Lost in time: the Strange story of Rudolph Penza

In 1950, at the times square in new York city there was a man with narrow sideburns and dressed in the style of the Victorian era. According to witnesses, he was scared to death and totally confused. In just a few minutes after a strange man noticed for the first time, he, unfortunately, was hit by a car and died.

In the morgue from the pockets of the deceased learned that beer token 5 cents with the name of the bar, which was unfamiliar even to the oldest inhabitants of the district; account for the maintenance of the horses and wash the carriage, issued paid stables, located on Lexington Avenue, however, while not listed in any directory; about 70 dollars in old dollar bills; a card with the name of Rudolf Venza, according to which place of residence was listed the apartment on Fifth Avenue in new York; the letter sent to the same address, in June 1876 from Philadelphia.

None of these items were visible signs of the effects of time. Captain Hubert Rome Department of missing persons have tried using these data to identify the strange man. The investigation was able to establish that. Specified on the card to the address on Fifth Avenue was a commercial enterprise and the name of Rudolph Penza the then owner was not familiar. Fence and was not in the address book of the city, and his fingerprints were not found in any database. No one was reported missing this man. Rome continued the investigation and finally found a Rudolph Penza Jr. in the phone book for 1939.

Rome interviewed residents at the address and found out that once there lived Rudolf Fenz, age 60, who worked nearby. After his retirement in 1940 he moved to another place. Rome found the address of the proposed Fence, but he died five years before the incident, but his wife was still alive and lived in Florida. The investigator contacted her and found out that the father of her husband has mysteriously disappeared in 1876 aged 29 years. He just came out of the house for an evening stroll and more it nobody saw.

This story was published in many Newspapers and magazines in the 1970s, 1980s and up until 2000 was applied as a real case event. However, there was researcher Chris obek, who decided to verify the accuracy of described and came to the conclusion that the people and events mentioned in this story are entirely fictional, although he was not able to determine the source.

In 2002, pastor George Murphy claimed that the original source is either one of the works of the anthology of sci-Fi works under the direction of Robert A. Heinlein, "Tomorrow, The Stars", or the story published in the "Molerovskogo weekly" of September 15, 1951. The author of this story is a science fiction writer Jack Finney, and the fictional episode with Robert Fensom is part of the story is "Fear", which first appeared in "Kolarovska weekly".

And like everything fell into place — Robert Fenz was a literary hero in a fantasy novel. However, in 2007, a scientist working in the Berlin news archive, found a news article dated April of 1951, in which he mentioned this same story. This article was printed over 5 months before a story by Jack Finney. In addition, the article mentioned that several researchers failed to find evidence of the existence of Rudolf Fence, as well as to confirm the fact that he disappeared in 1876 aged 29 years.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»