The Man From Taured (Book 3 of World’s Scariest Legends)
The Man From Taured
By Jeremy Bates
The Sexton’s musings (spoilers are likely):
Very interesting. I would not consider this book to be horror. It was not frightening per se but it was unnerving. The very concept that you could unwillingly fall through the veil into an alternate reality is an unsettling consideration. While the book is very well written, researched, and highly entertaining, it is also thought provoking. It moves very quickly in that I pretty much read it in one day.
Here’s the kicker…it’s based on a true story. In 1954 a man by the name of John Zegrus arrived in Japan, when immigration looked at his passport. The documentation looked to be legitimate if not for one glaring detail…the country of origin was a place called Taured. He was detained and housed at a hotel while the authorities investigated further. When they went to get him the following morning he was gone. Seemingly vanished without a trace. Now I’ve seen reports that he was nothing more than a con man who was committing multiple kinds of fraud all over the world but that’s the narrative of the media and government so who knows what the actual truth is. Perhaps we will never know. This said, Jeremy Bates’s story surrounds this urban legend.
At first I didn’t really like the main character. The book is written entirely from his first person point of view. He does not give a very good first impression but he grows on you as you get to know him. Plus as we all know you only really see the real person when bad things happen. Times of strife tend to bring out the true nature of a person and I think he delivers positively. Or as much as you can in a seemingly impossible situation. Things go from bad to worse to bad…then not so bad, then bad, then worse and then rock bottom. Eventually the clouds clear and nature rights itself but the journey is a tough one.
Closing thoughts:
A fascinating story based on an urban legend. One that makes you consider the possibilities of the universe. We know so little about the world around us. We are infants in our knowledge. We are very fast to judgement but don’t consider our own ignorance. The natural world is magical and mysterious. Who’s to say that there are not parallel realities to our own? Perhaps we can’t prove it but we can’t disprove it either. As in all things I find it best to keep an open mind a heart. While this is a work of fiction it does raise some very interesting things to think about. I enjoyed it most thoroughly.
