25 Claims Of Time Travel That Some Believe Are True

In New York City in 1951, a man wearing 19th century clothing was hit by a car. It was then discovered that he had gone missing in 1876. (The items in his pocket seemed to corroborate this.) Most scholars, however, agree that the story is an urban legend.

In one of his books, Father François Brune claimed that fellow priest and scientist Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti developed a machine that allowed him to see through time. Its existence (never mind its functionality) has never been confirmed.

On March 27, 1938, an Italian scientist by the name of Ettore Majorana disappeared on a boat between Palermo and Naples. His disappearance made waves around the world, but no trace was found. Then in 1955, a photo of a man taken in Argentina surfaced that looked exactly like him. Analysis even showed 10 points of similarity between their faces. Given that he looked exactly the same, some people hypothesized that he had built a time machine.

This photo of “Nicolas Cage from the past” looks uncannily like the actor. Though we don’t know who the gentleman in the photo is, the photo is reported to be a genuine carte de visite from c.1870. It was being sold on eBay for $1 million.

In 1911, two English academics and authors published a book called “An Adventure” under the names “Elizabeth Morison” and “Frances Lamont.” They claimed to have traveled back in time as well as having seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette during a visit to the Palace of Versailles. Their claims caused quite a bit of controversy and ridicule.

Håkan Nordkvist, a Swedish man, uploaded a video to youtube of himself meeting his future self in the year 2042. Apparently he had been transported there while fixing his sink. The story, however, was reportedly a marketing campaign for an insurance company.

The Philadelphia Experiment is a name given to US Navy experiments carried out during World War II. According to the story, the Navy was trying to make the USS Eldridge invisible to detection. During the experiment, the ship allegedly jumped back in time for 10 seconds. The story, however, has been widely regarded as a hoax.

A Swiss man claiming to have contact with aliens, Billy also claims that he was abducted, travelled back in time, and photographed the dinosaurs. His images, however, have been largely discredited.

In 2003, the Iranian news agency Fars claimed that a 27-year-old scientist had developed a time machine allowing people to see into the future. A few days later, the story was replaced with a new story quoting government officials that no such device had been registered.

Andrew was allegedly arrested in January 2003 for SEC violations when he made 126 high risk stock trades and was successful on all of them. He started with $800 and ended with $350 million. Later reports suggest that he claimed to be from 200 years into the future and knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding. While it caused quite a stir on Yahoo! News, the piece had apparently first appeared as a work of fiction in Weekly World News (a satirical site devoted to creating fictitious stories), and was later picked up by various magazines and newspapers.

That is the name of the painting that Apple CEO Tim Cooke was admiring at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam while he was there for Startup Fest. Painted by Pieter de Hooch in 1670, the letter in the painting bears an eerie resemblance to the Apple iPhone. Tim is quoted as saying, “I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore.”

In 2010, film maker George Clarke uploaded a video clip from the set of a Charlie Chaplin film. In it, a woman walks by seemingly talking on a cell phone…in 1928! Most skeptics agree, however, that the device was most likely a hearing aid.

In the 1948 film, actor Henry Fonda is riding in a stagecoach when he pulls out what looks like an iPhone to get directions. Although the scene has caused quite a stir lately, people have pointed out that it was most likely just a notebook with the directions written down.

An eccentric individual, he calls himself VonHelton and has shown photographs of himself throughout history to prove that he’s a time traveler. It’s worth noting, however, that he also claimed to be a vampire and applied to NASA for the position of “space marine.”

In a painting from the 1800’s some people have noted that a person is holding what appears to be a box of CD’s while another person is taking one of them from the top.

This refers to a series of experiments carried out at Montauk Air Force Station on Long Island where the military allegedly experimented with time travel. Critics, however, allege that this story grew out of the Philadelphia Experiment legend.

During the 1995 boxing match, a person is seen in the background holding up what looks like a smartphone while recording the match. The photo has been highly debated with some critics arguing that it’s simply a digital camera from the 90’s.

In a crowd of workers leaving a DuPont factory in Massachusetts in 1938, you can see one woman who seems to be talking on a cell phone. According to a woman claiming to be her grandchild, the lady in the photograph was testing out a new wireless telephone developed by company scientists.

Between 2000 and 2001, a user who self identified as John Titor appeared on an online bulletin board claiming to be from 2036 on a military mission. He said that the US would be destroyed by a civil war in 2008 and then the world would undergo a nuclear war in 2015. He eventually disappeared as his predictions failed to occur.

In the video, a teacher can be seen gesturing to a chalkboard with the words “With,” “No,” “Warning,” as well as “Game 2 Giants 9 Rangers 0.” Some people are quick to point out that this was indeed the score of game 2 of the 2010 World Series between the Giants and the Rangers.

In 2004, Basiago, an American lawyer, claimed to have been part of DARPA time travel experiments in the 70’s. Allegedly, they had sent him back to the Civil War, as well as Mars. Eventually, several others came forward, including a man named William Stillings. He too claimed to be part of the experiments and went on to claim that the US government had sent over 100,000 people to a secret Mars base but only 7,000 survived.

In the early 2000’s, a man named Tim Jones sent out emails asking for a “dimension warp generator.” Eventually “Tim” was exposed to be known spammer Robert J. Todino. In an interesting twist, Robert genuinely believed he could travel through time. The events were recalled in the song “Rewind” by jazz trio Groovelily.

Dubbed “the time traveling hipster,” the man in this photo of a 1941 British Columbia bridge opening ceremony seems wildly out of place with his camera, sunglasses, and printed shirt. However, as bizarre as the image may seem, the items the man was wearing were readily available in 1941.

You remember that photo of Nicolas Cage and that gentleman from 1870? Well, Nicolas Cage is not the only one with a time traveling claim. Enter John Travolta. Similar to the photo of Mr. Cage, John Travolta’s 1860 look-alike’s photo gives the impression that John Travolta is a time traveler. (Are you hiding something from us John?) Not surprisingly, the photo was put up for sale on eBay, though this seller was only asking $50,000.

According to the theory of relativity, moving really fast would slow time down for you. This means that if you set off into space going near the speed of light and eventually found your way back to Earth, you would land potentially hundreds of years into the future. Unfortunately, while the laws of physics allow for such “forward time travel,” they don’t allow for “backwards time travel.” Given this fact, we may never know whether some mad scientist took off at the speed of light sometime in the past and ended up returning to Earth thousands of years into the future. If he or she did, the scientist wouldn’t be able to send any message backwards through time to confirm their safe landing.

Note: “looking” backwards through time is possible. Every time you look at a star you are seeing light from millions of years ago.