So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Paul Amadeus Dienach

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

In the spring of 1922, a man named Paul Amadeus Dienach fell into a coma. He eventually woke up — in the year 3906, in another man's body.  

How many of us have wished we could have a superpower? Like, say, time travel. And I know what you're thinking. It sounds impossible, right? People don't just jump backwards or forwards in time. Unless they're Paul Amadeus Dienach. In 1921, Paul fell into a mysterious coma. And the whole time he was unconscious he lived an alternate

life in another man's body. But it wasn't just any man. Paul says it was someone who lived almost 2,000 years into the future. It sounds wild but we might have to take Paul's word for it because when he came out of his coma, he was able to predict events that wouldn't happen for nearly a century. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're talking about a man named Paul Amadeus Dinach. Just before his death, Paul wrote about his experience being in a coma in 1922. He claimed he traveled to the future where he lived for a year in another man's body. And to this day, we can't explain how Paul could have known about the future world

events and technology that he described. We'll explore the mystery coming up. Stay with us. Our story begins in 1917 in Zurich, Switzerland. Paul is a Swiss teacher and academic enthusiast. In his 20s, he pursued humanitarian studies, cultural history, and something called classical philology, which is basically the study of ancient Greek and Latin written language. But now Paul's 31 years old and he teaches mostly history. And as far as we know, he's fairly healthy. But then one day out of nowhere, Paul just falls asleep. Presumably, it's in the middle of a normal everyday activity because his family and friends try to rouse him but Paul doesn't wake up. This freaks everyone out so they take him to the hospital. The doctors say Paul has slipped into a coma but they can't find anything physically

wrong with him and Paul stays like this for 15 days until finally he wakes up. It's snowing outside and the second Paul opens his eyes, his mother falls onto the floor. She is sobbing with relief. Paul's a little disoriented when he wakes up, but other than that, he seems fine. Doctors still can't figure out what caused the two-week coma, but after a few months, Paul seems to be back to normal. Everyone hopes it's just a weird one-time incident. But four years later, in May of 1921, it happens again. Paul falls asleep and once more his friends and family can't wake him. Only this time, it lasts longer than a few weeks.

A month passes and still nothing. At this point, things are looking even more dire than before. The doctors have to put Paul on a feeding tube to keep him alive. Meanwhile, his aging mother and his other friends and family continue to visit him. All they can do is pray Paul will spontaneously wake up. But another month goes by, and people start to give up hope. His mother even dies during this time, presumably of natural causes. Still, it's got to be just the worst way to go, knowing that your son is in a mysterious coma.

Even if he does wake up, you didn't even get to say goodbye. Finally, Paul does wake up. In May of 1922, one year after he fell asleep, he opens his eyes. Paul's completely awake, and aside from his muscles not being used in a while, he is fully functioning. But again, doctors have no idea what was wrong with him or if it will happen again. Worst of all, someone has to tell him about his mother's passing, which breaks his heart. And maybe it's this grief that's weighing on Paul because from the moment he wakes up, he's acting cagey, as in he won't say anything about what he experienced during the coma, which, you know, makes sense if there was nothing to talk about. But from the way Paul's refusing to answer his friend's questions, it seems like maybe something did happen while he was unconscious and that, whatever it is,

he literally doesn't want anyone to know. And Paul's strange behavior doesn't end there, because as the months go by, he basically becomes a recluse. He won't see or talk to any friends or family. But from what they can tell, Paul seems to be preoccupied with getting his affairs in order. He cleans out his deceased mother's house, takes care of his inheritance issues, and sells some land. Other than that, he keeps himself so busy with manual labor, it's as if he's purposefully preoccupying himself. And he prefers to spend his evenings alone, reading philosophy books. And to be fair, Paul is a teacher and he was probably a big reader before, but he seems

more invested than ever in his studies, specifically anything having to do with philosophy. And he's spending a lot of time talking to his priest, which is a pretty new development. Apparently, sometime before Paul's second coma, he told his priest that he was suspicious of religion and had been actually questioning his faith. But now, Paul says he no longer has those thoughts. Instead, he makes these vague, sweeping statements like, If only you knew all the great things there are. And you cannot even imagine what is actually out there. It's almost as if Paul's implying that the priest doesn't know as much as he does about

religion or the afterlife. But when the priest tries to ask Paul more about it, he refuses to elaborate. It's definitely strange, but it's possible that everything, Paul's behavior, his interest in philosophy, his conversations with the priest, is just his way of coping with his mother's death and his own mortality, which makes a lot of sense because Paul isn't exactly healthy. In the months after his coma, he comes down with tuberculosis. When his lungs don't clear up by October of 1922, Paul's physicians decide he needs a changing climate. So they encourage him to move somewhere more temperate. Paul isn't exactly seeing friends and his mother has passed, so he's like, why not? He picks up his life and moves to Athens, Greece, where he gets a position teaching French and German to adult students.

At first, it seems like just the thing he's been needing. Paul enjoys long hours out in the sunlight, and in the evenings, he wanders the bustling streets and admires the local culture. But Paul's not totally back to being himself, because some of his students find their new teacher to be a bit strange. Now, to be fair, Paul doesn't exactly speak great Greek, so the language barrier is already a little awkward. But it's more than that. Like, one afternoon, a student finds Paul sitting across from the Parthenon, which is this massive ancient temple in the middle of Athens. Paul is staring intently through the barrier bars at one of the large rocks. The student probably figures this is a good chance to just, like, make small talk.

So he sits down next to Paul and remarks how strange it is that someone 2,000 years ago could have been looking at this exact same rock. And like this is a pretty normal thought that most of us might have, right? But Paul basically responds, yes, that's true. But also that same rock will be here in 2,000 more years. So if you stare at it long enough, it's almost like you're living in the future. Also, that same rock will be here in 2,000 more years. So if you stare at it long enough, it's almost like you're living in the future. This totally catches the student off guard. Like, he was just making a basic observation, but Paul's response was so serious that this guy has no idea what to say.

Meanwhile, Paul seems to be concentrating on something. And sure enough, after a few moments, Paul adds that there won't be any bars around it in the future. He says that people will do away with them. Which is just even more of a weird thing to say. Like how could Paul be so confident about something so specific? And the student doesn't really have a choice other than to chalk it up to Paul's eccentricity. In any case, there is one person who manages to get close to Paul while he's in Athens. It's another one of Paul's students, a guy named George Papahadzis. Paul seems to respect and trust George, and the two become somewhat close.

But Paul still never breathes a word to George or anyone about whatever he experienced during his second coma. Unfortunately, by April of 1923, about six months after moving to Athens, Paul is coughing more and more. His tuberculosis has only gotten worse. At this point, it seems inevitable that Paul will die within a year or so, so he cuts back on teaching. The last year of Paul's life is kind of a gray area, but we know that one of the last interactions he had was with his landlady. One day, she knocks on Paul's door and he answers. But instead of his calm, level-headed self, Paul greets her almost manically. He gives her a massive hug and tells her he's completely overjoyed. He says he can finally write everything down, but he doesn't explain what he's referring to.

He just seems really excited and almost, almost like relieved about something. In any case, the next time we hear about Paul is when he dies sometime in the spring of 1924. But it's unclear whether he passes in Athens or if he dies in Italy on his way back home to Switzerland. His name doesn't come up again for another 50 years until 1972, when Paul's old friend George publishes a book. It's a translation of Paul's diary entries, and it contains the story of what really happened to Paul

during his second coma. Turns out, he wasn't just lying there unconscious like his doctors and loved ones believed. Paul was actually busy living in the future. Coming up, Paul pays a visit to 3906 CE. Now back to our story. Just before he passed away, Paul gave his friend and student George a set of notebooks. Paul tells George they are for him to practice translating from German to Greek. But when George starts looking through them, he realizes these aren't just any notebooks. They're Paul's diaries. The first few entries are from 1918, the year after Paul's first coma. In them, Paul spells out his love for this woman named Anna. It turns out that he's been madly in love with Anna since childhood,

but she ultimately married another man and died soon after. So apparently, Paul was carrying this heartbreak with him throughout his life, which is really sad. And it could explain why he became so withdrawn towards the end. But it's not just unrequited love that's weighing on Paul, because the later diary entries are way more strange. They start in 1922, the year Paul woke up from his second coma and moved to Athens, and they mostly concern this big weight he feels in his chest. Paul doesn't specify what exactly is weighing on him, but as his illness gets worse, he begins to contemplate the nature of his death,

and his writings seem to get more and more hairy until finally Paul decides it's time to write down what happened to him during his second coma, the one that left him acting so strange. And bear with me because this story is about to get wild. Apparently, on what Paul considers the first day of his coma, he wakes up in a strange room. He doesn't recognize it, but he knows he's inside a hospital. He says he's in a lot of pain, although he doesn't specify where, and his thoughts are a little fuzzy. His vision is also hazy, but Paul writes down that everything around him seems unbelievable, as in he literally doesn't know how to describe what he's seeing, except that the view outside his window seems like some kind of beautiful countryside.

Twelve days pass in the hospital, and his pain mostly vanishes. Paul's able to walk around a little, and when he looks in the mirror, his head is wrapped in a bunch of bandages. So presumably, he can't really see his face. And Paul's still feeling a little bit hazy, so he doesn't think too much of it. A few days later, the nurses finally remove the bandages from his head. Paul gets up to go look in the mirror again. He's probably expecting his face to be a little, you know, bruised or swollen in places. But when he sees his reflection, Paul is stunned because the person staring back isn't him. It's a young man, as in Paul is in someone else's body, which, okay, that definitely sounds like something from a coma dream, but to Paul, it's so real that he loses it.

He doesn't give any details exactly, but apparently he panics so much that the hospital won't even allow nurses into the room. And for the next few days, Paul is attended to only by two specific physicians. But when he tries to communicate with the doctors, he can't understand them. Now, remember, Paul is literally a language instructor, so it's got to be really freaky that he has no idea even what dialect they're speaking. He can tell it has an Anglo-Saxon root, and he recognizes some Scandinavian words, but otherwise he has never heard this language before, which only weirds Paul out even more. A few days pass and eventually Paul calms down.

He's even allowed to go on a walk around the hospital. And he still has a hard time understanding what he's seeing or how to describe it because everything looks extraordinary. Like there's this place Paul calls the drawing room, which seems to be like a waiting room. He says it's strangely large and everything in it, the tables, chairs, stools, and picture frames seem like they're made of crystal. They're reflecting these beautiful pastel shades, almost like a kaleidoscope. So at this point, Paul's probably wondering if he's died and gone to heaven. But as he continues walking, he hears the doctors and nurses whispering. With the language barrier, he can't make out what they're saying, except that they keep uttering a stranger's

name, Andreas Northman. Then suddenly, it hits Paul. Andreas Northman is the man whose body he's in. And slowly, Paul begins to put the pieces together. He learns that Andreas went to the hospital after a harrowing accident, and Andreas actually died, but the doctors were able to revive his body by somehow freezing his brain. Except Paul knows that Andreas hasn't actually come back to life. Instead, it's like some sort of wire has been crossed between Andreas's body and Paul's consciousness. Which, granted, that sounds impossible, but Paul must realize how bananas that sounds because he decides not to tell anyone that he's not Andreas Northman. Meanwhile, Paul is hit with a whole other surprise. At some point, Paul asks what year it is, and he finds out it's not even 1921, the year he fell into his coma. It's 3906 CE. Paul is stunned.

3906 CE? That is almost 2,000 years in the future. There's just no rational explanation for how he could have fallen asleep and woken up here. And maybe it's the shock that's getting to him because the entire time after Paul wakes up, he can't sleep. Now, sometimes his consciousness dozes off, kind of like a deep daydream, and Paul finds himself thinking about his mother or his deceased love, Anna, but physically he can't fall asleep. Apparently, this isn't normal, even by futuristic standards, because the hospital staff start to pay attention. And when the doctors can't figure out why Paul's not sleeping, they send in a couple visitors. Paul describes them as two elderly men dressed in fine white clothing.

At first, he thinks they have to be maybe priests or kings. But he later learns that they're actually called electors. And they're the spiritual leaders of this futuristic society. Maybe it's their demeanor, or maybe it's Paul's own sensitivity to spiritual topics, but something about them stirs Paul. He's suddenly overcome with emotion. He completely falls to their knees and confesses everything. That he's actually from the year 1921 and how he woke up in another man's body but has no idea why. The two men seem to understand what Paul is saying, but they're

still shocked. They aren't able to help him other than to reassure him that human cognition and time are just an illusion, which doesn't really make sense to Paul. But he takes it as further evidence that he's living in some highly evolved future and not the afterlife. Like he must have fallen through some sort of time travel portal. It's definitely a lot for Paul to process, but as his first month passes, he's getting excited. Like Paul wants to learn everything he can about the future. One of the electors starts teaching him their language, and he even gives Paul a strange device that can narrate books and bring pictures to life,

which sounds a lot like a TV or an iPad, but to Paul, it's completely foreign and futuristic. Paul's particularly curious about what's happened in world history between 1921 and 3906 CE, except the elector warns him that he shouldn't focus too much on historical facts. Instead, he should pay attention to the bigger picture. He tells Paul that time and human creatures are only subjective impressions and that there is a more true and objective reality. He calls this ultimate reality Samad. Paul doesn't really understand anything about the Samad. He's more concerned about what will happen to him now that he's living in the future. And so far, the only four people who know

the truth about Paul are the two electors and Paul's two main physicians. Paul pleads with one of the electors not to tell anyone else about his body swap. He's worried about becoming a scientific study or a freak show. And the elector responds that something called the Valley of the Roses will be the final decider of whether or not Paul's secret is shared with the world. But he doesn't explain what this place is or when Paul might be able to visit. And things get even more complicated when Paul receives a new visitor. Andreas Northman's best friend, Stefan. Stefan can tell pretty quickly that Paul is not the same person as Andreas. For one, Paul's handwriting is different.

And some way or another, Stefan just intuitively figures out that there is someone else in his friend's body. But ultimately, Stefan seems okay with it. Because when Paul is finally discharged from the hospital, Stefan happily takes him under his wing to show him around the future. Now, I know this whole thing sounds out of this world, like we've got body swap, we've got time travel, all in the same story. But it gets even more fanciful when Paul leaves the hospital. He finds out that he lives in this beautiful, majestic countryside in Scandinavia. And neither he nor Stefan nor any of their friends seem to have jobs. Instead, they spend most of

their time on one never-ending holiday. Over the next few months, they all take long walks and talk about philosophy. They go on boat rides, they sing, they attend dance performances, and they even go on vacation to Italy together. So Paul assumes that Stefan's social circle is just a bunch of upper-class heirs. Like, I mean, how does this whole group of people just not have to do any work? But Stefan explains that it's because of what is called two-year service. Basically, everyone graduates school at 17,

and then they spend ages 17 to 19 in a city, working at whatever job is given to them. And in that time, everybody makes enough money to live out the rest of their lives. Stefan even takes Paul to see one of these cities. It's a place in the north called Norfor, which, you guessed it, is not a real place on any map today. In Norfor, Paul sees flying vehicles, floating observational towers, and lakeshores lined with synthetic marble. And all this sounds like your run-of-the-mill sci-fi film, but keep

in mind this is Paul. He's from the early 1920s. Talking pictures haven't even been invented yet, but some of what he describes is actually stuff we have today. Like Paul talks about things like 3D movie theaters and jumbotrons, so it's definitely wild for him to be learning about these things. Paul is fascinated. And when he tries to figure out how the world evolved to this level, Stefan explains that there was once a mass nuclear war some 1600 years before in 2309 CE. He says the war destroyed much of the world's population. But from there, a universal commonwealth emerged and people took on a more unified mentality. This led to a period of technological and economic expansion, but now society values spiritual progress more than material. Now based on what we know about Paul's

interest in things like philosophy and religion, this all seems like it could be pretty up his alley, which makes sense if this is just a wild coma dream. Either way, Paul loves his new life. But as the first year in the future comes to a close, it's time for him to make an important journey. It's time for him to go to the Valley of the Roses. Up next, Paul has a full-blown spiritual awakening. Now back to the story. So remember when the electors visited Paul in the hospital? He asked them not to tell anyone that he was actually living in another man's body. And they vaguely replied that he would eventually go to this place that could help him.

They called it the Valley of the Roses. Paul still doesn't know anything about it, but to get there, he and his new friend Stefan take some sort of flying boat down Europe's main artificial river towards the Mediterranean. As they get closer, Paul senses some sort of excitement in the air, and he's about to find out why. As it turns out, the Valley of the Roses is a city in the Mediterranean that's full of lush gardens,

rivers, and rose bushes. The temples and monuments are covered in fabulous gemstones, and the light is so beautiful it practically sparkles. Like, this place sounds a lot like heaven. Paul discovers that it's home to the world's spiritual elite, which is basically a class of people who have devoted themselves to studying things like philosophy and science. And more than that, they have an evolved ability to get in touch with the Samid, which, if you remember, is sort of this greater objective reality. Paul loves this place. He spends the next days or weeks learning about the great thinkers of the past, and since he still can't sleep, he spends his nights just staring at the beautiful lights in the city. But the longer he stays in the Valley of the Roses,

the more something inside of him changes. Paul starts thinking more and more of his old love, Anna. At first, it's just a trickle of thoughts. But then a full flood of memories and emotions and nostalgia hits him. It's as if it's been a few days, not years, since he last saw her. Eventually, Paul asks Stefan how it's possible for him to feel so much for Anna while he's in another man's body and in another millennium. Stefan responds, it's because of the summit. And that's when Paul realizes his love for Anna still exists because it's transcendental.

It exists beyond his body, beyond place, and even beyond time. Anna is his summit. This realization washes over Paul and suddenly he feels drowsy. His eyelids get heavy and he begins to nod. Then, for the first time in a year, he falls asleep. When Paul wakes up, it's 1922, one year since he slipped into a coma. He's inside his own body, lying in a hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. Paul can hardly make sense of what just happened to him, but he's convinced it's all real, and he's pretty sure people won't believe him, so he says nothing. It's not until closer to his death, one year later,

that Paul writes the whole thing down from vivid memory. And when he dies, his friend and student George is the first person to read Paul's story. Over the years, George puts Paul's diaries into the hands of various secret societies like the Freemasons. Maybe he hopes they'll be able to make sense of what it all means. And the Masons, at least, seem to take it seriously because they try to keep the diaries under wraps. Allegedly, they're worried about the knowledge of the future falling into the wrong hands. So when George finally decides to publish Paul's story for the general public, it's 1972, almost 50 years since Paul died. Now, George is from Greece, and at the time, the Greek

Orthodox Church is a huge political presence. They immediately condemned the book as heresy, and when the Greek dictatorship crumbles the following year in 1973, the first edition basically goes extinct. It's six more years until George publishes it again in 1979. This time, he titles the book The Valley of the Roses. Then a few years later, George dies, probably of old age, and any real interest in Paul dies with him. In fact, the story might have been lost entirely if not for a Greek writer and TV producer named Achilles Syrigos. In 2015, Achilles finds an old copy of George's book and translates it to English. The whole thing makes for a wild read. A guy who goes into a coma and comes back with vivid memories from the future? It's the stuff of a utopian

sci-fi. But as far as real life examples go, Paul's not actually that unique. Because as it turns out, he's not the only person who's come back from a coma with new stories to tell. In 2012, a 29-year-old man named Alpha Kabija gets into a bike accident in London. He's taken to a nearby university hospital where he spends a few weeks in a medically induced coma. And when Alpha wakes up, he knows who he is and who his loved ones are. He can even remember the accident. But he's also accumulated a few new memories. Like Alpha remembers going to see his girlfriend, who was pregnant with twins.

He recalls putting the ultrasound picture in his notebook and then remembers that they've picked out two names, Skye and Nikita. Alpha also recalls having a job interview at MI6, which is Britain's secret intelligence service, and he remembers owning a small private plane. Except when Alpha wakes up, his girlfriend isn't pregnant, not then, not ever. He never interviewed with MI6, and he doesn't own a private plane. But Alpha is convinced that everything he remembers actually took place, which actually isn't too unheard of. Humans tend to think our memory works like a video camera recording real moments as they happen but this isn't entirely true.

In fact, we are really good at adding in things that never happen stuff we either imagined or dreamed about. In Alpha's case, he thought all these things had taken place in the present. But with Paul Amadeus Dienach, he was convinced he had lived through the future, which is actually something that scientists today are studying. They call it chronesthesia, or mental time travel. It's basically where someone imagines something that happened to them in the future, but it's coded into their memory as a present moment. Now, this is like way on the

fringes of science, and we really don't know how it works exactly, but it could explain why Paul was so convinced he wasn't dreaming. His memories felt so real. He was convinced he had actually lived them. But it was probably just his imagination playing tricks on him. This makes sense when we think of the future Paul experienced. A lot of the futuristic philosophy in particular seems similar to Eastern religions, which Paul probably went into his coma already knowing a lot about. In fact, the Hindu religion believes in something called the Samadhi, which sounds a lot like the word Samad in Paul's dreams.

There are even Hindu spiritual elites called Brahmin who are said to access the Samadhi. So all of this, the Hindu Samadhi, called Brahmin who are said to access the Samadhi. So all of this, the Hindu Samadhi, the Brahmin, it could all be the basis for the Valley of the Roses and the spiritually in-tuned people who lived there. Like maybe Paul's imagination was pulling all these references together in his psyche to form this realistic seeming place in the future. Which sounds like a logical explanation, until you remember that Paul's diary gives us a breakdown of history leading up to the 40th century, and a lot of what he predicts is scarily close to our present situation. So according to Paul, the 21st century would be shaped by agricultural and environmental problems, the rise of individualism, a collapse of human rights, and the existential threat of nuclear weapons.

The list goes on and on, but his predictions are eerily accurate. Like, these are clearly things we are dealing with 100 years later, and they were all predicted by a man from the early 1920s. It's hard to believe Paul could have just come up with this stuff on his own. In 1922, World War II hadn't even happened yet, which kick-started the scientific and technological revolution. The Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. program that invented the first nuclear weapon, wouldn't begin for almost 20 more years. Like, Paul wouldn't have even known what nuclear weapons were, let alone that they would become a primary threat to civilization. There's just no rational explanation for how

Paul could have known about these things. But in the end, it's just too big of a coincidence to dismiss. Like, who knows what we're capable of doing and seeing when our bodies are asleep or in a coma? Maybe our consciousness really can travel to the future and inhabit another person's body. Just whether or not that's actually possible, we just might have to wait until 3906 CE to find out. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.