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The Man From Taured (Japan; 1959)

Souleater said:
I dont think anyone did, Japan just deported him and washed their hands of the whole thing as soon as he had served his time in prison.
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The story that was "cracked" was the version of the story known from Wilson and Grant's book - i.e., the paranormal version suggesting the Man from Taured had come from a different reality, dimension, etc. The woo factor emphasized in such paranormal framing was demonstrated to be false documentation and lies associated with a con man (once the correct timeframe had been determined).

There remained mystery associated with the story even after it had been substantiated. The mystery of an unidentifiable man who'd arrived from somewhere "else" was basically transformed into the mystery of a known person whose trail could not be tracked after leaving a Japanese prison and being deported from Japan. A missing person doesn't carry as much "woo factor" as an uncanny origin and consistent claims of a non-existent homeland.
 
I remain perplexed by this case even though I don't think any more information will be forthcoming (Hong Kong immigration records? lol).

Regarding the magazine-sized passport, such hand-written passports were common around WW2. Probably less common by 1959 but since he claimed to come from Africa he might have made a plausible story out of it.

The bank fraud makes it clear that Zegrus was a con artist, not an interdimensional being. The best explanation I can come up with is that he married a South Korean woman but for some reason found it impossible to travel with her to a permanent residence. So he invented a new identity and nationality by finding an unknown spot on a map, then made two passports for that invented nationality. He then acquires multiple temporary visas for him and his wife to travel around and sustain themselves with petty crimes.

That being the case, I don't see any reason why he would persist in the Tuared story while he was in prison. The suicide attempt makes it sound like he was in real psychological distress over his treatment by the legal system. Why not simply tell them the truth? Maybe he had some bad upbringing in his home country and really didn't want to go back there, or he feared additional prosecution. But where did he expect he would end up, and where did he end up in the end? This raises a couple of other questions for me: If he came to Asia as an American or British military officer, why was he not identified and sent to a military tribunal? And if not, how did he get to Asia at all? Trans-oceanic travel was very expensive and uncommon in the 1950s -- Japanese people needed special permission to travel until 1964.

Basically we can imagine a plausible story without paranormal intervention, but it's still deeply mysterious how Zegrus arrived in Asia and how he vanished in 1961.
 
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NegussiHabessi said:
I remain perplexed by this case even though I don't think any more information will be forthcoming (Hong Kong immigration records? lol).

Regarding the magazine-sized passport, such hand-written passports were common around WW2. Probably less common by 1959 but since he claimed to come from Africa he might have made a plausible story out of it.

The bank fraud makes it clear that Zegrus was a con artist, not an interdimensional being. The best explanation I can come up with is that he married a South Korean woman but for some reason found it impossible to travel with her to a permanent residence. So he invented a new identity and nationality by finding an unknown spot on a map, then made two passports for that invented nationality. He then acquires multiple temporary visas for him and his wife to travel around and sustain themselves with petty crimes.

That being the case, I don't see any reason why he would persist in the Tuared story while he was in prison. The suicide attempt makes it sound like he was in real psychological distress over his treatment by the legal system. Why not simply tell them the truth? Maybe he had some bad upbringing in his home country and really didn't want to go back there, or he feared additional prosecution. But where did he expect he would end up, and where did he end up in the end? This raises a couple of other questions for me: If he came to Asia as an American or British military officer, why was he not identified and sent to a military tribunal? And if not, how did he get to Asia at all? Trans-oceanic travel was very expensive and uncommon in the 1950s -- Japanese people needed special permission to travel until 1964.

Basically we can imagine a plausible story without paranormal intervention, but it's still deeply mysterious how Zegrus arrived in Asia and how he vanished in 1961.
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To that end I wonder if he actually claimed to come from Tuared at all? Tuareg makes more sense, the other might be a transcription error. Especially when you connect it to the Tamanrosset angle. Maybe he WAS a Berber? that leaves a pile of other questions still unanswered though.
 
Coastaljames said:
I think to be "into" paranormal stuff is to be constantly disappointed...goes with the territory.
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It's one of the few things X-Files waxed philosophical about. Where is the line between looking for the truth and looking for evidence to support a pre-existing conclusion? If you "want to believe" will you let that blind you to the truth?
 
AnonyJ said:
Heads up - issue 406 :cool:
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Yer 'tis:

FotoJet.jpg

[J.L. is a pseudonym]
 
Heh, this reminds me of something I heard long ago somewhere: "a good mystery is solvable. The mystery is that you haven't found the solution, not in questioning IF there IS a solution."

This was a mystery because the facts were scattered. Then the facts get collected together and it makes sense.
 
Its the age old problem we have, FOF tales past on, some author gets hold of it and it passes it as fact and thus a whole legend is born
 
Robbrent said:
Its the age old problem we have, FOF tales past on, some author gets hold of it and it passes it as fact and thus a whole legend is born
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Yeah, the old school tall tale is a true story... multiple times removed from the truth. Some variants of this one actually remove all of the details from the original account entirely.
 
Robbrent said:
I can't be the only one disappointed that this is not true
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My detective work (in the article) throws up a story that (in my opinion) is even weirder and odder than the myth.

Yes, this guy was real and from our time/universe but had managed to travel half the world with a homemade passport from a fictional country, constructed in a fake language. He claimed to be Ethiopian, a self-styled American, an agent for the Egyptian government *and* an FBI employee - then commits bank fraud in Japan, gets jailed and then gets deported ....somewhere!

His antics are up there on a par with Frank Abagnale - I'd love to know what happened to him :)
 
AnonyJ said:
My detective work (in the article) throws up a story that (in my opinion) is even weirder and odder than the myth.

Yes, this guy was real and from our time/universe but had managed to travel half the world with a homemade passport from a fictional country, constructed in a fake language. He claimed to be Ethiopian, a self-styled American, an agent for the Egyptian government *and* an FBI employee - then commits bank fraud in Japan, gets jailed and then gets deported ....somewhere!

His antics are up there on a par with Frank Abagnale - I'd love to know what happened to him :)
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Yeah, and apparently he used the name Tuareg somewhere in there, thus creating the name of the incident..... but WHY? Was he a Berber? might that "weird writing" have been the Tifinagh script used by the Berbers? I don't know and don't have avenues to investigate.
 
marhawkman said:
Well this is interesting... Did another web search trying to find one of the pages I looked at yesterday and noticed a hit on the English Wikipedia discussion page for the Andorra article..... It seem that if you enter "Les Tauredes" into Google maps and ask for directions to get there... it points to a location in southern France. The person who posted this claimed that it was the name of a river. I couldn't find anything about it on the French Wikipedia though.

However a web search for "Les Tauredes" gave this: http://www.lestauredes.fr/ Yeah... that's a website for a vineyard. I'm not sure if "vallon des Taurèdes" (valley of the Taurèdes) is a proper name though. Interesting! In the Google maps hit, if you click on it, it gives a street address for Les Tauredes that is the same address listed on the website for the vineyard. Hmm... how was the vineyard name chosen? Hunh, they have a facebook page, I guess I could just ask them.
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Heh, it's been over a year, but they finally replied.
Hello, thank you for your interest in my wineyard. Its name comes from the name of the place.
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kinda vague....
 
Well, I just got issue 406. Congrats, AnonyJ - a very good article!

BTW, for some reason I always saw your name as "AntonyJ", but now I see it's an obvious pseudonym. Does your published one, Julia Louis, hint at a modern day Dreyfus affair?
 
Congratulations, AnonyJ, on a fine article finally published! :twothumbs:
 
On today's Quora, someone posted the fictionalised account of the "man from Taured" story as "proof" that alternative realities exist.
A couple of the replies pointed to the Full Fact debunking of the incident:

https://fullfact.org/online/man-from-parallel-universe/

The Wikipedia page also reports that John Zegrus was suicidal after being convicted by the Japanese court and tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists with a piece of broken glass. As a convicted fraudster and clearly suffering from depression, I expect his ultimate end, following his deportation, was a sad and lonely one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zegrus
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
On today's Quora, someone posted the fictionalised account of the "man from Taured" story as "proof" that alternative realities exist.
A couple of the replies pointed to the Full Fact debunking of the incident:

https://fullfact.org/online/man-from-parallel-universe/

The Wikipedia page also reports that John Zegrus was suicidal after being convicted by the Japanese court and tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists with a piece of broken glass. As a convicted fraudster and clearly suffering from depression, I expect his ultimate end, following his deportation, was a sad and lonely one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zegrus
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Took a quick look and noted that this is a rather... basic look at it. Made a major factual error and asserted Tamanrasset was fictional too.
 
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