By Tim Binnall
A cleverly fabricated video of a woman purportedly arriving at JFK Airport with a passport from the nonexistent country of Torenza has spread like wildfire online, with many around the world believing the wild story to be true. The fairly realistic presentation (seen above) reportedly began circulating on social media around a week ago, with its specific origin uncertain, as it has now been copied and repurposed by countless content creators across the globe. In the video, which resembles a news segment, a woman can be seen speaking to an airline worker as a voice-over details her 'amazing story' of being "from a country that has never existed in our lifetime."
The narrator explained that the woman arrived in New York on a flight from Tokyo, but her passport was issued by the nonexistent country of Torenza. The "flawless" paperwork, the voice over marveled, boasted "dozens of stamps from countries that also do not exist." Continuing to weave the fantastic tale, the narrator revealed that the ordinary-looking woman stunned officials when they told her Torenza did not exist, and she replied, "then this isn't my world." The video concluded with the voice-over claiming that the otherworldly tourist was taken away by security before vanishing into thin air while waiting to be questioned.
To seasoned students of the strange, the 'Torenza Woman' is likely to sound strikingly familiar, as it is an almost beat-for-beat retelling of the famed 'Man from Taured' urban legend. Similar to the story spread in the video, that mysterious traveler was said to have arrived at a Tokyo airport with a passport from the nonexistent country of Taured and subsequently vanished after being held for questioning. The tantalizing tale spawned all manner of speculation in paranormal circles for years, with many suggesting that the man was a time traveler or from another dimension, until researchers ultimately determined it was derived from the antics of a con artist named John Zegrus.
Much like the Taured Man, almost as soon as the video of the Torenza Woman appeared online, the tale quickly became the subject of a staggering number of reaction videos and reports from international media outlets breathlessly theorizing that she had slipped into our world from some other dimension or time period. While some outlets noted the similarity to the decades-old Taured Man urban legend, many missed the connection and treated the video as genuine. Interestingly, it would appear that the tale of the Torenza Woman did not gain traction online in the United States, perhaps because the assertion that it happened at JFK Airport in New York City was too dubious to be believed.
Lest one think for a moment that the video was genuine, thanks to diligent online sleuths, it was later determined that the footage of the woman at the airport was from an unrelated TV program from a few years ago, with the Torenza tale being added using AI. Be that as it may, with the story having spread to millions of people around the world, there are undoubtedly a significant number of individuals who will go unaware of that explanation and continue to wonder about the weird account of the Torenza Woman who now seems destined to become an urban legend on par with the Taured Man for a new generation of those baffled by the bizarre.