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Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
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10 People Who Claimed To Have Traveled To The Future
While the possibility of time travel remains debatable, we have had people who’ve claimed to have traveled to the past, the future, or even parallel universes. One common argument against time travel to the past deals with the possibility of altering the past. If you travel back in time and kill your parents, what happens to you? Do you die off, just disappear, or what?
Claims of time travel to the future are more realistic and believable, since the future is unknown. Some who claim to have traveled to the future even offer predictions to back up their stories. These predictions could be all they need to validate their time travel claims, should their prognostications come true. Even when they don’t, the time travelers could argue that they averted the event or made us avert it simply by telling us.
10 John Titor
On November 2, 2000, John Titor posted a message on an Internet forum claiming to be a time traveler from 2036. Titor claimed he had traveled to 1975 to pick up an IBM 5100 computer and only stopped by in the year 2000 over what he called “personal reasons.” To prove he was a real time traveler, Titor added pictures of his time machine and said it was made by General Electric.
Titor claimed that a civil war started in the US in 2004 and evolved into a nuclear war with Russia, leaving millions of people dead. He was part of a military unit that had traveled to the past to retrieve crucial items necessary for the survival of humanity. He had been tasked with retrieving an IBM 5100 computer to debug a machine used in 2036.
Besides warning of a civil war, Titor predicted there would be no Olympics in 2004 and that the West would collapse in 2005. The same year would see an outbreak of mad cow disease, and whoever was president would attempt to emulate Abraham Lincoln. Titor offered to take some people to the future, but just like his predictions, that never happened because he suddenly disappeared in March 2001.
In 2009, John Hughston of Hoax Hunter speculated that “Titor” was actually brothers Larry and John Rick Haber. However, some believe Titor was real and must have averted the civil war by indirectly warning the US government when he dropped by in 2000. Besides, Titor already mentioned that by traveling into the past, he had created a “worldline” and altered history. In fact, he claimed to have witnessed certain alterations to history, like an opposing team winning a football match instead of the team that had originally won it.[1]
9 Andrew Basiago
Andrew Basiago is a Seattle lawyer and another time travel claimant. Not only does he claim to have traveled to the future, but he also says he’s traveled to the past and Mars. Basiago claims he went to Mars in 1981 alongside a teenage Barack Obama and William Stillings, who were involved in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) effort to create a time machine.
Basiago claims the project, which was code-named Pegasus, was active between 1968 and 1972 and led to the creation of a real time machine. Basiago says he used the machine to travel to the year 1863, where he listened to one of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, and the year 2054. He added that the US government frequently used the machine to deploy military units to alter the past and future as it deemed fit.
Unlike other time travelers, Basiago failed to provide us with some predictions about the future, except that he will become president between 2016 and 2028. Some do not believe Basiago’s claims of interplanetary and temporal travel, since they whole could have been a ploy to create awareness for a book he was writing at that time. On the other hand, the book could be a further revelation of his claims. That is, if they are true.[2]
8 Bryant Johnson
In 2017, police officers in Casper, Wyoming, were called to deal with a drunk man roaming the streets. The man turned out to be Bryant Johnson, who claimed he was a time traveler from 2048. Johnson stated that he had traveled to 2017 to warn us of an alien invasion that was supposed to happen in 2018. He said he originally intended to travel to 2018 but arrived one year earlier because the aliens got him drunk.
He even demanded to speak with the “president of the town” to warn him of the impending invasion. Johnson’s time travel claim was clearly an excuse to avoid a public drunkenness charge. Officers did not fall for it and promptly arrested him. They revealed he was so drunk that his eyes were bloodshot, and he could not talk properly.[3]
7 Noah
Noah claims to be from the year 2030. In a video posted on YouTube, he claimed artificial intelligence had taken over, Bitcoin was an acceptable currency, and climate change had heated North America and cooled Europe. He added that electric cars were more reliable and that humans were already traveling to Mars and had found cures for certain cancers.
The weirdest of his predictions dealt with President Donald Trump. Noah said that Trump changed his name to Ilana Remikee after winning the 2020 election. Noah’s claims remain in doubt since he provided no evidence to back up what he’d said. He claimed he could not provide any because of a “paradox” that will not make people believe him, anyway.
He followed up his initial video with another one in which he supposedly took a lie detector test to confirm he was telling the truth. We say “supposedly” because the machine was not visible in the video. Noah could not be identified from the footage, since his face was blurred and his voice altered. His videos were posted on Apex TV, a YouTube channel known to feature people with questionable time travel claims.[4]
6 William Taylor
William Taylor claimed to have traveled from 2005 to 3000 and finally 8973 before returning back to the present. He claimed to work for the “British Intelligence Agency” and to have been sent to the future as part of a time traveling experiment the agency had been working on since 1981. He first journeyed to the year 3000, when humans no longer walked on the ground but instead moved around in flying vehicles.
He later traveled to year 8973, where disease, death, war, and crime are nonexistent. All humans are tall and slim with big heads and eyes and live peacefully with robots and cyborgs. Taylor hinted that time travel seemed to be normal in the future, since no one was surprised when he mentioned he was a time traveler. In fact, he claimed to have met another time traveler from 2055.
Taylor also provided us with some insights into the British government’s alleged time travel project. He said the machine doesn’t just allow humans to travel through time but also to parallel universes. He added that other governments also have their own time travel projects, but they all keep them under wraps. However, the British government will unveil its own to the world in 2028.[5]
5 Bella
Bella is an Albanian lady who claimed to have traveled to the year 3800. She even added evidence: a selfie she supposedly took in the future. Bella claimed she was able to go to the future with the help of a Belarus physicist called Alexander Kozlov. She says the process of traveling through time is not as cool as we think. Everything turned black while she traveled, and whatever she used to journey to the future passed very high voltage through her body.
Bella claimed the future was not cool, either. Everything we know has been completely destroyed, with robots ruling over man. Everywhere she looked, she saw rubble, robots, and dead people. Bella even claimed to have encountered one of the killer robots. It was huge and capable of talking and making facial expressions. It asked her where she came from, but she did not answer.
Many people criticized Bella’s claims over several irregularities. She said she took several pictures, so she should have provided more photographs as evidence instead of just one. Even the picture she did show was questionable, even though there were futuristic-looking buildings in the background. Besides, her lipstick somehow remained perfectly applied, something that should not have been possible, considering the chaos.[6]
4 Unidentified Man
An unnamed man from Siberia has said he traveled to the year 4040. The man claimed to have worked in a physics lab, where he and another scientist collaborated to build a time machine. He tested the machine and found himself in the year 4040, when half of the world’s population was dead while robots held sway.
The man added that the groundwork for the destruction of humanity was laid in 2458, when humans contacted some aliens from another galaxy. The aliens lived longer than humans—between 400 and 450 years on the average—but had just come out of a disastrous war that left only 200,000 survivors. They migrated to Earth in 2460.
Humans experienced rapid development after the arrival of the aliens. Health care improved, and humans were living up to 200 years. In 3213, humans and aliens collaborated to create artificial intelligence. They built a very large computer that was half the size of Europe and put it in the Pacific Ocean. The computer controlled every other robot and electronic device on Earth.
The computer soon overtook humans in intelligence and turned the robots against the humans and aliens. Both engaged in a war with the robots until the year 4040, by which time half of the world’s human population was dead. The unnamed man ended his time travel story by warning us about the dangers of artificial intelligence. He said it was a disaster waiting to happen.[7]
3 Hakan Nordkvist
Hakan Nordkvist is a Swedish man who claimed to have traveled to the year 2042. Unlike the other time travelers we’ve mentioned, Hakan did not use a time machine and only got to the future by accident. Hakan says it all happened on August 30, 2006, when he entered his kitchen to find his sink leaking. He opened the cabinet under the sink to repair the leak but could not find it. He reached into the cabinet, only to find himself in the year 2042.
Hakan claimed he met the 72-year-old version of himself in the future. The two of them even had the same tattoo. To confirm the 72-year-old man was truly him, Hakan asked him some personal questions, and he answered correctly. To make the whole thing believable, Hakan provided a very short video of his meeting with the 72-year-old version of himself.[8]
2 Andrew Carlssin
On March 19, 2003, Yahoo! News reported the arrest of one Andrew Carlssin by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for insider trading. Andrew Carlssin had successfully traded 126 high-risk stocks, turning an investment of $800 into over $350 million in just two weeks—during a financial crisis when other investors were losing money. There was only one way that could have been possible: insider trading.
Carlssin denied participating in insider trading. He reportedly claimed he was a time traveler from the the year 2256 but teleported himself back to 2003 to trade in stocks. He said everyone in the future knew about the stock market failure of 2003, and he only returned to see if he could make some quick cash.
He never revealed the location of his time machine but promised to divulge certain information, including the location of Osama bin Laden and how to get the cure for AIDS, on the condition that the SEC left him alone. The SEC found Carlssin’s claims hilarious. Curiously, there was allegedly no prior record of Carlssin existing anywhere on Earth before December 2002.[9]
Carlssin was supposedly charged but mysteriously disappeared before appearing in court. No one has heard of him ever since. Maybe he returned to the future? Or perhaps, as many believe, the whole story was a hoax. A big mark against the story is that Yahoo! News was essentially reblogging an article from Weekly World News, a tabloid known for its positively ridiculous claims.
1 Michael Philips
Michael Philips claims to be from the year 2070 and to have traveled back to 2018 to avert a war that will be fought in 2019. This conflict, which will become World War III, will be so deadly that World Wars I and II will seem like child’s play. Philips says his mission is to stop the war before it starts.
The basis of the war will occur late this year, when North Korea will attempt to launch a nuclear weapon at the US. The US will respond with two cruise missiles, and the war will quickly evolve into a nuclear conflict involving several enemy nations trying to nuke themselves into extinction.
Philips also provided us with some information about 9/11. He says it was caused by another time traveler we’ve already mentioned: John Titor. Titor traveled to 2000 to lay plans for the 9/11 attacks. The idea was to create an event that will unify the US and avert that civil war that should have happened in 2004 (or 2008, as Philips tells it).[10]
Besides informing us about the averted civil war and predicting World War III, Philips also made more predictions for the future. He said Trump will win the 2020 election, and Elon Musk will build the first spacecraft to transport humans to Mars in 2025. Humans will be living on Mars by 2032. Of course, Philips’s prediction about Mars contradicts Basiago’s claim of humans traveling to Mars in the 1960s.
Read more purported instances of time travel on 10 People Who Claimed To Be Time Travelers and 10 Recent, Crazy Claims From Apparent Time Travelers.