John Titor: The Online Urban Legend of a Time Traveler from the Year 2036

It happened after watching Somewhere In Time around 2004. I jumped on the Internet to see if I could find any cases of people claiming to have traveled through time. What I found was the John Titor rabbit hole, the story of an alleged traveler from 2036 on a mission not to change the timeline, but to save a troubled future.

In 1998, late night paranormal talk show host Art Bell received two faxes from an individual claiming to have info on the nature of time travel. In the first fax, the sender (at that time, unnamed) detailed the discovery of time travel in the year 2034. He also claimed that a “brick wall” existed in the timeline, and that no traveler could breach the year 2564.

The second fax, while less detailed, promised photographic evidence, as well as scans of the traveler’s time machine operations manual. On November 2, 2000, an individual using the forum username TimeTravel_0 posted at the Time Travel Institute (TTI), in a thread titled Time-travel Paradoxes! “Wow!” he wrote, “Paul is right on the money. I was just about to give up hope on anyone knowing who Tipler or Kerr was on this worldline. By the way, #2 is the correct answer and the basics for time travel start at CERN in about a year and end in 2034 with the first ‘time machine’ built by GE. Too bad we can’t post pictures or I’d show it to you.”

On January 27, 2001, this same user appeared on Art Bell’s Post to Post BBS, creating a new thread titled I am from 2036. “Greetings,” he wrote there, “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.”

Read: The IBM 5100 and John Titor’s Mission from the Future

The individual posting as John Titor went on to answer questions, detail the function and design of his time machine, and provide alleged photographs of the time machine and its operations manual.

Read: Details on John Titor’s alleged time machine

On March 24, 2001 John Titor shared his final message. “I will be leaving this worldline shortly and this will be my final post,” he wrote. True to his word, he never posted again.

To this day, no one knows John Titor’s true identity. His true name, his appearance, his location. All of it remains a mystery. If he was an actual time traveler, as he claimed, that version of John Titor no longer exists on this worldline. If he was a hoax, an individual playing a character, that person has yet to officially come forward to reveal the truth with evidence. This combo has made John Titor a lasting online urban legend.

Current John Titor Content:

John Titor Predictions – A (constantly dated) look at some of Titor’s more infamous quotes and comments about the potential future of our worldline.

What Is Alter-Vu? – Entry on a curious phenomenon related to John Titor, in which many of the individuals who interacted with him claimed to experience strange dreams and alleged alterations to their reality.

The Cyberworld Connection – Over the years, some have noted a connection between John Titor’s story and the fictional world of GURPs Cyberworld, particularly his description of life and conflicts in the future. Is it possible that the real John Titor had simply based part of his time travel tale on a popular roleplaying game?

The Secret Song – John Titor allegedly told Time Travel Institute forum user Pamela the title of a song, which he would use to identify himself if he ever visited this worldline (or one close enough to it) again.

Using Kerr Black Holes As Time Machines – A quick musing on the feasability of using rotating black holes similar to Titor’s description as a means of traveling through time.

The John Titor Departure Video – A quick word on an alleged recording Titor made of his return trip.

Titor as an unreliable narrator – An old slightly stuffy article I wrote about John Titor’s nature as the unreliable narrator of a time travel story.