thumb|right|250px|Titor's purported military insignia

John Titor and TimeTravel_0 are pseudonyms used in communications and on Internet forums between 1998 and 2001 by an individual claiming to be an American military time traveler from the year 2036. The communications appeared most prominently on the Time Travel Institute, an Internet forum dedicated to discussing time travel and fringe science since 1998. His posts discussed various aspects of time travel and described future calamitous events, including a global nuclear war that he predicted would take place in 2015.

The story fascinated Internet communities, but the increasing inaccuracy of the predictions and other inconsistencies led many to view it with skepticism and try to discover who created it. A 2009 investigation suggested that the affair was a hoax started by Larry Haber, a Florida entertainment lawyer, or one of his brothers, John Rick Haber or Morey Haber, both of whom have careers in computers and information technology. However, the Habers and other suspects have denied these reports, and no one has publicly claimed to be the originator of the Titor posts.

Titor's posts

Faxes to Art Bell

The earliest known communications attributed to the Titor persona were two faxes sent to Art Bell, the host of the paranormal-focused radio show Coast to Coast AM. The first fax, dated July 29, 1998, described the invention of time travel in 2034 as a byproduct of CERN research, claiming the technology produced "a contained singularity engine" with rotating singularities controlled by magnetic fields. The fax predicted widespread devastation from the Y2K disaster and the collapse of the United States government. It also described an impenetrable temporal barrier at the year 2564, beyond which "nothing exists." A second fax followed shortly after, in which the sender promised to provide pages from "the operations manual of my time machine" and photographs of the vehicle. The second fax also urged Bell to reconsider his views on Russia, claiming they would "eventually save this country and the lives of millions of Americans."

IRC Chats

Before appearing on the Time Travel Institute forums, the individual using the name TimeTravel_0 participated in an IRC conversation on October 14, 2000, with several participants including users known as Yareisa, G°, and wyrmkin_37. In this conversation, TimeTravel_0 claimed to be 38 years old, from Florida, and based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. He stated he had been sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5110 computer, mentioning this model specifically four times during the chat.

He predicted civil war in the United States and nuclear conflict involving Russia and China — claims that would later be repeated and elaborated upon in his forum posts.

Beginning with his November 2, 2000 posts on the Time Travel Institute forums, TimeTravel_0 shifted to referring to the IBM 5100 instead, making no public acknowledgment of the discrepancy. The IBM 5100 was released in 1975, while the IBM 5110 was its successor released in 1978. TimeTravel_0 also sent correspondent Pamela Moore a physical piece of an IBM 5110 label with an Orlando postmark, consistent with his initial IRC claim.

Forum posts

John Titor's military insignia appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums on November 2, 2000, under the username TimeTravel_0. TimeTravel_0 responded that "the basics for time travel start at CERN in about a year and end in 2034 with the first 'time machine' built by GE." Forum members challenged the technical claims, questioned inconsistencies, and pressed for verifiable details throughout the exchanges.

In January 2001, TimeTravel_0 began referring to himself as "John Titor" and also started posting at the Art Bell Post-2-Post BBS Forums. The final Titor post was made in late March 2001.

Later, around 2003, various websites compiled Titor's posts, rearranging them into narratives. Not all of these sites refer to the original dates that the messages were posted on the forums.

Claims

thumb|right|[[IBM 5100 computer]]

In his online postings, Titor claimed to be an American soldier from the year 2036, based in Tampa, Florida. He said that he was assigned to a governmental time-travel project, and that as part of the project he was sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer, which was needed to debug various legacy computer programs that existed in 2036 — a possible reference to the UNIX year 2038 problem. In later posts, Titor stated that the device had been transferred to a 1987 truck with four-wheel drive for his stopover in the year 2000. with civil unrest surrounding the presidential election of that year. According to Titor, this civil conflict, which he described as "having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse",

In 2009, a report by John Hughston of the Hoax Hunter Web site pointed to Larry Haber, a Florida entertainment lawyer, as the CEO of the foundation. Lynch concluded that Larry Haber and his brother Richard, a computer scientist, were very likely the men behind John Titor, whom they actually introduced in 1998, accompanied by different predictions, including chaos due to the Y2K "bug".

In 2018, multimedia artist Joseph Matheny, creator of the alternate reality game Ong's Hat, said that he worked as a consultant for the unnamed individuals responsible for the legend. John Titor "is a story that was created as a literary experiment by people who were observing what I was doing with Ong's Hat and these people wanted to do something like that. I was a consultant on the project, [but] it wasn't my project."

In 2003, the John Titor Foundation published a book, John Titor: A Time Traveler's Tale (), which compiled and annotated the posts; the book is now out of print. A separate Web site, johntitor.com, also compiled the posts around the same time, rearranging them into a narrative format, though it did not always preserve the original posting dates.

  • In 2009, a docudrama called Timetravel_0 was directed by Scott Norwood.
  • Titor was referred to in the shonen supernatural horror manga Magical Girl Apocalypse.
  • Japanese rock band Sōtaisei Rirons third studio album, TOWN AGE, featured a song, John Q, which references John Titor.
  • In an issue of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, John Titor is listed in the Deadpool's Guide to Super Villains card set as an alias of Kang the Conqueror.
  • In the video game Reverse: 1999, John Titor is a senior computer engineer from IBM claiming to be a time traveler who speaks in Hexadecimal code and was also behind the development of the IBM 5100.

References

  • John Titor's first thread on Time Travel Institute — original posts from November 2, 2000
  • John Titor's second thread on Time Travel Institute — continued discussion from January 2001
  • John Titor's third thread on Time Travel Institute — parallel universe discussion from December 2000
  • Original IRC conversation with TimeTravel_0 — October 14, 2000 chat log
  • John Titor Fax 1 — first fax to Art Bell, July 29, 1998
  • John Titor Fax 2 — second fax to Art Bell, 1998