The helpful neighbor - an almost Shakespearean tale, but, alas, a hoax/urban legend

Jack Brummet, Urban Legends Ed.

Alas, this is a hoax, or, urban legend.  But nonetheless, a good story.  It has been passed around under various guises, with different names and locales, but the crux of the tale is always the same. . .

Traute Soupolos needed a helping hand

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The Time Traveller Unmasked--> the rest of the story

You may have seen this great ad (or its numerous variants) drifting around the Internet sometime over these least few years.  As happens so rarely, we now know the rest of the story!  Or, the rest of the hoax.  Read on. . . [thanks to Jeff Clinton for the news tip]

John Silveira, who worked for Backwoods Home Magazine confected the ad in the first place:  "it first appeared on page 92 of the Sept/Oct 1997 issue of BHM—and I wrote it."

Since it was published 13 years ago, it has been talked about on the Jay Leno show, and in hundreds of other media outlets.  Thousands of people have written to that Post Office Box.  There have been t-shirts, and there has even been a ghost hunter trying to track down the Time Traveller. To read the full story, go here, to Backwoods Home.
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