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No, This Isn't a Photo of 'Time Traveler' John Titor in 1941

Rumors of a visit from time traveler from the year 2036 have floated around online since 2000., bethania palma, published dec. 18, 2022.

In the early days of the internet, a user who went by the name John Titor started popping up in various channels, claiming to be a time traveler sent from the year 2036 by the U.S. government, and bearing warnings about a dark future ahead.

It's an "internet mystery" that has had staying power through the years, so much so that some have linked it to a genuine photograph  taken in 1941 that appears to show a man wearing clothing from the 2000s, claiming that man is John Titor. Here's one example of from the social media site Imgur:

We'll look at the origin of both the John Titor conspiracy theory below.

Who Is John Titor?

It all started on Nov. 2, 2000 , when an internet user with the handle Timetravel_0 began posting on a forum, claiming he came from the future  and had just stopped by at the turn of the century while on task to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer system from 1975.

"My 'time' machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two top-spin dual-positive singularities that produce a standard off-set Tipler sinusoid," he wrote.

The user later began posting on forums using the name "John Titor," generating a lot of curiosity and interest. The story was covered extensively by the popular supernatural- and conspiracy-themed radio show "Coast to Coast," hosted by Art Bell.

On March 21, 2001, Titor stated he was returning to 2036 and stopped posting messages. He hasn't been heard from since. 

No one has ever taken credit for creating John Titor, nor has anyone been definitely proven to have posted as the time traveler. Sleuths have since attempted to trace the messages, with an Italian investigative TV show called "Voyager" pointing to a eponymously-named John Titor Foundation , which published a book presenting the Titor story as real, and an entertainment lawyer named Lawrence Haber , who some theorize was the mastermind of the John Titor phenomenon from the start.

Where Did the Photo Come From?

As we previously reported , the photograph above, in which the alleged time traveler allegedly appears, doesn't show any such thing. Though the man in the photograph may appear to some modern viewers to be dressed in anachronistic attire and out of place in 1941, all of the articles of clothing he's wearing in the picture, from the sunglasses to the Montreal Maroons shirt, were readily available at that time.

The photograph was taken in Canada at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge and was part of the Barlorne-Pioneer Museum's exhibit called "The Past Lives Here," which started in 2004. Perhaps predictably, fantastical theories about the picture's contents took off after the museum digitized it and placed it in its online collection.

Evon, Dan. "Does a Photograph Capture a Time-Traveling Hipster?" Snopes , 23 Feb. 2015, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/time-traveling-hipster/.

Paulas, Rick. "The Mystery of John Titor: Hoax or Time Traveler?" Pacific Standard , 14 June 2017, https://psmag.com/environment/the-mystery-of-john-titor-hoax-or-time-traveler-57001.

"The John Titor Story ." https://www.johntitor.com/Pages/Story.html. Accessed 15 Dec. 2022.

"The Wild Tales of People Who Claim to Have Travelled through TIME." DerbyshireLive , 18 Feb. 2018. www.derbytelegraph.co.uk , https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/weird-wonderful-tales-people-who-1221007.

Dodds, Laurence. "Who Was John Titor, the 'Time Traveller' Who Came from 2036 to Warn Us of a Nuclear War?" The Telegraph, 21 Oct. 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11945420/Who-was-John-Titor-the-time-traveller-who-came-from-2036-to-warn-us-of-a-nuclear-war.html.

By Bethania Palma

Bethania Palma is a journalist from the Los Angeles area who has been working in the news industry since 2006.

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The Legend of John Titor - The 'Time Traveler' From 2036 and One of the Greatest Internet Mysteries of All Time

A mysterious man from the future had a mission to save the world. In order to do this, he needed to travel back in time to get a 1975 IBM 5100 computer. 

This man, known as John Titor , became one of the greatest Internet mysteries of the early 2000s due to his detailed knowledge of time travel and his dark predictions for the future. It was something that captivated me while I was in high school and many people devoted years trying to figure out if there was any truth behind his wild claims, or if they were all just one big hoax.

It all began in July 1998 on the late-night paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM when host Art Bell received a series of faxes (yes, faxes) from an alleged American Soldier claiming to have detailed knowledge of time travel. The faxes describe how time travel was invented in the year 2034 and tell of an ominous discovery that no one is able to travel beyond the year 2564. They also warn of the devastation to come following the impending Y2K disaster . Here is a transcription of his first fax:

“Dear Art, I had to fax when I heard other time travelers calling in from any time past the year 2500 AD. Please let me explain. Time travel was invented in 2034. Off-shoots of certain successful fusion reactor research allowed scientists at CERN to produce the world’s first contained singularity engine. The basic design involves rotating singularities inside a magnetic field. By altering the speed and direction of rotation, you can travel both forward and backward in time. Time itself can be understood in terms of connected lines. When you go back in time, you travel on your original timeline. When you turn your singularity engine off, a new timeline is created, due to the fact that you and your time machine are now there. In other words, a new universe is created. To get back to your original line, you must travel a split second father back, and immediately throw the engine into forward without turning it off. Some interesting outcomes of this are: One, you meet yourself. I have done it often, even taken a younger version of myself along for a few rides before returning myself to the new timeline and going back to mine. Two, you can alter history in the new universe that you have just created. Most of the time, the changes are subtle. Sometimes, I’ll notice car models that don’t exist, or books that come out late. The oldest one was a skyscraper that wasn’t built in a near favorite store of mine in New York. Interestingly, when you travel in time, you must compensate for the orbit of the earth. Since the time machine doesn’t move, you have to adjust the engines so you remain on the planet when you turn it off. Unfortunately, it was also discovered that anyone going forward in time, from my 2036, hit a brick wall in the year 2564. Everyone who has ever been there has reported that nothing exists. When the machine is turned off, you find yourself surrounded by blackness and silence. Now, most time travelers are trying to find out where the line went bad by going into the past, creating a new universe, and proceeding forward to see if the same thing results in 2564. It appears the line went bad around the year 2000. I’m here now, in this time, to test a few theories of mine before going forward. Now, for the future you might want to know about. One, Y2K is a disaster. Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. Two, the government tries to keep power by instituting marshall law, but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail. Three, a power facility in Denver is able to restart itself, but is mobbed by hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed. This convinces most that maybe we shouldn’t bring the old system back up. Four, a few years later, communal government system is developed, after the constitution takes a few twists. China retakes Taiwan, Israel wins the largest battle for their life, and Russia is covered in nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors. Art, the reason I’m here now is because I believe a nuclear weapon set off by Iraq in the Middle East war with Israel might have something to do with the damaged timeline. I will test that theory and get back to you. Please pray that we discover the reason why there is no apparent future after 2564.”

Titor then disappeared and was mostly forgotten about until the year 2000 when someone with the username TimeTravel_0 began posting the same story to the Time Travel Institute Forum. This person also began posting to the Art Bell BBS forums under the username John Titor. Here is the fist post from John Titor:

Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975. “My ‘time’ machine is a stationary mass temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two top-spin dual-positive singularities that produce a standard off-set Tipler sinusoid. “I will be happy to post pictures of the unit.”

John obviously received a lot of attention from his posts and he openly invited any and all questions about his life, his mission, and time travel.

He wrote in detail about how time travel worked and provided technical specs regarding his time machine , the C204 Gravity Distortion Unit. He even posted a few grainy photos of his actual machine along with scans from the machine's manual. 

Scan from the technical manual showing a diagram of the field shapes and time vectors produced by the unit during operation.

One of the schematics provided by John Titor for his time machine.

An image of the time machine provided by John Titor.

Another view of the time machine in the back of his vehicle.

According to John, the ability to time travel was discovered in Geneva, Switzerland at CERN , during experiments involving the Large Hadron Collider . Here is an excerpt of what he said about the discovery in one of his posts:

“The source of power for the C204 that allows it to distort and manipulate gravity comes from two micro singularities that were created, captured and cleaned at a much larger and ‘circular’ facility…The breakthrough that will allow for this technology will occur within a year or so when CERN brings their larger facility online.” – January 31, 2001

He claimed his mission was to head back to 1975 in order to obtain an IBM 5100 computer and bring it back to 2036. Why would such an old computer be so important in the future? 

An IBM 5100 computer

The answer is that the 5100 series has a unique function that IBM kept secret for years. It is capable of reading old code written before the widespread use of APL and Basic and there are none of these computers left in the future. Government scientists in 2036 need it to debug equipment susceptible to the UNIX Millennium Bug , a problem similar to the Y2K bug that will cause many systems relying on computers to fail. 

This "secret" feature was actually confirmed by an IBM engineer who helped design it, which only furthers the John Titor legend because only a very small number of people ever knew about it.

So, if all John needed to do was get a computer and go, what was he doing in the early 2000s posting on time travel and paranormal message boards?

He said his detours in the years 1998 and 2000 were to visit family and possibly himself as a young child, but he also wanted to send out a warning of the possible future to come. Oh yeah, he also claims that he saved the world from Y2K.

Through his discussions on the Art Bell Forums, John Titor described an upcoming Civil War in the United States which would result in the country breaking up into five different regions. Most major cities would be destroyed, leaving Omaha, Neb. as the new U.S. capital. The civil war would last from 2004 until 2015, ending with WWIII and nuclear attacks which would destroy global infrastructure and the environment. 

"Perhaps it would be better if you just considered me a fraud. I really don't have a problem with that. If that were the case, could we then have discussions that you were comfortable with?" - John Titor in a post from February 2001.

As the years passed, it became clear that all of John Titor's predictions would be wrong, as there was no Y2K disaster nor any civil war happening after the 2004 election. However, a post from January 30, 2001, helps explain all this away.  Due to the fact that he was from a different timeline, the events of our future may not be exactly the same or happen at the times he predicted. 

"As far as the future goes, your worldline is about 2.5% different than mine. This is a roughly cumulative measurement based on my arrival in 1975. As far as I can tell right now, you are headed toward the same events I would call "my history" in 2036. However, the very nature of time travel states that every worldline is unique and you are very much in control of what you do and how you get there. Heck, the fact that I'm here makes it different than mine."

Not long after, John headed back to his own timeline in 2036. But before he left, John Titor posted his final message on March 24, 2001,: 

"I will be leaving this worldline shortly and this will be my final post. There are only a handful of people who will know exactly when I will be leaving and I'm sure they will let you know when I'm gone. [...] My parting thought revolves around something J.C. has been harping on since day one. No, I do not have a secret agenda but I have been paying a great deal of attention to your worldline. My interaction with you was not a direct mission parameter but it was a secondary mission protocol based on standing orders given to all temporal drivers. That secondary objective is basically to gather as much information about a worldline based on a set of observable variables when we first arrive. Your worldline met those conditions. What amazes me is why no one here wonders why Y2k didn't hit them at all? Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road. Farewell."

And with that, he was gone forever. With the events that have happened at CERN in the past decade and the state of the world today, do you think John was right but just a few years off?

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The Untold Truth Of 'Time Traveler' John Titor

If we do someday day crack the secret code of time travel, we'll be opening a Pandora's box full of both nightmares and wonders. As if the threat of Skynet sending cyborgs back into the 1980s wasn't scary enough, the nature of time travel is so confusing that we'll forever question every element of reality.

On the other hand, what if time travelers have already set foot in our time, and we just didn't know about them? Some people believe that back in 2000, one time traveler from the future — a man who called himself John Titor — risked everything in order to tell the hairless apes of the present day a little bit about the terrifying destiny that supposedly lies ahead of us.

In the year 2000, a man from the future said hello

Before we begin, it's important to step back and remember that in the dawn of the new millennium, the internet wasn't the refined, smartphone-accessible, Facebooked social network that it is today. Back then, the internet was a scary place still trying to find itself, and you never knew who was on the other end of a screen name. It was in this atmosphere that an unknown man signed up on a message board with the username TimeTravel_0, according to i09 , and opened the doors to a conversation that never closed. In January 2001, he announced his name as John Titor and said he had come from the future. He posted:

"Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975. My "time" machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid. I will be happy to post pictures of the unit."

From Day 1, John Titor started fielding a lot of questions, both from believers and disbelievers. What separated Titor from the everyday crank call was the level of detail he provided. Rather than sticking to vague fortune cookie platitudes, Titor's answers were precise.

His science checked out more than you'd expect

An everyday prankster wouldn't last ten minutes when confronted with real scientists ready to poke holes in his story. However, according to the  Guardian , Titor "held his own against skeptical physicists." He even shared detailed schematics and photographs of his time machine, which were all surprisingly convincing. It soon became clear that if this John Titor guy was a prankster, he'd at least done his homework.

Every layer of Titor's story was there for a reason, including his seemingly contrived mission statement: though it might sound silly that scientists in the year 2036 would have any interest in collecting an antique IBM computer, the Minnesota newspaper Post Bulletin   pointed out that Titor's explanation was based on facts. Basically, Titor's claim was that programmers in the future needed the old computer because it had a function that would give them access to a secret "memory code." Post Bulletin writer Patrick Stephenson interviewed one of the engineers of the original IBM 5100, Bob Dubke, who confirmed that this function existed. Crazy, right?

If Titor's story was a hoax, nitty-gritty details like this were the key ingredient. His mission was mundane enough and the scientific details specific enough that you had to wonder. This same logic applied to Titor's descriptions of society in the future, with forecasts rooted in contemporary fears.

He warned of a dark future

Like any proper time traveler, John Titor warned us about scary, apocalyptic events that we could look forward to in the decades ahead. Titor made it clear that our era of humanity did a lot of damage to the environment. He added that people in his time have made "huge strides" in getting the radiation cleaned up, and that they produce far less waste since all their food and water production is localized.

According to  AV Club , Titor claimed that his society was radically different from ours because people in 2000 were only a few years away from entering decades of horrible wars. Titor predicted that the 2004 U.S. presidential election would fracture the country into two opposing sides — yeah, you can probably guess what the sides are — resulting in a violent civil war erupting by 2008. As if that wasn't gloomy enough, the  Guardian added that Titor predicted World War III would begin in 2015, caused by Russia dropping nukes on the U.S., Europe, and China, slaughtering three billion people. All this post-apocalyptic bloodshed supposedly caused Titor himself to  become a child soldier at age 13 .

Titor finished this dark tale by explaining that after this bloodshed cools off, the U.S. will settle down into a collection of small feudal communities. Honestly, it's surprising that this concept hasn't already become a Netflix series.

He said people in the future don't like us too much

Sadly enough, Titor made it clear that people from his time weren't too fond of the denizens of the early 2000s. After surviving the wars, he claimed that the humans of his time had become hardened, efficient workhorses who knew how to make their own tools, use their own guns, and pick up and move anywhere if they needed to. According to the  Telegraph , Titor rather harshly condemned everyone in the message board by saying, "Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep."

If Titor's story were true, it'd be hard to blame him for the hard feelings, considering that his entire world seems to have gone to hell by 2015. But oddly enough, despite the fact that Titor noticeably disliked almost everyone he talked to online, this supposed time traveler did invite his followers to come to the future with him. Titor warned that the trip would be a lengthy process involving multiple long drives across the country, since the time displacement unit had to be loaded into a vehicle, a la Back to the Future . If anyone did go with him, well, we never heard about it.

He made a close friend

According to Mike Sauve, who is known as the official John Titor academic due to his book  Who Authored the John Titor Legend?,  the controversial time traveler did make some friends on the message board. Titor's closest connection was a woman named Pamela Moore, who shared a warm relationship with him, almost as if she already knew him from outside the boards. Moore has said that Titor left her with a so-called "secret song," which she could use to verify his identity in case any impostors came along in the future.

Moore later explained to Sauve that the reason she was so immediately interested in talking to Titor was that back in 1998, she'd experienced a vivid dream about him. In this dream, she had rode in a car with a time traveling man whose answers were identical to the ones Titor later gave in the message board. Moore — whom Titor once referred to as his "dear friend" — has always maintained her firm belief in Titor's story.

The most intriguing wrinkle in Moore's story is her mysterious relationship with a woman named Kay Titor, who claims to be John Titor's mother. Kay once sent Moore a personal letter, along with a package that Kay claims John meant for Moore to have. However, it's worth noting that all correspondence between both parties has been carefully monitored and controlled by Larry Haber, who is Kay Titor's lawyer.

In 2001, he went home

If he was real, John Titor didn't stay in our time for long. After looking around, meeting the past versions of his family, and answering every question that his online following wanted to ask him, he said adios to the early 2000s. His final post appeared on March 24, 2001. To summarize why other time travelers didn't make a point to speak to denizens of the past, Titor wrote, "Quite frankly, you all scare the Hell out of me and I'm sure other temporal drivers would feel the same."

This post, which can still be seen on Stranger Dimensions , is also a lengthy speech where Titor explains what he believes is so terrible about the humans of present-day Earth, angrily stating his belief that people in the modern era needed to do a better job taking care of each other. In the post, Titor rails against the way people ignore the sick and homeless, as well as expressing his disbelief that people so callously drive right by anyone broken down on the side of the road, never asking if that person needs help.

Finally, John left his followers with a parting line that could have been a movie quote: "Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road." After that, he sped away in his time traveling car into a temporally fleeting sunset, or whatever, presumably never to return ... right?

He came back to post a grave warning on CNN

While most people doubt that John Titor was really a time traveler, there are those who still believe, and he may even have come back a few times. The most notable example of this occurred on November 30, 2010, when a user calling himself John Titor issued a terrifying warning on CNN's iReport feature, frantically warning the United States not to get into a war with North Korea. Titor explained that the conflict would be a horrendous mistake, which would result in half of the U.S. being wiped out.

Was this the same John Titor as before? Maybe just an impostor using the name for dramatic effect? Or perhaps, was it ... a different Titor? The time traveler's friend, Pamela Moore, told Mike Sauve that our current timeline could be invaded by John Titors from various alternate timelines, all of whom might come from different post-apocalyptic futures. For a glimpse at how confusing all these overlapping timelines can get, try watching one of the later Terminator movies.

The real John Titor may have been found

Most observers believe the John Titor saga was a hoax, but no one has ever claimed the bragging rights for it. Nonetheless, interested parties have dug for answers. According to Pacific Standard , the most notable investigation was conducted by Voyager , an Italian TV series. Voyager 's professional sleuths peeked into a for-profit LLC called the John Titor Foundation, which sells self-published collections of Titor's posts. The Foundation's CEO is a man named Lawrence "Larry" Haber. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Larry Haber is the same lawyer who represents Kay Titor, the woman who claims to be John's mother.

As written by io9 , investigator Mike Lynch believes that the real John Titor is actually the lawyer's brother, a computer scientist named John Rick Haber. This guy's professional background would certainly explain why "John Titor" was so knowledgeable. According to Australian Broadcasting Corporation , Haber's son Brandon is also an IT expert who previously worked for NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Crazy stuff, but it does seem plausible that the John Titor story could've been a group effort.

As seen on Thrillist , multimedia artist Joseph Matheny claims that he was a consultant for the John Titor "project," which he says was a postmodern storytelling effort using the internet to create folklore for the new millennium. However, Matheny claims he left the project at a relatively early point, and he has no idea how Larry Haber got involved.

John Titor appeared earlier in the timeline than we thought

One aspect of the story that would go along with Joseph Matheny's explanation is that a different "John Titor" appeared in 1998, with a slightly different story of the future.

Two years before John Titor landed on the internet, someone sent two faxes to Art Bell, according to io9 . On Bell's overnight talk show  Coast to Coast AM , the host read the faxes aloud on the air. The John Titor who wrote the faxes also claimed to be from 2036 and was also on a mission to retrieve an old IBM, but there was one stark difference from the online version: this Titor claimed that worldwide devastation would occur in the year 2000, as a result of Y2K. Now, seeing as Y2K was the biggest conspiracy theory of the late '90s, it makes sense that a time traveling huckster would jump on it. However, given that it was only two years later that Titor "came back" with the Y2K business removed from his storyline, it sure looks like those Art Bell faxes could've been a "first draft" before the actual literary experiment happened in 2000. As far as disbelievers are concerned, these faxes are the smoking gun.

Pamela Moore, on the other hand, wrote to Mike Sauve with a different explanation. She think it's bizarre that "not one single person" remembered the faxes in 2001, back when Titor was posting online, and she questions why the faxes "magically just appeared in the timeline."

Is a real time traveler out there?

So, long story short: the evidence points to John Titor having been a neat experiment put together by a group of creative folks, possibly including John Rick Haber or Joseph Matheny. However, unless the key creators someday come forward, there will probably always be a lingering "what if." Whether the truth ever comes out, this whole story does pose a trippy question: what if time travel does get discovered in the future? And if so, could there be real time travelers walking among us today?

In 2014, two physicists decided to look into that very question, according to the New Republic . Teresa Wilson and Robert Nemiroff from Michigan Technological University hunted the internet for any posts between the years 2006 and 2013 which mentioned the terms "Pope Francis," or "Comet ISON." These phrases were chosen because their specificity meant it was unlikely they would have been used by chance before they became official terms. When this search proved unsuccessful, the physicists also hunted through popular Google searches, and finally put out a query, asking time travelers to identify themselves by using a 2014 hashtag in any posts before 2013. 

The results? Negative. No time travelers were found. However, the physicists pointed out that these results were hardly conclusive. So if any John Titors are really out there, leaping through spacetime and setting right what once went wrong ... well, we haven't found them yet, but maybe someday.

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John Titor: Time Traveler

On November 2, 2000, a man using the handle “TimeTravel_0” posted on an internet message board claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. He said his name was John Titor, and he wrote about the dystopian future from which he came; a time of war, famine, and destruction.

He warned that his future was also our future, suggesting we prepare by stockpiling weapons and food. He also explained how his time machine works, offering up diagrams of the device. The year is 2036. Sixteen years after a surprise nuclear strike by the Russians in 2015, the United States infrastructure has collapsed. Factions of survivors have attempted to rehabilitate the country, struggling to make their lives in a place that now resembles a modern version of the Old West. In John’s future, time travel is a reality. The technology was developed at CERN in Switzerland years earlier and is mainly used for military purposes. This led to the formation of the 177th Temporal Reconnaissance Unit, of which John eventually becomes a member.

He is assigned his first mission: travel back in time to the year 1975 to recover the world’s first portable computer; the IBM 5100. This particular model features a hidden quirk; an ability to “speak” multiple code languages, one of which was useful to those attempting to rebuild the US infrastructure in 2036. The reason John was chosen for this mission was a personal one; his grandfather was the lead engineer of the small team responsible for building the IBM 5100.

With some help from his grandfather, John completes his mission and successfully retrieves the computer. On his way back to the future, he decides to stop over in the year 2000 to visit his mother, Kay Titor, and retrieve some personal artifacts and warn his family of the wars to come. It’s in this time that John reached out via the internet and began to tell his story. For most, the fact that there was no nuclear strike by the Russians in 2015 or a second American civil war suggests that John’s story was not real. For true believers, the fact that his vision of the future did not come to pass simply suggests that John’s presence in our timeline altered our future, stopping or delaying the inevitable nuclear war. From the moment John made his first public post, an eclectic group of characters have been slowly pulled into his story, becoming part of a complex and unusual mystery that for some might seem trivial. But to those who follow the word of John Titor, these interactions are proof that time travel is real and that our future is in jeopardy. Now, 20 years after his initial posts, John Titor’s story is even more relevant. With reports of Russian interference in the American presidential election and tensions rising under Donald Trump’s White House, John’s predictions of a second civil war and a surprise nuclear strike are being reconsidered by those who follow him.

JOHN TITOR: TIME TRAVELER is a feature length documentary film exploring unbelievable story of John Titor, which to this day remains to be one of the internet’s biggest unsolved mysteries. If John was real, what does that mean for the future? Is nuclear war imminent, or can we somehow change our destiny using the information John left behind? Do the blueprints of his time machine offer any insight into the technology needed to travel through time? Pamela Moore has been awaiting John’s return. What kind of information did he share with her? What does she know about John and our future that we don’t? If John isn’t real, who authored the hoax and for what reason? Many point to Larry Haber, but his motives remain unclear. Through in-depth interviews with the real people involved, we will attempt to answer some of these questions.

Brian Robertson

John Titor & Time Travel

Hosted by George Noory

Thursday - March 20, 2008

About the show

Historian for alleged time traveler John Titor , Oliver Williams reviewed the facts of the remarkable case, and related some of Titor's past predictions to recent news stories. Titor's story has been pieced together from posts he made on Internet discussion boards beginning in November 2000 and ending in March 2001. He claims to have traveled to 1975 from the year 2036 (a period recovering from the devastation of World War III)-- to find an IBM computer that was needed to fix something in his time.

Williams believes that we could be living in an alternate reality that was changed by Titor's visit in 1975. Specifically, he did something to stop Y2K from happening, said Williams. According to the timeline Titor shared, America entered a Civil War between 2005 and 2010, then became involved in a global war which culminated in a nuclear exchange in 2015. By 2036, the population had been reduced by one third, society is more agrarian and the US capitol is in Nebraska. The country is divided up into five main areas, with states having more control.

Williams noted that the upcoming research at CERN may lead to unexpected breakthroughs in time travel-- and that Titor had posted comments connecting experiments at CERN to the development of time travel. Williams has created several podcasts related to the Titor story, which can be viewed on You Tube .

Oil & Water

There were two 1st hour guests. Richard C. Hoagland commented on recent stories about salt from dried up lakes being found on Mars, and a possible lake on Titan. Then, Jerome Corsi , co-author of Black Gold Stranglehold , discussed an untapped oil field in the U.S. There may be 500 billion barrels of oil in this field, which could be drilled using the new technology of horizontal drills, he said.

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Hosted by : George Knapp

Upcoming Shows

In the year 2000, a time traveler appeared to predict the future

This week’s entry: John Titor

What it’s about: The future! At least as it existed in the year 2000 in the mind of an internet user calling him or herself John Titor. Titor appeared on a time travel forum in 2000 and then posted throughout 2001 on a bulletin board system (a weirdly dated place to post online, for 2001). He claimed to be a soldier from 2036 who was on a mission back to 1975 but had stopped in 2000 for personal reasons. One of those reasons included making some bold and unlikely predictions about 2001’s future. We’ll see how much this modern-day Amazing Criswell got right.

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Strangest fact: Titor’s supposed mission to the past was a strange one, but perhaps its odd specificity was enough to make his story plausible to some. He claimed he was being sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 , which was needed to debug legacy programs in 2036. (The story somewhat checks out, as UNIX systems can only record dates through the year 2038 ). Supposedly, Titor’s grandfather was involved in creating the 5100, which is why he was selected for the mission, though time travel seems like an elaborate solution to what’s essentially a repeat of the Y2K bug .

Biggest controversy: Unlike many others who have claimed knowledge of the future, Titor said that he had a working time machine. He described it as a “stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities” and that the equipment was built into a 1967 Corvette, Back To The Future style. Titor claimed that the car traveled through time by creating a “standard off-set Tipler sinusoid,” referring to the work of Frank J. Tipler , a controversial physicist who has published theories on human reanimation and building a time machine. Tipler’s ideas are widely considered pseudoscience .

Thing we were happiest to learn: None of Titor’s gloom-and-doom prophecies came to pass. He predicted a second U.S. civil war, beginning with unrest surrounding the 2004 presidential election and followed by “a Waco type event every month that gets steadily worse” until erupting in large-scale violence by 2008. The war would split the country into five regional factions, rage until 2015, and then, for unspecified reasons, spill over into World War III . Like Criswell before him, he claimed the capital would move to the heartland (for Titor, Omaha, Nebraska), with Washington, D.C., being destroyed. (Although capital of what isn’t clear, with the country split five ways.) Titor also claimed the final Olympics would occur in 2004.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Titor also predicted some cool stuff that never came to pass. He claimed CERN would create miniature black holes in 2001, forming the basis for time travel. He also suggested that UFOs were in fact more advanced time machines from further into the future than he claimed to hail from. The black holes never came to pass, though the jury’s still out on UFOs.

Also noteworthy: In 2008—long after many of Titor’s predictions had failed to happen—Italian TV show Voyager looked into him. The show hired a private investigator, who found no evidence of a John Titor ever having existed. He did, however, come across the John Titor Foundation, a company set up in 2003 with a P.O. Box in Kissimmee, Florida. (Many of Titor’s stories involved Florida, and he claimed to live there in the future.) The Titor Foundation published a book that same year, John Titor: A Time Traveler’s Tale , now out of print. In 2009, the website Hoax Hunter found the CEO of the Titor Foundation, an entertainment lawyer named Larry Haber. His brother John was a computer scientist, and as Titor had very specific knowledge of the IBM 5100, it’s likely either John, or the two brothers together, created Titor and his predictions.

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: One detail Titor did get right: The IBM 5100 is actually able to emulate and debug mainframe computers, so its value to future generations isn’t entirely implausible. Surely hipsters will be moving in on this form of retrocomputing , using seemingly obsolete computers, if they haven’t already.

Further down the wormhole: Titor claimed that, because of the collapse of the federal government, the U.S. dollar would be as worthless as the Confederate dollar (though at other times he claimed U.S. currency was still in use). Confederate money thrived during the early part of the Civil War but spiraled into inflation and was retired at war’s end. But one Confederate state actually has two defunct currencies. The Texas dollar existed for six of the 10 years in which the Lone Star State was an independent nation. We’ll visit the Republic Of Texas next week. Yeehaw!

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15 Details About John Titor, A Supposedly Legitimate Time Traveler

One of the greatest time travel mysteries of the modern era is that of John Titor, a real-life time traveler who may or may not have existed. His story is one that could have only existed in the early days of the internet, before everyone could be Googled in a matter of seconds. The saga of John Titor may be the greatest hoax ever, but out of various time travel stories , Titor's contains some eerily realistic elements - so much so that it may make you question your beliefs about time travel and the multiverse. Is time travel real? People have been asking that question since before H.G. Wells published The Time Machine  in 1895, but real time travelers , if they exist, rarely make themselves known. That’s why John Titor is such a special case.

The only tangible proof that exists outside of John Titor’s message board posts are time traveler photos . If you’ve never read about the time-hopping mystery of John Titor and his '67 Corvette, this is the perfect primer to get you ready to fall down the rabbit hole. Titor’s story has twists and turns that rival any John Grisham novel, and once you learn about the man who drove through time to the Gulf Coast, you’ll want to know more about this guy who apparently just wanted to save the world.

Who Is John Titor?

In the early days of the web, an internet user calling themselves " TimeTravel_0 " began posting on the message boards of the Time Travel Institute. Over the course of multiple posts, TimeTravel_0 revealed he was a soldier from the year 2036, and he was trying to warn people about oncoming  civil and nuclear wars  that would supposedly cost millions of lives.

In 2001, TimeTravel_0 joined the forums of Art Bell and began using the name John Titor. Bell hosted a paranormal radio show called Coast to Coast AM , on which he had read several faxes reportedly sent by Titor . 

Why Did He Travel Back In Time?

According to Titor, he was sent back in time to pick up an IBM 5100 , which his grandfather had helped design. Supposedly, he needed this model - one of the first portable personal computers - to correct predicted issues with Unix in his timeline . After acquiring the computer, he stopped in the year 2000 for "personal reasons" - and to warn people about the threat of  Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (which would be spread through beef products).

How Does The IBM 5100 Play Into This?

One of the oddest parts about the John Titor story is the part played by the IBM 5100. Why would someone from the future need such an old computer? In 1975, IBM released the 5100 as one of the world’s first personal computers, and it came with one feature that set it apart from other computers of the time: It could debug and emulate code written in other programming languages, such as BASIC and APL .

According to Titor, this feature would allow people of the future to keep their technological architecture running after a Unix timeout error in 2038. He said he wanted to snag a 5100 and help debug the code that would keep the world's computers from having a meltdown. 

What Kind Of Time Machine Did He Use?

If Titor was indeed a time traveler, what did he use to jump through space? A DeLorean? A TARDIS? Wormhole technology? Not exactly. In one of his posts, Titor explained that he used a "stationary mass, temporal displacement unit... powered by two top-spin, dual-positive singularities," which created " a standard,  off-set Tipler sinusoid ."

All of that tech was supposedly crammed into a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette , though he reportedly changed vehicles a few times. Titor posted multiple photographs of a manual for the machine, which contained detailed diagrams, and he even posted pictures of the timey-wimey device itself. One man reportedly tried to patent the technology and cash in on the future discovery, which likely did not help his case during his  trial for sexual assault in 2013 .

Grandfathers, And Computers, And Paradoxes - Oh My!

Many commenters following Titor's story worried that, if he was telling the truth, talking about it so publicly would create a paradox where his future never happened. But according to Titor, that wasn't possible.

He claimed that the  Everett-Wheeler model of quantum physics , or the many-worlds theory, ensured that his travels would not create a paradox. That's because, simply by stopping and interacting with the past at all, he had created a new "worldline" - a divergence that sets his timeline on a new path, preserving the old one. This also might explain why so few of his predictions have come to pass .

Titor Warns Of World War III

In his short time on the Internet, Titor made a series of interesting predictions that have seen mixed accuracy. One of his early messages warned of a Y2K disaster that would leave the US in a state of martial law.

His most dire warning was of a second American civil war that would begin in 2004. That turned out to be untrue, but his claim about the occurrence of a "Waco type event every month" - referring to the 1993 siege in Waco, TX - was not entirely inaccurate if you add up worldwide incidents of violence. He went on to say that by 2008, the world as we knew it will have disappeared, and that the US would split into multiple sovereign nations. He also predicted a short but intense World War III .

Titor Technically Predicted The Iraq War

Titor reportedly predicted the Iraq War. The strangest thing is that he specifically mentioned weapons of mass destruction - and the deception surrounding them - before they were brought to national attention. Titor allegedly wrote : "None of the things I have said will be a surprise. They were set in motion ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?"

It's entirely possible that this prediction was nothing more than someone with the foresight to take contemporary views on foreign policy to the logical extreme, but can we truly be certain?

He Said The Olympics Were Going To Be Canceled

Titor wrote a post claiming that, due to worldwide conflict, the final Olympics would take place in 2004 . So that prediction was kind of a dud, but it's important to note that Titor was all over the place when discussing the future. This could mean he was perpetrating an elaborate hoax, but it could also mean the Olympics didn't happen in his timeline, while they continued to thrive in ours. 

He Has Some Harsh News For Modern Americans

One of the many hot takes Titor brought back from the future was how people in his time viewed Americans from the past , and it wasn't flattering. He wrote in a post from 2000:

Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that... Learn basic sanitation. Learn to shoot and clean a gun. Consider what you would bring with you if you had to leave your home in ten minutes and never return.

What's Life Like In The Future?

After Titor had begun building a bit of a following, people wanted to know what life was like in the future. Titor happily obliged, explaining that, for one, the internet was still up and running. He continued describing the world of tomorrow as follows:

Life is centered on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents. There is no large industrial complex creating masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock is grown and sold locally. People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Religion is taken seriously and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.

Was Titor Really A Time Traveler?

Obviously, the biggest question about John Titor is if he was really a time traveler, or if the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Many of Titor's claims may have been inaccurate, but some of his information was close enough that many took him seriously . But you can't just show up on the Internet claiming to be a time traveler without people being skeptical. John Hughston, a guy who runs the website Hoax Hunter, believes that  Lawrence Haber  may be behind the Titor story. 

Lawrence Haber, a lawyer from Florida, is the CEO of the John Titor Foundation. Several other connections exist, but the evidence was not entirely conclusive. Another theory is that Titor was actually Oliver Williams, creator of fan website JohnTitor.com. The world may never know the truth.

How Did Titor Get Around His Claims Not Coming True?

The biggest wrench in the gears of Titor's claims is the fact that none of them really came true. Several things he said came close to coming true, or historical events passed that shared similarities with his claims, but that's not really the same thing. Titor claimed that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics might explain this, as he created a new timeline the moment he began interacting with the past .

Another early claim of Titor's was that CERN would discover time travel , or the basis of time travel, in 2001. According to public knowledge, this didn't occur. However, CERN did discover the Higgs boson in 2012 - what if that discovery ends up being the basis for  time travel technology ? 

Some Titor Truthers Believe That A Lot Of Work Went Into The Alleged Hoax

One of the theories behind the John Titor story is that whoever posted as Titor was also posting under  88 different aliases in order to make Titor's posts more believable. Some of the posts gave positive reinforcement to Titor's story, while others were seemingly suspicious of Titor's claims. The theory states that Titor wanted to appear more credible, so he crafted specific questions he knew he could answer. 

The John Titor Foundation

If you do a cursory amount of digging into the John Titor story, you'll discover something called the John Titor Foundation, a mysterious web 1.0 site that features a collection of dates and times along with the phrase, " 177 Tempus Edax Rerum - Good Luck, John ." What's up with that? The foundation was allegedly set up by Larry Haber, a lawyer who lives in Florida. Before it was just a lonely web page, the John Titor Foundation self-published  John Titor: A Time Traveler’s Tale , a compilation of online posts allegedly made by Titor that you can still find on Amazon for over $100 a copy . 

What Does Larry Haber Have To Do With John Titor?

Aside from all the time travel, one of the most confusing things about the John Titor story is Larry Haber, the entertainment lawyer who allegedly represents Kay Titor, a woman believed to be the mother of John. Supposedly, a group of amateur private detectives managed to interview Haber. He spoke at length about Titor's mother and about a video that allegedly shows Titor leaving in his time machine. Apparently, after the interview, Haber asked for his comments to be deleted.

The main theory about Haber is that although he may not be John Titor, his brother or his son could be. His brother is a computer scientist, and his son is allegedly connected to projects with the NSA, the US Air Force, and NASA. When the amateur detectives asked Haber whether or not his son could be John Titor, he said that he wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. 

• Time Travel
• Strange True Stories

As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

WinLight News

Stories from the Dragstrip

John Tedder’s piece of HEMI class-racing history at the U.S. Nationals

With the winner of this season’s HEMI Challenge decided, we did a little digging in the Auto Imagery archives and found this awesome photo that has a little bit of a story behind it.

Chrysler executive John Tedder, shown with “Mr. MoTech” lettered on the side of his 1968 Barracuda at Indianapolis in 1981, won the NHRA National Championship in Super Stock AA Division in 1972. It was a fine warm-up for winning class with his HEMI ‘Cuda at the U.S. Nationals in both 1973 and 1974.

Here’s the tie-in: Class eliminations at Indy for this particular group of vintage Super Stockers is now known as the HEMI Challenge.

Warren, Michigan-based Tedder raced for 30 years, and the “Mr. MoTech” lettering on his racecar was a nod to his success in recruiting for MoTech Automotive Education Center. Tedder actively visited high schools in the region with his 1968 Barracuda to entice youth to pursue a future in the automotive industry, and who knows how many futures were shaped by his clever approach.

Although Mr. Tedder died in 2014, two years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he will forever be part of HEMI history and class racing at the U.S. Nationals.

This photo and more are available for purchase, in digital and print, at AutoImagery.com .

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Time Travel   John Titor

• Added by Cosmo
• Create date Dec 8, 2023
• Updated Jan 4, 2024
• Tags ibm 5100 john titor time travel

Table of contents

The appearance of timetravel_0 ​, john titor's narrative​, time-travel paradoxes, topics limited to 11 pages, parallel universe, the c204 and its operation​.

Images from John Titor

• Dec 15, 2023
• Twin Microsingularities : Positioned in two separate magnetic housing units, these microsingularities - theoretically akin to miniature black holes - were presented as the machine's power source.
• Electron Injection Manifold : This critical component was described as manipulating the mass and gravity of the microsingularities, a process essential for time navigation.
• Gravity Sensors or Variable Gravity Lock : These features were likely included to stabilize the machine, ensuring precise targeting and operational safety during time travel.
• Cooling and X-ray Venting System : To manage the intense energy and heat generated by the device, a cooling system was deemed necessary, along with an X-ray venting system for high-energy emission control.
• Four Primary Cesium Clocks : Employing cesium clocks, known for their exceptional timekeeping accuracy, implies a focus on maintaining precise temporal measurements, crucial in time travel.
• Three Main Computer Units : These units presumably served as the control center, orchestrating the machine’s functions, calculating time trajectories, and monitoring various operational parameters.

John Titor's Dark Future​

Pamela ​, the social impact of titor's story​, conclusion​.

Celebration, FL, USA

Latest questions

• Dec 31, 2023

What do you think the "secret song" was? John Titor and Pamela agreed on the name of a song as means to verify identify later in the future, I have fun imagining it's something ridiculous like The Monster Mash, but I'm curious what you think it'd be. Not looking for serious answers (unless you actually know), just having fun.

• The Mashiahc John shrooms
• Jan 9, 2024

You will one day see who John titors grandfather is and will be again.. John titor has Solomon’s key to resurrection

• Jan 25, 2024

"Hacking to the Gate" came into mind, its the intro to an anime that revolves a lot of his plot around John Titor.

• Jan 30, 2024

I often thought that "Time is on my Side" might be the song.

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