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A 1917 time travel photo unearthed in a Canadian history book shows a group of people on a hillside — but one mysterious ‘surfer man’ has caught the eye of internet sleuths and sparked wild speculation
The snapshot was taken more than a hundred years ago in Canada and depicts a group of men, women and children assembled on what looks like a hillside.
Yet eagle-eyed observers have noticed the image is extraordinary for one particular reason – what appears to be a person who seems completely out of place in the early 1900s.
The picture surfaced in Lester Ray Peterson’s 1974 book The Great Cape Scott Story – a historical account of the Canadian area’s heritage.
What has fascinated those who’ve seen this photograph is how utterly out of sync the ‘surfer dude’, as he’s been nicknamed, appears to be.
He’s wearing an incredibly baggy -shirt and shorts, sporting a modern messy hairstyle and is clearly at odds with everyone else around him, reports the Daily Star.
Looking at the people next to him more carefully, the man to his left appears utterly baffled by his presence.
Further to the right, a woman also appears to be pointing towards the supposed time traveller, sparking rampant theories the person was out of place in both setting and time period.
In fact, it almost looks as though he jumped straight into the shot just as the camera clicked.
YouTuber Jamie D. Grant was gobsmacked when he came across the book and spotted the mysterious photograph.
In a YouTube video titled Time Travel proof found. Truth or Illusion?, he says: “Notice the group, their clothes, their hats. Even how they sit poised for a photo.
“Now look closer. His head uncovered, his hair, his shorts. The man on the left stares in disbelief.
“Has a mysterious traveller proved the impossible and journey through time? What do you think?”
The ‘surfer man’ has been included in the catalog of supposed ‘time travellers’, joining the likes of the ‘time travelling hipster’ who appeared in a 1940s photo, displaying a style that seemed years beyond those around him.
One viewer commented on the video, writing: “I looked through this book as a small child and noticed this picture; not only is it real; but at the time I just felt his clothes were a little ahead for being in this picture. It still gives me the chills.”
Another person said: “The guy looks like he was caught off guard in the picture.
“He definitely looks like he’s from another time period. Cool video.”
Yet, as several observers have pointed out, while ‘surfer man’ might appear unusual within the gathering, his clothing could easily have been trendy during that era.
Someone commenting on the book via GoodReads.com referenced a Post Gazette piece, noting: “In the comments to the article, someone mentioned that t-shirts were around then and that they made it into the common lexicon soon after that date – it appeared in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in the 1920s.
“This Article says they were worn by US Navy sailors as early as 1913.
“Considering that other guys in the picture are also wearing shorts, I’m going to say that he’s not a time traveller.
“Other than Bill and Ted, what time travellers would think that a t-shirt and shorts would be the best thing to wear when time-travelling into the past anyway?”
In both instances, physicists are in complete agreement that traveling backward through time remains out of reach based on our current understanding of the universe and its laws.
Professor William Hiscock, from Montana State University, explains that forward time travel is achievable through Special Relativity’s time-dilation effect. Traveling in reverse, however, is an entirely different story.
The academic stated: “Time travel into the past, which is what people usually mean by time travel, is a much more uncertain proposition.
“There are many solutions to Einstein’s equations of General Relativity that allow a person to follow a timeline that would result in her (or him) encountering herself – or her grandmother – at an earlier time.
“The problem is deciding whether these solutions represent situations that could occur in the real universe, or whether they are mere mathematical oddities incompatible with known physics.”
The professor stressed that no scientific study or observation of the universe has ever provided any indication that such journeys through time are possible.
