’d been causing the weird activity before, through some kind of time slip, in order to try and get Ken’s attention.
What’s more, Lukas eventually revealed that he’d also been talking to a mysterious third party who claimed to be from the year 2109! This man from the future had apparently travelled to the past and brought Lukas a “leems boyste” which translates to “box of lights”.
Could this be the computer he was using to communicate with Ken? To confuse matters further, Lukas then admitted his real name was actually Thomas and he’d been going under a moniker because the man from 2109 had ordered him to.Eventually, the man from 2109 joined the conversation as well and told Ken that he and Thomas were part of a secret experiment that would change the course of history. By revealing his real name however, Thomas had potentially ruined the grand plan. What that plan was, we may never know. In his final correspondence, Thomas told Ken he’d been accused of witchcraft and was being forced from his land. Naturally, owning a futuristic computer hadn’t done him any favors. Regardless, he had the time to thank Ken for his friendship and promised to write a book on the events before stashing it somewhere for him to find later. 2109 confirmed that, one day, the book would indeed be discovered, before vanishing shortly afterwards, never to return.
But is there any truth to it? The account of events is from Ken himself, who wrote a book about it called
The Vertical Plane. Ken definitely profited from this, so there’d certainly be motive to fake it but upon analyzing the messages from “Thomas”, English teacher Peter Trinder concluded the vocabulary used was authentic to 1540s Cheshire and that they were therefore 100% genuine. Other academics have disagreed with this, pointing out various inconsistencies with the language that may point to it being a hoax.
Despite this, we can never truly know, and Ken remains steadfast that many of the messages came through when nobody was in the house to be able to fake them. Thomas’s promised book however remains unfound. While we want this exciting story to be real, until we get some more concrete proof, it's up to you to decide. I hope you were amazed at the most convincing time traveler stories. Thanks for reading!
