One of the most intriguing stories of a stranger from a strange land is the Mystery of the man from Taured. The story goes that in 1954, a man arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo after disembarking from a plane originating in Europe.
Upon arriving at the customs checkpoint the man presents a passport indicating he is from Taured. The only problem is that officials recognize that no such land exists. The man is insistent that he is from a nation over 1,000 years old situated on the border between Spain and France.
Popular tellings of the story differ with various sources at this point. Some indicate that the man is confused by Andorra and insists that this is not his homeland while the majority have the man identifying the space as Taured though he appears confused that it is being called “Andorra” and claims to have never heard of such a place.
When immigration officials take him to a hotel under guard they are shocked the next morning to find he has disappeared with no discernible means of escape. Complicating matters further is that his confiscated passport is also gone as is virtually every bit of evidence that he ever passed through Tokyo.
The story of the Taured man is a spooky favorite. The idea of a waylaid traveler finding himself in a strange land, seemingly of another world, was constantly used as fodder for mystery and horror stories throughout the last century.
The story itself could easily have been a plot for an episode of ( which, incidentally, would have aired less than five years after the Taured man stepped off that plane at Haneda ).
The Taured Man
There are a few possibilities as to what happened to the Taured man ( ordered from least to most likely ):
1. He Was a Time Traveler – Perhaps the name “Taured” was unknown to the people of 1954, as it is unknown to the people of the present year, because the land formerly known as Andorra is to be known as Taured many years in the future.
For this to be the case, a few assumptions would need to be made. First, the boundaries of Andorra and Taured would need to be nearly identical despite a thousand (or more) years difference between their existence. Very few nations have geographic boundaries that have remained completely unchanged for …
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