Of course, this is an urban legend. How they could fit all that information into a 4-line, 1-col story is a mystery. Anyway, I wonder if perhaps the story is based on the thread of an actual, if misunderstood, event. Does anyone know where or how this story originated?
I’ve checked the usual sources, but they all lead back to a cesspool of UFO/paranormal/paranoia sites. There’s no mention on Snopes. There are some real life stories of sudden reappearance but they usually involve husbands returning to wives they had abandoned years before.
I read about this story in one of Brad Steiger’s books called: “Strange Disappearences.” He did not give the name of this man, Rudolf Fenz. But he said that the police paperwork on this case rests somewhere in the records room of the police precinct assigned to 42nd Street…In my sci-fi novel, “TIME TRIP ON A MOEBIUS STRIP,” I mention this story, along with 16 other famous peoples’ disappearances…and a few other famous cases…One case in particular was the disappearance of the First Fourth Norfolk Regiment of British soldiers during the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. They disappeared into a cloud which had landed on a hill. The cloud then lifted up to join 5 other clouds traveling against the wind…All this was witnessed by other soldiers of a New Zealand division positioned on a ridge overlooking the terrain. After the war, the Turks, when the British government inquired of these lost soldiers, replied they had neither captured that regiment, made contact with it, nor even knew it existed.
Another famous case was the experience of Air Marshall Sir Victor Goddard, who became lost flying over Scotland during a heavy storm. He claimed to have seen an abandoned airfield whose location he knew. But instead of it being deserted, as it was at the time, it was busy with mechanics working on yellow painted planes. It was four years later that this field was re-opened as a Royal Air Force flying school. The thing that proves Air Marshall Goddard had flown into the future was the color of the planes. It wasn’t until 1938 that all the training planes were painted yellow. They had all been silver in color before then…
This case reminds of of the two woman walking in the French Palace Gardens during heavy a
magnetic storm in the 1930’s…They said they saw Marie Antoinette walking there and people dressed in 17th century clothes, which also reminded me of the case of a woman resting on a sofa six feet off of the ground inside of a Con Edison power plant over one of its generators…This all ties into “The Unified Field Theory,” or what happens in the Bermuda Triangle whenever the moon is directly overhead…Ivan T. Sanderson, in one of his books, “Invisible Residents,” explains his theory of the Bermuda Triangle which he believes in one of 12 such areas around the earth positioned exactly 72 degrees apart with 2 more at the poles…
Anyway, I wonder if perhaps the story is based on the thread of an actual, if misunderstood, event. Does anyone know where or how this story originated?