Time travel is a fascinating if somewhat mind-boggling concept that has captured our collective consciousness for centuries. The idea of being able to visit the past or the future, to witness historical events or to see what lies ahead, is both intriguing and thrilling. But is it possible?
Logic dictates no. Surely if it is someone would have met a time traveler by now, our world should in theory be filled with time travelers from the future. And yet strange stories persist, which seem to have no other explanation.
Well, one of the most mysterious and controversial cases of alleged time travel is that of Rudolph Fentz, a man who supposedly vanished from the 19th century and reappeared in the 20th century, without aging a day. His story has become a popular urban legend, but did it really happen?
Sadly, like so many popular conspiracy theories it unravels the more you pull at it.
The Man, the Legend
As the legend goes, in mid-June of 1951, at around 11 pm a strange man was found cluelessly wandering New York’s Times Square. The young man, said to look around 29 years of age, was wearing outdated clothing and had seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Confused passersby watched as the seemingly disorientated man stumbled around the busy square, apparently lost. When worried onlookers approached him, he claimed to have come from the year 1876.
The authorities were called, but before help could arrive the strange man was tragically already dead. Oblivious to the dangers of motorcars, he had stepped out into the street and right in front of a speeding taxicab.
He passed away at the scene and his body was taken to the nearest morgue. When officials began searching his belongings things only got more confusing.
So why is the internet convinced that this man, Rudolph Fentz, was a time traveler? Well, it wasn’t just the fact that he appeared out of nowhere or his old-fashioned clothes that made Fentz weird. What the examiners found in his pockets was also really strange.
Upon searching his body the officials at the morgue found a copper token for a beer that was worth 5 cents. No one recognized the name of the bar on the token, and it couldn’t be found in any of the city’s address books. Alongside this token was about 70 dollars in old banknotes that hadn’t been in circulation for decades. Weird.
Stranger still, they found a bill for the care of a horse and the washing of a carriage. Much like the token, the name of the livery stable on the bill didn’t appear in any address book. Also, weird.
The only helpful items were business cards featuring the name Rudolph Fentz and a Fifth Avenue address on them as well as a letter to Fentz that had been sent to the address, dated 1876. None of the items the man, apparently Fentz, carried showed any signs of age, despite being apparently almost 80 years old.
The case was handed over to Captain Hubert V. Rihm who worked for the Missing Persons department of the NYPD. He first traced the address to a business on Fifth Avenue. He came up short however when the owner stated he had no idea who Rudolph Fentz was.
When Rihm checked, there was no Rudolph Fentz in the phone book and his fingerprints weren’t on file anywhere. He could also find no active missing person’s report on a man matching his description. The one thing he did find, however, was an entry for Rudolph Fentz Jr. in an old phonebook from 1939.
Rihm used the listed address to try and track down Fentz Jr. Some of the residents at the building remembered him, describing him as a man in his 60s who had worked nearby. Unfortunately, they also told Rihm that he had moved away in 1940 and no one seemed to remember where he’d gone.
The determined detective didn’t give up. He found the man’s bank and learned that while Fentz Jr. had died five years previously his wife was alive and living in Florida. She provided the detective with two interesting but deeply disturbing tidbits.
Firstly, her husband’s father had been called Rudolph Fentz and he had disappeared when he was 29 years old. Secondly, he disappeared while taking an evening walk. His last known location? Times Square.
Sure enough, when Rihm checked the missing person files for 1876 Fentz was there. Descriptions of his appearance, age, and clothing all matched the man laid in the morgue. Rather than risk being seen as a laughing stock, Rihm closed the case, marking it unresolved. It was all too strange for his liking.
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Fentz’s story seems to have entered the public realm around 1972 but really blew up during the internet age. People became convinced that Fentz was a time traveler. His demeanor, clothes, and the objects he carried all pointed to it. The prevailing theory was that he had somehow slipped through a wormhole or portal and ended up in the 20th century.
Yes, But…
Of course, not everyone is convinced that Fentz was a time traveler, and there are a lot of reasons to agree with them. For a long time, the most reasonable theory was that Fentz was a hoax.
Maybe he was a fabrication created by someone who wanted to fool the public or to make money. Perhaps he was an actor hired by a journalist, prankster, or writer who wanted to create a sensational story but had an unfortunate accident in the process.
Or maybe Fentz was just some poor lost soul. Someone who suffered from a dissociative identity disorder or a delusional disorder and had adopted Fentz’s identity.
It was also pointed out on message boards that Fentz’s name, address, and occupation were not uncommon in the 19th century, it could be a coincidence that a man called Fentz went missing around the time the “time traveler” seemed to hail from. His clothes and belongings could have been obtained from a costume shop or an antique store. Sure, what the man was carrying was certainly strange, but time travel is a bit of a leap.
All plausible theories, but we now know they’re all wrong. In 2000 a folklore researcher, Chris Aubreck, began investigating the story after it appeared in a Spanish magazine, portrayed as a factual report (which went viral online). He discovered that the story had originally appeared in the 1972 May/June issue of the Journal of Borderland Research, again as a factual report.
Some digging found that the magazine had gotten the Fentz story from a 1953 book, A Voice from the Gallery by Ralph M. Holland. The following year he published his findings and was amazed when Pastor George Murphy reached out to correct him.
It turned out Holland had plagiarized the story from either a 1952 Robert Heinlein science fiction anthology, Tomorrow, the Stars, or a short story published in Collier’s magazine. Either way, the result was the same.
Rudolph Fentz wasn’t an urban legend or a real-life time traveler. He was a character in a short story, “I’m Scared” created by famous science fiction writer Jack Finney. A story narrated by Captain Hubert V as he investigates a strange time traveler called Rudolph Fentz. This urban legend can be considered well and truly debunked.
Top Image: This image, the internet believes, is of Rudolph Fentz. But all is not as it appears to be. Source: Family Fentz / Public Domain.
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