Sightings - The Man From Nowhere: Japan, 1954

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

When a mysterious traveler arrives in Tokyo with a passport from a country that doesn’t exist, immigration officials are left scrambling for answers. But before they can unravel the mystery, the man...—and his entire reality—vanishes into thin air. Thanks RAYCON for sponsoring this episode. Looking for killer earbuds? Check out ⁠buyraycon.com/sightings ⁠to get 20% off sitewide! Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Maps define our world, separating one nation from another with invisible lines. But what happens when you encounter a traveler from somewhere that doesn't exist? When his map differs from yours, and reality itself seems to bend around him. The greatest mysteries can be found not in the vast unknown, but in who's right here, standing directly in front of you. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each week we bring you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed
Starting point is 00:00:44 by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McLeod. – And I'm Brian. And before we dive into today's episode, we've got a little bit of housekeeping. – Oh, thank goodness. The floors in here are getting dirty. I'll go grab my broom. – Well, first of all, we want to thank everyone who's been listening to each new episode of Sightings and let you know we are so appreciative for you joining us every single week as we dive into the unknown.
Starting point is 00:01:11 We want to keep growing though, even more. So do us a favor. If you're listening right now, pick up your phone. We know you're listening on your phone. Open up a text message and share this episode with a couple friends. And leave us a review wherever you want to. But especially on Apple would be nice. Leave us a review on Apple. That'd be helpful.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Because you can tell us what you love about the show. And, you know, sometimes we take it to heart. We've made adjustments based on what people have to tell us. Oh, absolutely. And we're going to start sharing some of our favorite reviews in future episodes. Oh, we are! We are! That's how I'm looking forward to that.
Starting point is 00:01:44 Oh, also a reminder that are! That's what I'm looking forward to, that. It's going to be fun. Oh, also a reminder that if you don't already, follow us on Instagram, at SightingsPod, because we post cool pictures and images related to each week's stories. You can kind of dig a little deeper on each one. And it's just a great way to join the conversation, share your best skeptical gecko or believer beaver theories or ambivalent Aardvark. Have we done that one yet? Nope, that's a new one.
Starting point is 00:02:07 We'll just add him to the stable. Add to our stable of animals and their belief systems. Well, speaking of Skeptical Gecko and Believer Beaver though, we've actually gotten some fan art. What? No. Yes, and it is absolutely incredible. We're going to be putting it up on Instagram in the next few days.
Starting point is 00:02:22 So again, go find us on Instagram at Sightings Pod. You gotta see the amazing Believer Beaver and Skeptical Gecko that we have. And maybe now we'll finally have some Skeptical Gecko hats and t-shirts coming on the horizon? Maybe. Brian, can we do branded blankets? Oh, that would be really a good idea.
Starting point is 00:02:41 Right? Why is this show all about blankets? I don't know. But listeners, you know, we want to get some merch going online. Just tell your friends about us, though. Keep your eye on the show, and we're going to reach the point where we're able to do that very soon, I think.
Starting point is 00:02:53 Woo! Excitement! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! OK. So that should do it for housekeeping. So now we have to shift gears, McLeod, though. We've got to get you back in the voice.
Starting point is 00:03:06 The voice? To introduce this week's giant mystery of a story. Okay. I didn't realize I was doing a voice. What do you mean? We're voice. Today's episode takes you to the fringes of reality where one man encounters another
Starting point is 00:03:19 who may not be from our universe at all. Find out what happens on this episode of Sightings. Hey, listeners, we're back from Theme Music and we don't want to be interrupting the early parts of our stories with any ads. So we're going to do one real quick right now. It's actually a good place to do it because we want to remind you that you should be listening to sightings episodes with headphones. That's right. I actually just listened to one of our episodes on a pair of Raycon earbuds.
Starting point is 00:04:06 That's right, the ones that I got you. I've never sounded so beautiful. That's right. Raycons everyday earbuds are great. And I got them from my mom. If you remember the last time we talked about Raycon, we got them for her. She loves them.
Starting point is 00:04:21 I have a pair, I love them. McCloud has a pair, he loves them. And now you know what's coming up? Father's Day. That's right, dad. It's a really good thing to get for your dad. Fathers, padres, papas. So this Father's Day treat your dad
Starting point is 00:04:35 to a pair of everyday earbuds by Raycon. Cause he deserves to relax, recharge, enjoy his favorite music, enjoy sightings, enjoy McCloud's incredible voice. What I also love about my Raycons, aside from how beautiful I sound to myself, is the awareness mode, just because I've got the kiddos and I don't like being closed off from them.
Starting point is 00:04:53 And they allow me to hear what's going on around me while I'm listening to myself. So go to buyraycon.com slash sightings to get 15% off site-wide. That's right. Raycon is offering up to 15% off site-wide. That's right. Raycon is offering up to 15% off site-wide when you go to buyraycon.com.com. Buyraycon.com.
Starting point is 00:05:14 And now, on to the story. My name is Hiroshi Tanaka. The date is July 7th, 1954, and I'm recording this account because I am frankly not certain that the official report will capture everything that happened. Because some things, I've learned, are simply too strange for government documents. Regardless, I should state for the record that I am making this recording against protocol. If my superiors found it, I would likely face disciplinary actions. But I must document while details are
Starting point is 00:05:57 fresh. And I must convince myself I haven't gone mad. I must convince myself I haven't gone mad. I've worked as an immigration officer at Tokyo Haneda Airport for 15 years. 15 years of passports, visas, and repeat questions. Purpose of visit, duration of stay. Early afternoon, JAL 378 arrived from Paris. Passengers were mostly Japanese nationals, but there were a decent number of European businessmen and a few American military personnel. Everything was just standard procedure.
Starting point is 00:06:32 Check documents, stamp passports, and send them on their way. Nothing unusual. Then he approached my counter. He was European, perhaps late 30s, and impeccably dressed in a tailored suit despite the heat. He carried a leather briefcase that looked expensive, and his demeanor was confident, like someone who had done this many times before. When he approached my counter, he greeted me in perfect Japanese. This wasn't uncommon for businessmen who frequently traveled here, but his accent was unusual. Not French, as I initially thought, but something I couldn't quite place. I asked for his passport and he handed it over
Starting point is 00:07:16 without hesitation, and that... that is when things began to get strange. The passport looked authentic in every way. The paper quality, the printing, the photography, all of it, perfect, normal. It had numerous stamps from countries all over the world, including several previous entries to Japan. But there was one problem. The country of issue was TORide. Though I've been doing this for many years, I must admit I'd never heard of such a place. So at first I assumed it was some new nation that had perhaps gained independence recently, or maybe a small principality
Starting point is 00:07:59 I wasn't familiar with. So I asked the man where T Toured was located. He looked at me like I was playing some kind of joke, and told me it was between France and Spain, of course. I thought perhaps I'd misheard him or he misspoke, so I called over my superior, Matsuda-san, and he confirmed what I suspected. There was no country called Toured. We asked the man to join us in a small interview room and he seemed more amused than concerned as if we were making some obvious mistake. We asked for additional information which he provided without hesitation, a driver's license and business cards all from a place called Tide. He also carried Japanese yen, French franc, and another currency, bills that looked professionally printed but which bore
Starting point is 00:08:52 the insignia of the National Bank of Tauride. By this point the man began growing agitated, so he brought out a world map and asked him to point to his country, and with absolute certainty he pointed to an area between France and Spain, the place where Andorra should be. He said that this spot was Torit, and had been so for more than a thousand years. Matsutasan politely informed him that the country in that location was Andorra, and the man said that was absurd. He showed us his passport, his Japanese stamps, and said he'd traveled here from Torid no
Starting point is 00:09:32 less than three times this year alone. But despite my seeing the stamps with my own eyes, it was impossible. How could a man have multiple entry stamps for a country that doesn't exist? Matsuura-san decided we needed to check his story further, and the man reluctantly provided details of his visit. But when we called the Tokyo-based company he claimed to have meetings with, they had no record of him. The hotel where he had a reservation had no booking under his name.
Starting point is 00:09:59 Yet the man produced confirmation documents for both, documents which, like his passport, appeared completely authentic. As we shared our findings with the man, he insisted we were playing some elaborate prank on him and demanded to speak with his country's embassy to clear up this quote, ridiculous misunderstanding. But of course, there is no torrid embassy in Japan, or anywhere else for that matter. By this point it was approaching evening, and we couldn't keep him in that small interview room indefinitely. So after consulting with security and immigration officials, the decision was made to house
Starting point is 00:10:37 him in a room at the airport hotel overnight while investigations continued. I volunteered to take the first shift guarding his room as I was keen to observe the man further and perhaps get him to reveal the truth about his identity. And if I'm being honest, it was also because I was fascinated. He was a man with immaculate documentation for a country that doesn't exist. It was either the most elaborate forgery I'd ever seen
Starting point is 00:11:02 or the most unexplainable event of my life. The man was given a room on the sixth floor. There were no balconies, just a window that overlooked a sheer drop to the concrete below. As I showed the man his room, he seemed to resign himself to his situation, asking only for a meal and some privacy. When I delivered his food to him, he reiterated his story with absolute conviction. As he did, I caught a glimpse of a newspaper on his desk, but not one I recognized. The text was in a language that looked like a
Starting point is 00:11:36 mix of French and Spanish, but wasn't quite either. And though the date was yesterday's date, the headlines described global events I've never heard of. And a photo of a supposed American president, Fallon, who is very much not the American president, was featured on the front page. The man must have noticed I was staring at the paper and asked what was wrong. I didn't want to frighten him by denying facts in the newspaper that was sitting right in front of me, so I instead tried to keep things light. I asked him about his previous trips to Japan and what he enjoyed about the country.
Starting point is 00:12:09 He described the airport's new east wing, which was the most advanced he'd ever seen anywhere in the world. It was a shame, he said, that he hadn't flown into it this time. Except, I thought, there is no east wing at this airport. Plans were drawn up, yes, but were scrapped last year due to budget constraints. But every detail he mentioned exactly matched the plans I'd seen. Thinking he was confused or deliberately trying to mislead us, I quietly excused myself. But as I turned to go, he called out, and as I turned back he stared at me, pleading silently for all of this to be over. Later I stood outside his door in silence. I wondered what all of it meant. Was he a spy? A con man? But then what would be the purpose of
Starting point is 00:13:00 inventing an entire country? And how did he create such convincing documentation? The passports, the itineraries, the newspaper? I was pondering all of this when Sato, my colleague, stopped by to ask if I wanted coffee. I did, so he left to grab a cup. And that's when I heard a strange electrical humming coming from the torrid man's room. I knocked, but there was no answer. The sound was getting louder, and I noted an odd light flickering under the door. Not a normal electric light, but a greenish-blue glow that pulsed in time with the hum.
Starting point is 00:13:38 I used my key to enter, and I found the room completely empty. The man was gone. His briefcase was gone. The man was gone. His briefcase was gone. His luggage was gone. It was impossible. The window was still locked from the inside, and there was no other exit. Even if the man had somehow gone out that window, it was six floors straight down to solid concrete.
Starting point is 00:14:01 Sato returned with my coffee and immediately dropped it when he realized the man was gone. Because again, it was impossible. I was questioned extensively about what happened, and my superiors think I'm either incompetent or complicit in his escape. But I know what I saw, or rather what I didn't see. There was no way out of that room. So where did he go? The mystery weighs on me.
Starting point is 00:14:32 And I fear it will ultimately be my undoing. The airport director is furious. The government has been notified. It's all becoming a diplomatic incident. Though with which country, I can't tell you. That is why I suspect little of what I've said here will appear in the official report. And when I arrive for my shift this afternoon, I'm not sure I will still have a job. But I will get to the bottom of this. That I know.
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Starting point is 00:16:09 Assertive. Remember eye contact. But also, remember to blink. Smile. But not too much. That's weird. What if you aren't any good at your job? What if they demote you instead?
Starting point is 00:16:20 Okay. Don't be silly. You're smart. You're driven. You're gonna be late if you keep talking to the mirror. This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks. It's never just coffee. Today is July 16th, just over a week since the incident with the man from Torrid.
Starting point is 00:16:42 And I'm making this recording because I fear I might not have much time left. As I expected, I was suspended from my position at Haneda Airport. Administrative leave, they called it. But we know what that means. I was told to stay at home, forget what I saw, and most importantly, to stop asking questions. But how could I? How could anyone? A man doesn't simply vanish from a locked room on the sixth floor of a hotel, taking all his belongings with him without being seen. And an unknown country called Torrid doesn't simply appear on forged documents of remarkable quality like I saw that day. So I began investigating on my own.
Starting point is 00:17:20 My first step was to return to the airport, not as an employee, but as a civilian. I still had friends there, including Sato, who brought me coffee that night. We met at a small cafe near the terminal, and though he smiled when he saw me, I noticed he was constantly looking over his shoulder during our conversation. He said very little had been put into the official reports, and that the entire incident was being handled by someone much higher up than us. But there was one thing he thought I should know. Apparently the airport's electrical systems experienced unusual surges on that day, particularly around the time the man from Torrid disappeared. I asked if there was any record of these anomalies, and Sato
Starting point is 00:17:59 slid a folded paper across the table. It was a memo reporting impossible power surges at precisely 1038 p.m., the exact moment I heard that strange humming from the man's room. This wasn't coincidence. It was evidence. My next lead came from a rather unexpected source. Three days after my suspension, I received a phone call from an elderly man who identified himself only as Professor Yamamoto. He refused to say how he got my phone number, but he knew about the Torrid Man and insisted we meet immediately. I agreed, of course. What choice did I have? When I arrived at his apartment, I found a frail man with thick glasses
Starting point is 00:18:42 and hands that trembled as he poured tea. Then out of nowhere he told me I wasn't the first. A frail man with thick glasses and hands that trembled as he poured tea. And out of nowhere he told me I wasn't the first. Unsure of what he meant, I asked for elaboration and he proceeded to tell me about his research into what he called temporal spatial anomalies. For decades, he claimed, there had been reports of people appearing in Japan who seemed to come from places that didn't exist. Usually they were detained briefly, then deported or simply disappeared back to wherever they came from.
Starting point is 00:19:10 In 1932, he told me, a woman arrived in Kyoto claiming to be from a country called Luan, which was apparently located in what we know as Mongolia. Her documentation was perfect, but her country did not exist. She was detained for three days before disappearing from a locked room. Of course, this account was never made public, but the professor had collected dozens of such anomalies dating back to the Meiji era. Some were mere rumors, but others were documented by police reports that were quickly suppressed. All, he said, followed the same pattern.
Starting point is 00:19:47 Visitors from non-existent places, confused by their reception, then vanished without explanation. What I experienced, he concluded, was not a hoax or a security breach. It was a tear in the fabric between worlds. I nearly dropped my tea. This sounded like something from a science fiction novel. But the professor was serious and explained his theory of parallel universes, worlds that developed along different historical paths but occasionally intersected with our own. He told me to think of reality as pages in a book. Normally each page is separate, but sometimes the pages stick together.
Starting point is 00:20:28 And in that brief moment, someone can slip from one page to another. So for these travelers, these countries do exist in their world. Torrid is real there, in the place we have Endora. To the man from Torrid, it was I who made no sense, denying the existence of his homeland. As I left the professor's apartment, he pressed a small device into my hand. It looked like a compass, but instead of pointing north, its needle quivered erratically. He said that it measured electromagnetic fluctuations, and that if I experienced anything unusual, I should watch the needle. It just might save my life," he said. I wasn't sure of what to make of all
Starting point is 00:21:10 of it, but I took the device anyway. And I'm grateful I did, because just two days later I revisited the room the man from Torrid had stayed in. It had been occupied by other guests since then, of course, but I managed to convince the cleaning staff to let me in during a changeover period. The room looked exactly as I remembered, but as I stood by the window the device in my pocket began to vibrate, and then I felt it. A static charge in the air. I heard that same electrical hum I'd heard that night the man disappeared. The lights flickered, and for just a moment, so brief, I might have imagined it.
Starting point is 00:21:46 The room changed around me. The furniture shifted position. The color of the walls darkened. Then as quickly as it came, the phenomenon passed. The needle on the device settled, and soon it was as if nothing had happened at all. But I know what I saw. This morning I received another call from Professor Yamamoto. His voice was urgent, frightened.
Starting point is 00:22:11 He said he'd been measuring unprecedented electromagnetic activity across Tokyo. Something is coming, he warned. Something big. I went to the professor's apartment as soon as I could, but found the door unlocked and the place empty. Physically empty, with all his research, furniture, everything gone. As I stared in at the blank space, a man approached. He said he was the building manager and asked if I was interested in the apartment. When I mentioned Professor Yamamoto, he insisted that no one by that name had ever lived there. In fact, no one had lived there for more than six months.
Starting point is 00:22:50 That was two hours ago. I came home to record this immediately, since I'm starting to question my own sanity. Am I just imagining things? Or is reality itself becoming unstable around me? The device the professor gave me hasn't stopped vibrating since I left his apartment. The needle spins constantly, and as I'm sitting here now, I've noticed the lights flicker every few seconds for the last minute or so. And perhaps it's just a trick of the eye, but my walls seem to be shifting somehow, becoming transparent in places, showing glimpses of another room that isn't mine. And that hum, that same hum, you hear it, right? I think I understand what happened to the Toread man.
Starting point is 00:23:37 He didn't escape from that hotel room. He simply went home. The door between worlds opened again and he stepped through, possibly without even realizing what was happening. And now, I think that same door is opening for me. There's a newspaper on my table that wasn't there a moment ago with headlines of events I've never heard of. So if this is still recording, this is Hiroshi Tanaka. This is July 16th, 1954. And I'm here.
Starting point is 00:24:12 Sightings will be back just after this. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public mobile, different is calling. Why do Fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network,
Starting point is 00:24:51 Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash Welcome back to Sightings. And boy, was that a departure for us. That seems to be our first multiverse story. That was neither ghouls nor monsters nor aliens. That was some sci-fi stuff. Yeah. That's, that's new sci-fi stuff. Yeah. That's new territory for us. And I got to say, I'm excited to dive in.
Starting point is 00:25:29 Yeah, I thought it still fit kind of the sightings mole because it was still an encounter that someone had that was weird and unexplainable. And not everything has to be monsters and aliens. I'm glad you thought so because I'm excited to explore that. I think, you know, we're a big tent. Absolutely. And it probably helps that I I think we're a big tent. Absolutely. It probably helps that I personally love multiverse stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:49 I mean, certainly reputable scientists have theorized it's possible. Yeah. I do think in keeping with our show, the notion that you could slip out of yours is a pretty terrifying notion. So this guy, I mean, can you imagine how frightened he must have ended up being? Just like the kind of pit of your stomach dropping, like the world isn't right. Well, once you realize the world isn't right,
Starting point is 00:26:20 it's almost like a game of candid camera. I remember, this is a tangent a little bit, but when I did a movie called They Look Like People and played a character struggling with his conception of reality, as we got deep into the process, I had this dream where, you know how dream reality shifts and changes, and you just find yourself in a new place or whatever?
Starting point is 00:26:42 It was as if within this dream, people around me started holding me accountable for all the shifts and changes. Oh, wow. I started going up to people in the dream and being like, hey, I'm sorry. I'm not sure if this is real. Within the dream, the foundation of my understanding of what was
Starting point is 00:27:02 happening was completely crumbling. Anyway, that's the closest I can get to like imagining what it must have felt like for this gentleman. What was his name? Did we have a name? No, no name. No name. Where was the country? It was between France and Spain, theoretically in a place where Andorra sits right now.
Starting point is 00:27:24 Now, it's okay if you don't know where Andorra is. I had never heard of this country. I have to admit, I don't. It's the 179th largest country, so it's tiny. Okay. There's only 87,000 people who live there, but it's a tiny place. So, in our story, in our version of the man from Torrid,
Starting point is 00:27:40 there's, like, flashing lights and, like, just he's gone, and there's a newspaper. And it's almost as if like a wormhole. It feels kind of fantastical. Is that your spin or is this aspects of the account of what's known about the story? It's a little bit of a hybrid. The known account is kind of the first half of the story where immigration officers at Tokyo Haneda Airport in 1954 encounter this man who claims he's from Torrid. He has all of these documents,
Starting point is 00:28:11 business cards, appointments, and claims to work from a company that doesn't actually exist in our reality. He has hotel reservations that don't exist in our reality. He has meetings with a company who has no idea who he is, that kind of thing. They do take him up and put him in a hotel room on the sixth floor, and he vanishes in the middle of the night. So that is kind of the foundation that I had to work from with this.
Starting point is 00:28:38 But of course, on top of that, I laid on a little bit more of the fantastical sci-fi, like the humming and the lights and- But the core details are in accordance with the story, pretty much. Yes, absolutely. But I had to give that to all the lens of the character you read, Hiroshi, who was a made-up person because we don't know who any of the immigration officers because there's no written report of this thing. I assume there's no pictures.
Starting point is 00:29:04 I guess also it was the 50s, right? So cameras were not like you didn't just pop them out of your pocket. Yeah, there's no security cameras, for instance. So if there's no documentation, what's the provenance? Is this kind of like an urban legend that just kind of has been talked about? Or is there a person who has gone on the record and talked about it? It's a little bit urban legend-y, but I think it's interesting that there's a lot of angles to talk about here because this isn't the only instance of this kind of thing happening.
Starting point is 00:29:30 Really? Yeah. The first one that I could find was in 1851. There was a man in Germany who showed up in this town and claimed he was from a country called Luxeria, which is not a place. Luxeria. I don't know what ended up happening to him, but that happened in 1851. In 1905, there was a thief in Paris who was caught by police. He says he was from a country called Lisbia. Now the police think he might mean Lisbon, which is Lisboa in Portuguese, but the
Starting point is 00:30:00 man doesn't know a lick of Portuguese, clearly is not from Portugal. So where is he from then? Even very recently, in 2008, there's this woman named Lorena Garcia, who woke up in the morning in her house and realized that nothing in her bedroom was right, like different sheets, she's wearing different clothes. None of it made sense to her. She went to work, none of her coworkers knew who she was. Her job was different than it actually was,
Starting point is 00:30:25 even though she worked at the same place. When she went home, she found that her partner was in fact the boyfriend she dumped six months ago who had no knowledge of that. It seems like she slipped into our universe somehow, where everything is different than what she knew from her universe, and she's been stuck here ever since. But like, but close.
Starting point is 00:30:47 And that's, I think, the thing about these slips is that the man from Torrid showed up here, if he was real, and claimed he was from this country that was named Torrid, but in our world, that country is Andorra. But it is a country. It just has a different name to him that doesn't exist in our world. So in my mind, maybe like a thousand years ago, Torred became my regional power or something like that, still has the same boundaries,
Starting point is 00:31:11 relative boundaries, so kind of diverged in a different way. Right. And that's where he came from, theoretically. I should say no one can trace the origin of the story though. Okay. The original written reference appears to have been a book called The Directory of Possibilities, published in 1981. It only has one line that references this.
Starting point is 00:31:34 So wow. I didn't read the book, but it seems to possibly be about multiverse type stuff because this is the one line that shows up in relation to this. And the line is, quote, and in 1954, a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Torid. That said, in 1960, there was a newspaper article that tells the story of a man named John Zegress.
Starting point is 00:31:59 He showed up in Japan, apparently, with a passport issued in this city called Tamanrasset, which was the capital of this country that sounds vaguely similar to Torit. I don't remember if they spelled it Torit or not in the article. Okay. But in this case, the country was south of the Sahara. Oh. And ultimately, he was deemed a fraud.
Starting point is 00:32:17 Deemed? Yeah. Ultimately, this man was convicted of forgery or fraud or something and spent a year in Japan in jail. Huh. For forging, I guess, a passport. Yes. So that very well could be the origin of this if it wasn't actually there was a man who
Starting point is 00:32:39 appeared from this country, vanished into the night kind of thing. So since then, the story's kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit. Apparently, it's kind of fodder on Japanese conspiracy and urban legend websites. I wonder what about it gives it the staying power? What about like that?
Starting point is 00:32:57 Like how do people use the story, I guess? Like the context in which people reach for it. If we're gonna put on the skeptical gecko hat, maybe someone saw this article and they're like, oh, we had this man who forged a passport, claimed to be from this country that looks like Torrid basically. Wouldn't it be cool if Torrid was actually a real country, you know, in his mind? And like it kind of, and someone just kind of did a what if.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Yeah. And the story kind of just took on a life of its own from there. And you know, as the story iterated, maybe being passed around on message boards or something like that, it became a story of an interdimensional traveler who stumbled into our universe. Yeah. So I think that's one theory, is that this is just kind of an urban legend that took on a life of its own.
Starting point is 00:33:40 My skeptical gecko version of things is just, the world is rife with confusion and misinterpretation. And so it's not beyond belief for me that like, one, somebody could be kind of trying to be cheeky, trying to do something clever and kind of play around with people, forge a passport and just kind of see what happens. Or there was a genuine miscommunication of some sort and that then just got kind of a game of telephone expanded and misunderstood. Interestingly, in relation to like this game of telephone or like just
Starting point is 00:34:20 this story kind of evolving and where its provenance might have been, be it fraud or elsewhere, considering the times that this story seems to evolving and where its provenance might have been, be it fraud or elsewhere. Considering the times that this story seems to be rooted in like 1954 Japan, it was just after World War II came to an end. Japan was ravaged, you know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:34 It was stripped of its empire. Yeah. There was a lot of uncertainty about the future. I wonder if that atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion kind of could have bled over into this legend. But I guess when, now that you bring up the kind of like historical context or like the time period, I can't exactly draw a perfect thread to like the why or the motive, but it makes it more conceivable to me that somebody would enter into a somewhat like broken chaotic country
Starting point is 00:35:03 and and try to pull a fast one of some kind. Yeah. So I guess to kind of sum this up in a weird way, as believer beaver as I conceptually am to the idea of a multiverse situation, because there's not enough hard evidence here to back this up, you know, if there was something real about the man from TOR, like anything about him disappearing or about any of the elements of him actually being from a different country and not just faking it. Since there's nothing there, I kind of have to fall on kind of the skeptical gecko on this one. Yeah. I mean, like the believer beaver case is cool. And you know what, where I honestly end up falling?
Starting point is 00:35:47 I think we all know what the Believer Beaver case is. I don't have to elaborate. It's just that this kind of happened and that it's possible. And I would love to actually hear from listeners who understand the physics of this stuff, to just kind of like, I don't know, try and educate us on like string theory and multiple dimensionality and all that fun stuff because it's hard to wrap one's head around. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:12 Where I genuinely fall, I can't say without a doubt this didn't happen because there is some scientific basis for it. So I'd say I'm a skeptical agnostic about it. But I think the thing that resonated with me with what you just said, at the very beginning of what you just said there was, it's cool. And this multiverse stuff, it's a cool concept and a really cool story. Which is why I think that that might be
Starting point is 00:36:39 the simple reason that this took hold and evolved over time, just because people are like, this is awesome. Wouldn't this be neat if this happened? And I think that's why I wanted to do it on the show because it's just such an interesting and compelling story. Oh, yeah. And like the idea, the notion of like splintering realities
Starting point is 00:36:55 and like how often, like I'd say multiple times a day, most of us ask ourselves, what would my life be like if I had done this? Absolutely. What would have been different if I had done that? You're driving to work and you realize kind of, oh, I kind of wasn't paying attention. And then you're like, what would have happened if I had crashed my car? Just take your pick of, I think we're constantly wondering about possibilities of ourselves. And that's what's fascinating to me is that maybe there is not a universe but a multiverse
Starting point is 00:37:26 in which all of those things exist where you did crash your car in one, you didn't in another. Yeah. Yeah. So I think really cool ideas, really cool conversation, listeners, we'd love to hear what you think about this one because it's pretty wild. Or if you want to school us on physics, please do. You know, you can find us on Instagram at SightingsPod or hit us up on Spotify in their comments. We read those.
Starting point is 00:37:50 Or leave us a review on Apple. We check that too. Please leave us a review on Apple as well. We would love that. Okay. So, Brian, what dimension are we slipping into next week? We are slipping into a pretty trippy one. I'll give you that.
Starting point is 00:38:02 We are going to be on a lake in Russia and it is going to be an absolute trip. That's all I can really say without giving it away. A lake in Russia. Yeah. Okay. Ice skating. It's gonna be ice skating ghosts. Ice skating ghosts.
Starting point is 00:38:16 You guessed it. How did you do that? Woo! Man, I'm good. You know, it's just all these episodes. I'm really like honing my guesswork. All right, well, listeners, we look forward to seeing you same time next week right here on Sightings.
Starting point is 00:38:30 See you then. Sightings is hosted by McLeod, Anders and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer and McLeod, Anders. Written by Brian Sigley. Music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernas. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to
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