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TIME WASTERS?
These time travellers say they’ve been to the future…and here’s their ‘proof’
They've supposedly seen the future and made their way back to 2019, and some of these self-professed "time-travellers" even say they have "proof"
NOAH claims he's a professional time-traveller who is stranded in 2019 - eleven years away from the year he belongs in, 2030.
The nervous young man is terrified that, if he's not careful, he'll bump into a past version of himself and cause a paradox which could rip the universe to shreds.
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Noah's not his real name, and he insists on blurring out his face and distorting his voice to hide from assassins who could off him as a punishment for revealing the "truth".
Last year he even claimed to have passed a lie detector test, insisting that he's the real deal and not a sci-fi fantasist.
"My 'natural time' is in the year 2030," he explains to Sun Online. "That is the year all my family and friends are in. Simply put, I was fired from my job during a mission in the year 2017, which is why I am now stuck in 2019."
His story has more than a touch of Back To The Future to it, and sceptics have suggested that the classic 1985 flick could have inspired his claims.
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But Noah says he was a high school student when he learned from government agents that time travel was more than just science fiction.
Supposedly, he was recruited into a top-secret program, and he went on to forge a successful career as a full-time traveller, based in 2030.
Now he's become stranded in the wrong year.
While he says he does have family in 2019, they wouldn't know or recognise the future version of himself - and meeting them could spark a chain reaction which could change the course of the future or destroy time itself.
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"A past version of myself exists right now and he is in middle school currently," Noah says.
"I have to stay far away from him to avoid causing a paradox, because the results of that could be profound, by what I understand."
Noah reckons he can prove he's telling the truth, with an X-ray which he says shows a device in his hand which helps him skip between time periods.
He tells us: "It was implanted before I went back in time via a surgical procedure. It was painless and that device actually helps in transporting all the atoms within my body. I'm not a scientist so I don't know all the details."
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Snaps from the future?
Noah's story may sound insane, (his message to the many doubters out there is simply: "I don't blame you.") but he's far from alone in making outlandish claims about time travel.
Over on YouTube, he's just a drop in an ocean of self-described time-travellers, all with different stories to tell and their own "proof" to share with the world.
Like Noah, many choose to appear anonymously, fearing repercussions from fellow time-benders who'd rather their secrets remained under wraps.
Speaking to interviewers at an undisclosed location and with his voice disguised, one viral clip shows a man whip a smudged, slightly crumpled photo out from a pocket in his blue jacket.
Man who claims to have been sent back from the year 6,000 shows 'photo proof'
"This is a photo from the year 6000," . "I don't know if you can see, but that's a city.
"You may notice that the actual picture itself is a little distorted.
"That is because in the time travel process, pictures tend to get distorted, as well as many other things.
"Some people actually have parts of their body distorted by the time travel process."
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If the conveniently distorted photo isn't convincing enough to win you over, the man also has a warning of what lies ahead.
"Artificial intelligence will be able to predict things with 100 per cent accuracy, and in the year 6000, we upload our brains to computers so we can live forever," he says.
"They don't want me to tell you this."
'Time traveller' describes the scenes he saw in the year 2307
A Greek man, also hiding his true identity, in another video that he spent two days in the year 3207 after being shot forward in time as part of a top-secret military programme.
"The buildings were absolutely enormous," he says.
"Cars were flying and there was strange coloured grass, not green but deep purple.
"Aliens, ordinary people, big animals and robots were walking together."
But not all of YouTube's "time-traveller" community insists on remaining anonymous.
In one popular clip, we're introduced to Alexander Smith, an American in a crumpled suit which looks like it just came out of a suitcase.
It may well have, but he's not just got back from a business trip - he's home after a jaunt in the year 2118... and he says he can prove it.
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Hand shaking, the wacky character holds up a smudged photograph which appears to show a high-rise city centre, although it's difficult to tell.
"This picture was taken in the year 2118," he says, without a flash of humour or self-doubt.
In the same clip, he tells us what threats we face in the future, where he says he was sent as part of the (no longer) top-secret program which made him one of humanity's first ever time-travellers.
"There's a danger of artificial intelligence taking over," he warns. "But the number one threat to humanity as we know it is global warming."
Photograph 'taken by time traveller in 2118' supposedly shows a future city
Thousands more like Alexander have cropped up on YouTube, the natural home for eccentric characters and conspiracy buffs.
No doubt inspired by films like Back To The Future, these people (mostly men) are adamant that they don't belong in 2019, often breaking their supposed cover to warn us of the dangers lying ahead.
The clip of Alexander showing off his "evidence" has racked up an impressive 500,000 views, while Noah's latest video has been seen by over 920,000.
Great Scott! When Back To The Future came true...
Time-travel classic Back To The Future may have missed the mark with the flying cars, but the film series has managed to get a whole lot right.
The 1989 sequel is particularly notable for predicting the rise of hoverboards. Although they haven't taken off commercially just yet, car company Lexus has already made a real, working hoverboard prototype.
Back To The Future II also showed us a world where kids can make calls and watch TV using VR headsets, tech which hit the market last year.
In the same film, when Doc meets Marty by the clock tower, the mad scientist whips out what looks like a tablet computer.
The flick has even managed to predict sporting results, suggesting the Chicago Cubs baseball team would win the World Series in 2015. This didn't quite come true, but the Cubs did win a year later in 2016 - against all odds.
Writers have confirmed that film baddie Biff Tannen was "loosely based" on Donald Trump, so it's eerie that Biff branches out into politics in the popular film. Could Back To The Future have predicted President Trump?
Time-travel Tube
The videos were shared on a popular YouTube channel, a paranormal network whose bread and butter is these self-professed time-travellers.
Since it was founded in 2014, ApexTV has interviewed 28 alleged time-travellers, and now demand for their vids is so high that it takes a team of 11 people to staff the channel.
An excited spokesperson for ApexTV told Sun Online: "We have three more upcoming videos including one with a man who claims to have travelled 60 million years into the past and seen actual dinosaurs - as well as one with a woman who claims to have a selfie from the future.
"We are pretty open minded and often share stories that a majority of people don't believe. We never give our opinions on the videos as we don't want to influence anyone else's."
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in the same "time-traveller" genre shows an anonymous woman, allegedly from the year 3780, showing off what she says is the actual technology she used to get here.
She describes the artefact, which looks a bit like a big computer chip, as a "skin", although it's not really clear from her rambling anecdote what the tech is supposed to do.
Fuelled by the rapid growth of internet conspiracy communities, a host of conspiracy YouTube channels can now give alleged time-travellers like her the kind of exposure that they could never have dreamed of ten years ago.
Some say they can prove their claims, others don't bother trying to convince us but, either way, the clips go down a storm with conspiracy buffs and sci-fi enthusiasts.
ApexTV's spokesperson added: "Now, with anyone being able to share paranormal experiences online via YouTube and other platforms, we finally have an outlet that can potentially reach millions of people.
"People's stories will no longer be kept secret, and that is the sole reason our channel exists."
'Time traveller from 2028' reveals what's around the corner in unnerving video
Is time-travel almost upon us?
Obviously no - but a man who claimed to once work for the British government says it's ten years from becoming a reality.
William Taylor said he was sent to the year 8973 in a secret time machine which will soon be released for public use.
Speaking to , he claims to have travelled to a future utopia free of disease and crime.
And Taylor, who says he worked as an intelligence officer in the early 2000s, claims the government is keeping other technological advancements from the public too.
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The first time-traveller?
Ever since the internet took off, it's been a natural haven for conspiracy theorists, paranormal buffs and sci-fi geeks.
And you can trace the net's rich history of time-travel tales all the way back to November 2, 2000.
That's the date when a man, posting as John Titor, first surfaced in a niche corner of an online chat site claiming to have come here from the year 2036.
A series of follow-up posts revealed that he had supposedly mounted a time machine in a car (ring any bells?) and shot back to our era for "personal reasons" after completing a mission back in 1975.
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Titor's claims captured the internet's imagination, and before long he had built up a cult following and had national radio appearances under his belt.
A cult celebrity, Titor warned us what he'd seen in the future, claiming that 2015 would see a nuclear war between the US and Russia, and that his job is to shoot back in time to collect artefacts which can be used to rebuild the world.
Over time he shared more of his story - including sketches of his time machine and his organisation's logo - and fielded more questions from his growing following.
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“Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret," Titor wrote in his best-known outburst. "No one likes you in the future.
";This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centred, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that.”
Documentaries were made about him, private investigators followed his trail, and message boards buzzed with hype around who this strange man could really be - and whether his morbid warnings of nuclear war would come true.
Then, in March 2001, he vanished - never to be seen on any message boards again.
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In the end, Titor was "exposed" by a PI as the creation of a Florida-based lawyer, who had even founded a company in Titor's name as part of the elaborate hoax.
But even so, his story proved the internet's fixation with time-travel and paved the way for today's new generation of John Titors, inspired, no doubt, by sci-fi flicks like Back To The Future, where we encountered that iconic time machine car for the first time.
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It's easy to have a dig at these characters and, down in the comment sections, many people do.
Sceptics point out that the common belief among scientists is that if time travel were real we'd know about it, because someone would have come back and proven it to us.
But what if this is the proof and "John Titor" was right all along: perhaps we "lazy, ignorant sheep" just aren't clued up enough to recognise it?