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(Image: GETTY/JOHN TITOR)

It sounds like an unbelievable situation – but many are convinced the mysterious John Titor travelled back in time back in 2000 to warn of us a bleak history for humanity.

The legend appeared on an online forum 16 years ago claiming he wanted to warn us away from a future ravaged by nuclear war and corrupt governments.

Conspiracy theorists today still consider Titor, who nobody ever met, a great mystery – and many think his claims of time travel might be true.

After publishing several future predictions, which gave people advice on how to avoid catastrophe, and sharing images of he claimed was his time machine, he suddenly vanished.

On November 2, 2000, he wrote online: “Greetings. I am a time traveller from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.”

(Image: JOHN TITOR)

The post was combined with pictures of his time traveling device, which was strangely looked very similar to a DeLorean in the film Back to the Future.

Titor claimed he was a member of a military unit living in the future in Florida, on his way back to the year 1975 and making a stop over in 2000 for “personal reasons”.

He told stunned internet users: “My goal is not to be believed. Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep.

“Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that.”

But then Titor came out with a surprising number of predictions which over the years have come true, or have elements of truth.

In one predictions Titor spoke about deception of weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq War in 2003.

He said: “None of the things I have said will be a surprise. They were set in motion ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”

Many believe claims over the existence of WMDs in Saddam Hussein's possession were a tool to justify a war with the Middle East nation, and some think this prediction proves Titor had foreknowledge of the conflict.

Another astonishing prediction was about one of the first personal computers, the IBM 5100, which had a secret function only revealed in August 2004.

The function allowed the machine to emulate programs in older languages used by IBM mainframes, but the company kept this under wraps in case it was abused by competition.

(Image: JOHN TITOR)

But in 2001, Titor wrote: “You mean other than the mad cow pandemic, the breakthroughs in high-energy physics and the unknown functions of the 5100?”

In 2004, three years after Titor vanished from the internet, IBM announced that such a secret function did exist.

This astonishing announcement reignited claims that John Titor was either very knowledgable about IBM programming, or was actually a time traveller.

In one of Titor’s posts, he randomly wrote the question: “Care to share with me how you solved the overheating problem on your space plane?”

Many believe Titor was alluding to the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, where all seven crew members died.

Catastrophe struck after piece of foam struck the shuttle’s wing during take-off, leading to superheated air breaching the damaged wing during re-entry and the destruction of the craft.

Conspiracy theorists claim this is another piece of proof that Titor knew the fate of the NASA mission.

(Image: GETTY - stock) (Image: JOHN TITOR)

Some of John Titor’s predictions failed to come true, like predicting Civil War in America starting in 2004.

He also predicted mad cow disease would spread over the globe and the Olympics would be cancelled.

Despite the failed predictions, conspiracy theorists claim that he stopped these events by simply warning us about them.

Titor wrote that by being in the past, he was creating a different timeline and certain things about his reality and ours were different.

He wrote: “News events that happen at different times, football games won by other teams, things like that.”

(Image: JOHN TITOR)

In 2009 a private investigator claimed Larry Haber, a Florida lawyer, and his computer scientist brother John Rick Haber were the most likely men to be behind the legend.

Both men had the tech-knowledge, and Haber was discovered to be the CEO of a for-profit company named the John Titor foundation, formed two years after Titor's internet appearance.

But despite this, many determined fans still claim that Titor’s predictions of future times were too elaborate to be false.

To this day those who spoke to him still wonder who he was, and if his time travelling story was real.