The Mystery Of Time Travel

Written by Lauren Ko

Do you believe in time travel? Well, if you don’t, maybe this story will convince you. In 1998, two faxes were sent to Art Bell, an American author and broadcaster who believed in the paranormal. The faxes claimed to be from 2036, and the author describes how time travel was invented in 2034 and the logistics behind it. It also talks about how new timelines are created and how you can alter history. The author also makes several predictions. How Y2K will be a disaster, how a communal government will be established, that China will retake Taiwan, that Israel will win a large battle, that Russia will be covered in nuclear snow, and also that the Russians will save the USA. They claim to be writing the fax since a nuclear weapon was used, and that it had somehow disrupted the timeline. There were only two faxes sent to Art Bell, and the fax address wasn’t heard from again until 2000. 

(“Time Travel Painting -Elizabeth Kenney)

In 2000, a user by the name of TimeTravel_0 appeared in a forum on the Time Travel Institute. On the forum, he chatted with others about how he’s a time traveller and how time travel works. He explained to them how his time machine worked and the six main components of it. He also claimed to be a soldier from 2036. He lived in Florida and said that he went back in time to retrieve the IBM 5100, which was one of the first portable computers. He claimed that he was sent back in time to debug it, since it was somehow affecting computers in 2036. He said that he was assigned this mission since his grandfather was part of the coding of IBM. Now, most people conclude that this was all just a hoax. Most of his predictions never came true and he also missed many things that happened in the 21st century. But the person behind the time traveller has never been revealed. The John Titor time travel mystery is considered one of the internet’s unsolved mysteries. 

Bibliography:

• “John Titor”, Wikipedia, Last Edited December 6th 2025. Accessed December 11th 2025.

• “Full text of ‘The Complete John Titor posts’”, Internet Archive. Accessed December 11th 2025.