Speaker 1: It's one thing when someone appears to vanish off the
Speaker 1: face of the earth. It's quite another when they appear suddenly,
Speaker 1: as if from nowhere, their clothes, behavior and mannerisms completely
Speaker 1: at odds with their surrounding environment. At best, this might
Speaker 1: make for a sensational, unthreatening news story, a slice of
Speaker 1: the Bazaarre to liven up the day, like the story
Speaker 1: of Andreas Grassel, who seemed to appear in England one day,
Speaker 1: completely out of the blue. Back in April two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, Grassel was found on a beach in a
Speaker 1: distressed state and appeared to have no recollection of who
Speaker 1: he was or how even to speak. While being looked
Speaker 1: after in care, Grassol began playing the piano in an
Speaker 1: effort to communicate with those around him, leading to him
Speaker 1: becoming known as the Piano Man. It was four months
Speaker 1: after he was first seen on the beach that he
Speaker 1: finally revealed his name and true identity. A twenty year
Speaker 1: old man from southern Germany, he claimed to simply have
Speaker 1: forgotten who he was until then. At worst, like the
Speaker 1: titular character in Nicholas Rogue's nineteen seventy six sci fi
Speaker 1: classic The Man, who fell to earth, or any immigrant
Speaker 1: for that matter, taking their first steps through an unfamiliar land.
Speaker 1: Some unfortunate individuals might find themselves becoming bogeymen for local
Speaker 1: anxieties about the general state of a nation and about
Speaker 1: just what constitutes the correct way to be in the world.
Speaker 1: Arguably the most famous example of the mysterious arrival narrative
Speaker 1: is the apocryphal tale of the Man from Torret. It
Speaker 1: was back in nineteen sixty when an enigmatic traveler reportedly
Speaker 1: arrived at Hanada Airport in Tokyo, claiming to be from
Speaker 1: a country which no borderers, officials, or anyone else for
Speaker 1: that matter, had ever heard of. The man was said
Speaker 1: to have spoken multiple languages, and when his flight number
Speaker 1: was not found to be on any register, he was
Speaker 1: ordered to hand over his travel documents. He presented police
Speaker 1: with a strange looking passport from a non existent city
Speaker 1: state named Torret. After leaving the interrogation room to consult
Speaker 1: with senior officials, the officer whose responsibility it was to
Speaker 1: question the man apparently returned to the small office, only
Speaker 1: to discover that the man had completely disappeared. All that
Speaker 1: was left behind was the strange passport lying face down
Speaker 1: on the table, and the man's returned plane ticket, which
Speaker 1: supposedly gave his name as John Zegris. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: the man from Torret as he became known, was simply
Speaker 1: the misreporting of a very real case about a genuine
Speaker 1: individual named John Zegris who was arrested in Japan for
Speaker 1: committing international identity fraud. The man had already been sentenced
Speaker 1: to one year in prison and deported to Hong Kong
Speaker 1: when the story was eventually picked up by Canadian newspaper
Speaker 1: The Province. From there, the story was embellished with speculative
Speaker 1: details that had nothing to do with the actual events
Speaker 1: of the case. Our ability to make narratives out of
Speaker 1: the chaos of existence is perhaps both our greatest strength
Speaker 1: and greatest weakness as a species. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: it is through narrative that we are able to construct
Speaker 1: the world around us. It empowers our sense of self
Speaker 1: and enables us to project meaning onto the world and
Speaker 1: the universe more broadly through the stories we create about them.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, since so much of how
Speaker 1: we see the world is dependent on what story stories
Speaker 1: we choose to believe, it is all too easy to
Speaker 1: get swept up in a lie, and whenever we are
Speaker 1: presented with a story that seems incomplete, it is almost
Speaker 1: impossible for us not to speculate on what those missing
Speaker 1: parts may be. So when a body is found with
Speaker 1: no identity, like the so called Isdel Woman has covered
Speaker 1: in Season six, episode seventeen, a story of ice and fire,
Speaker 1: we are almost pathologically driven to want to know who
Speaker 1: they were and what exactly happened to them. The case
Speaker 1: of the Isdel Woman has been dissected so much that
Speaker 1: it's become a kind of shorthand for a certain variety
Speaker 1: of true crime story, one in which we are both
Speaker 1: baffled and titillated by the mystery at its center. It
Speaker 1: also took place over fifty years ago. In more recent times,
Speaker 1: it is almost inconceivable, with the advancement of technology and
Speaker 1: the normalization of survey, that someone could suddenly appear in
Speaker 1: a well populated town with no trace of who they
Speaker 1: are or where they came from. And yet that is
Speaker 1: exactly what happened in two thousand and nine, during one
Speaker 1: strange summer in a picturesque seaside town in the west
Speaker 1: of Ireland. You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith.
Speaker 1: To anyone else, his appearance would have been unremarkable. To
Speaker 1: the driver of the bus route between Derry City and
Speaker 1: Sligo Town, The stooped figure who boarded his coach on
Speaker 1: that June twelfth afternoon in two thousand and nine cut
Speaker 1: a tragic figure against the cold rain beating down on
Speaker 1: the bus stop. Perhaps it was the ill fitting pair
Speaker 1: of trousers which hung too loosely from his waist as
Speaker 1: he mounted the steps, or perhaps it was the purple
Speaker 1: shopping back filled with torn pieces of random paper. Whatever
Speaker 1: it was, the man could barely meet the driver's gaze
Speaker 1: as he spoke in what was later described as a
Speaker 1: crisp North European accent. Where you headed, the driver asked,
Speaker 1: single to Sligo, the man replied. The driver asked if
Speaker 1: he wanted Sligo Town or somewhere else in the wider countryside.
Speaker 1: The man seemed put out by the question, as if
Speaker 1: he wasn't exactly sure himself where he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: The man rubbed awkwardly at the thick white stubble on
Speaker 1: the back of his head, leveled his eyes momentarily with
Speaker 1: the drivers, and repeated his first instruction single ticket to Sligo.
Speaker 1: As he shambled up the aisle, the driver turned in
Speaker 1: his seat to watch him go. He noticed that, as
Speaker 1: well as the purple shopping back, the man was carrying
Speaker 1: a simple black shoulder back and a medium sized hold,
Speaker 1: all which he'd placed neatly on the empty seat beside him.
Speaker 1: He leaned his head against the window and made sure
Speaker 1: to avoid eye contact with the other passengers who walked
Speaker 1: onto the bus, as though he didn't want to be recognized.
Speaker 1: He removed a bread roll wrapped in cellophane and chewed
Speaker 1: slowly as the vehicle pulled out at the station and
Speaker 1: began the arduous four hour journey down the coast. No
Speaker 1: matter how many times he drove this route, the driver
Speaker 1: was always struck by the breath taking landscape that unfurled
Speaker 1: before his windshield. He considered himself lucky as he passed
Speaker 1: through Donegal Town and breathed in the brackish sea air.
Speaker 1: As he made his way along the coast past Bundoran,
Speaker 1: passengers got on and off, some of whom he'd known
Speaker 1: for years. He took comfort in observing the local people
Speaker 1: going about their lives with the regularity of atomic clocks.
Speaker 1: The strange man seemed not to have moved during the
Speaker 1: entire bus journey. The driver couldn't help but wonder if
Speaker 1: he was simply a tourist, or was he here visiting
Speaker 1: family or for work, or was it something more sinister.
Speaker 1: As the driver reached the terminus in the center of
Speaker 1: Sligo Town, he caught himself reciting the Lord's Prayer under
Speaker 1: his breath. It was a habit he'd formed in childhood
Speaker 1: during moments of stress and confusion. As the unknown passenger
Speaker 1: descended the steps onto the nearly deserted platform, the driver
Speaker 1: finished his prayer in earnest Lead us not into temptation,
Speaker 1: he whispered, but deliver us from evil. Amen. It was
Speaker 1: just after six thirty pm when the stranger walked into
Speaker 1: the lobby of the sligh Go City Hotel. Though it
Speaker 1: was only a short distance from the bus station, the
Speaker 1: man was yet to find his bearings and seemed to
Speaker 1: have a persistent pain in his lower back, which made
Speaker 1: it difficult to walk. The bags he carried weighed heavy
Speaker 1: on his shoulders, so he stopped and waved down a taxi.
Speaker 1: When asked by the driver where he wanted to go,
Speaker 1: The man said nothing. He rustled around in his purple
Speaker 1: carrier back before pulling out a slip of paper with
Speaker 1: a hastily scribbled set of directions on it. The paper
Speaker 1: looked like it had been torn from an envelope. The
Speaker 1: driver squinted at it in an effort to read it
Speaker 1: the City Hotel. The man nodded in reply, and the
Speaker 1: driver gestured for him to jump into the back seat.
Speaker 1: When he got out to help the man with his bags,
Speaker 1: the stranger clutched the hole door to his chest like
Speaker 1: he was protecting it with his life, leaving him to it.
Speaker 1: The driver jumped back in and promptly made his way
Speaker 1: to the City Hotel. Minutes later they arrived, though the
Speaker 1: fare was little over five euros. The man handed the
Speaker 1: driver a crisp new twenty euro note, waving him away
Speaker 1: when he tried to give him change. The driver watched
Speaker 1: as the man ambled slowly away and in through the
Speaker 1: hotel's front door, before pulling off and heading back into town.
Speaker 1: Inside the hotel, the stranger approached the front desk carefully
Speaker 1: with great deliberation, as if he was weighing each word
Speaker 1: for the energy it would take to speak. He requested
Speaker 1: a room for four nights and offered to pay up
Speaker 1: front in cash. When asked for his ID, the man
Speaker 1: replied that he didn't have any. The receptionist explained that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a problem as long as he told them
Speaker 1: his name and address, and so, taking a pen and paper,
Speaker 1: the man put his name down as Peter Bergman and
Speaker 1: his address as Einstetters four four seven two, Vienna, Austria.
Speaker 1: Then he handed over the cash to pay for his
Speaker 1: stay and headed up to his room. The next time
Speaker 1: the man known as Peter Bergman was seen, he appeared
Speaker 1: neatly groomed. Locals remembered the piercing blue eyes, the tanned complexion,
Speaker 1: the clean shaven face, and closely cropped white hair. Each
Speaker 1: day he wore the same simple outfit black leather jacket,
Speaker 1: blue jeans, black shoes, black leather belt. He appeared to
Speaker 1: be a heavy smoker, being noticed several times making the
Speaker 1: long trek down from his room to stand outside in
Speaker 1: the mild air for a cigarette or two. The staff
Speaker 1: at the Sligos City Hotel liked to play a game
Speaker 1: where they tried to guess his background. The consensus was
Speaker 1: that he was some kind of professional worker. In his
Speaker 1: fifties or sixties, or a man away on business of
Speaker 1: some kind, perhaps a property speculator or a financier. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's a spy, joked one of the porters on his
Speaker 1: coffee break, a momentary silence to send it, as his
Speaker 1: colleagues tried to decide whether he was serious or not.
Speaker 1: Whatever his occupation, the man known as Peter Bergmann seemed
Speaker 1: to have a spring in his step after checking into
Speaker 1: his room, as if a weight had been lifted, perhaps
Speaker 1: because for the time being, at least, he wasn't required
Speaker 1: to answer any more questions. In between sitting down for
Speaker 1: an occasional beer at the hotel bar and dining in
Speaker 1: some of the cafes and restaurants in the area, Peter
Speaker 1: Bergmann was most often observed taking long walks around Sligo.
Speaker 1: Over time, he became more adventurous in his outings, despite
Speaker 1: the obvious back pain that continued to plague him, and
Speaker 1: with every foray into more extroverted activity, he became more
Speaker 1: and more the topic of fevered discussion and speculation. One
Speaker 1: thing that didn't go unnoticed was how every morning, after breakfast,
Speaker 1: which he took at eight thirty a m. Sharp, he
Speaker 1: left carrying his purple shopping bag full of papers, only
Speaker 1: to return later having apparently disposed of its contents. It
Speaker 1: was as though he was ferrying bits of his life
Speaker 1: bag by measured bag out of his room, until there
Speaker 1: was nothing left at all but the clothes that he
Speaker 1: was wearing. On the afternoon of Saturday, June thirteenth, he
Speaker 1: made a visit to the local post office, where he
Speaker 1: purchased eight international stamps and some air mail stickers, though
Speaker 1: there was never any record of the letters he might
Speaker 1: have sent. During one of the periods when hotel staff
Speaker 1: thought he was out, the housekeeper entered his room. When
Speaker 1: they opened the door, the found Peter fully dressed, standing
Speaker 1: in the entryway with a look on his face that
Speaker 1: seemed to suggest both that he was expecting somewhat and
Speaker 1: doing something that he wasn't supposed to be doing. Early
Speaker 1: on the morning of Sunday, June fourteenth, Peter asked the
Speaker 1: hotel receptionist to order him a taxi. As usual, he
Speaker 1: was holding the purple carrier bag, which by now seemed
Speaker 1: so much a part of his uniform that it was
Speaker 1: barely remarked upon when he walked out onto the footpath
Speaker 1: with its plastic handles straining from the weight of its contents.
Speaker 1: When the driver pulled up to the curb, he asked
Speaker 1: Peter through the open window where he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: Once again, in that calm, slightly eerie manner he developed
Speaker 1: when communicating with locals, Peter chose each of his words carefully,
Speaker 1: measuring them for impact. Perhaps, or maybe it was just
Speaker 1: the limited inc he spoke. I want to go for
Speaker 1: a swim, he said, Is there anywhere quiet? You know?
Speaker 1: The driver thought for a moment, and, after clocking that
Speaker 1: Peter was not a local, eventually suggested taking a short
Speaker 1: drive out to the nearby beauty spot of Ross's Point.
Speaker 1: The place was popular with families and sweethearts for the
Speaker 1: dramatic views it offered over the open Atlantic. Seemingly pleased
Speaker 1: by the suggestion, Peter ducked into the back of the car.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes later they arrived at the spot. Peter ordered
Speaker 1: the driver to stay put for a few minutes while
Speaker 1: he stepped out and went for a wonder. After walking
Speaker 1: only a few paces, he stopped and took in the
Speaker 1: view of the tranquill Bay and its grassy borders to
Speaker 1: the ben Bolburan Mountains. Beyond. Then he turned and headed
Speaker 1: back to the car. A brief smile flashed across his
Speaker 1: face as he approached the driver. Are you not going
Speaker 1: in today, the driver asked, Confused, Peter said something vague
Speaker 1: about there being too many people on the beach and
Speaker 1: that he wanted to come back some other time. Though
Speaker 1: Peter was as quiet as ever on the journey back
Speaker 1: to his hotel, the driver couldn't help but notice that
Speaker 1: he seemed, somehow more relaxed than he was before. It
Speaker 1: reminded him of the serenity that people talked about when
Speaker 1: they were close to death, what his father had once
Speaker 1: called a Saints calm. As he glanced in the mirror
Speaker 1: at the strange man sitting in his back seat, the
Speaker 1: afternoon sun caught the glint of his spectacles, turning his
Speaker 1: eyes into wide pools of light. On his final morning
Speaker 1: at the Sligo City Hotel, Peter Bergmann came down to
Speaker 1: the reception and asked if it would be possible to
Speaker 1: have a later check out, since he had some errands
Speaker 1: to run and his bus was not until the afternoon.
Speaker 1: He explained that because of the pain in his lower back,
Speaker 1: he wanted to restrict his movements as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Since the hotel was quiet and there were only a
Speaker 1: handful of bookings, the receptionist was happy to accommodate his request.
Speaker 1: After breakfast, the man returned to his room for a
Speaker 1: few hours before finally checking out at one p m.
Speaker 1: Though he'd arrived in Sligo with a small black rucksack
Speaker 1: and a hold all, by the time Peter made it
Speaker 1: to the bus station, the only items he was carrying
Speaker 1: were the distinctive purple carrier back and a disposable cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, which he'd purchased at a kiosk. After sitting
Speaker 1: down at one of the tables in the waiting area,
Speaker 1: he was observed scribbling profusely on some scraps of paper,
Speaker 1: which he then put in his bag. When the bus arrived,
Speaker 1: the man got on board alongside a handful of other passengers.
Speaker 1: The destination on the front read Ross's Point. The countryside
Speaker 1: that the so called peter Bergman traveled through that day
Speaker 1: is widely associated with the great Irish poet W. B. Yates,
Speaker 1: who spent much of his formative years holidaying in the region.
Speaker 1: It was the country of his heart, as he called it,
Speaker 1: and its presence and landscape can be felt in much
Speaker 1: of his poetry. I will arise and go now and
Speaker 1: go to innis free, and a small cabin build there
Speaker 1: of clay and wattles, made nine bean rows. While I
Speaker 1: have there a hive of the honey bee, and live
Speaker 1: alone in the bee loud glade, and I shall have
Speaker 1: some peace there. For peace comes dropping, slow, dropping from
Speaker 1: the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings. There.
Speaker 1: Midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, and
Speaker 1: evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and
Speaker 1: go now. For always night and day I hear lake
Speaker 1: water lapping with low sounds by the shore. While I
Speaker 1: stand on the roadway or on the pavement's gray, I
Speaker 1: hear it in the deep hearts core. Just after dawn
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, June sixteenth, two thousand and nine, Ross's Point
Speaker 1: native Arthur Kinsella was out on the beach with his
Speaker 1: son Brian. Normally, they like to swim at a spot
Speaker 1: close to their house, but due to high winds coming
Speaker 1: from the west, the waves had been particularly treacherous that morning.
Speaker 1: Arthur suggested walking a little further up the promenade, where
Speaker 1: the rocks offered protection from the blowing gale. It was
Speaker 1: Brian who noticed it first, what looked like a discarded
Speaker 1: department store mannequin dressed in speedos and a T shirt,
Speaker 1: lying face down in the sand with its arms by
Speaker 1: its side. As the two men drew closer, they realized
Speaker 1: it was a body. Arthur sank to his knees and
Speaker 1: gestured for Brian to phone the police. As they waited,
Speaker 1: Arthur said to Brian that it might be appropriate to
Speaker 1: speak the Lord's prayer for the repose of this unknown
Speaker 1: man's soul, our father, which art in heaven. Arthur spoke
Speaker 1: solemnly as the nearby waves crashed onto the beach. As
Speaker 1: it is in heaven. They couldn't have known at that
Speaker 1: moment that theirs would be the only prayer spoken for
Speaker 1: the man known as Peter Bergman, who died alone on
Speaker 1: that beautiful beach at the most westerly point of the
Speaker 1: European continent. The man had clearly been washed up on
Speaker 1: the beach, having gone into the water. In spite of this,
Speaker 1: a post mortem examination found no signs of what they
Speaker 1: termed a classical salt water drowning. What the pathologist did find, however,
Speaker 1: was that the man was in the advanced stages of
Speaker 1: prostate cancer and had multiple bone tumors. He would have
Speaker 1: been in considerable pain in the last few weeks of
Speaker 1: his life. The rest of the man's clothes were found
Speaker 1: in a neat pile further up the shore. The labels
Speaker 1: on the various items, along with the clothes he was
Speaker 1: found in had all deliberately been removed. No money, wallet,
Speaker 1: or form of identification was found. After a police investigation,
Speaker 1: it was also discovered that the address he supplied to
Speaker 1: the Sligo City Hotel turned out to be nothing but
Speaker 1: a vacant lot in an uninhabited commercial building in Vienna, Austria.
Speaker 1: As for the name Peter Bergman, no passports issued anywhere
Speaker 1: in Europe were found for anyone matching the man's physical
Speaker 1: description or aim profile. The stranger in Sligo clearly had
Speaker 1: some awareness about CCTV and their blind spots, because although
Speaker 1: police were convinced that he disposed of all his worldly
Speaker 1: possessions in public bins dotted around the town, there was
Speaker 1: no visual footprint of him actually doing it anywhere. Despite
Speaker 1: numerous attempts to find any next of kin, the Irish
Speaker 1: guardy failed to locate anyone that knew the man. Four
Speaker 1: months after his body was discovered, the man known as
Speaker 1: Peter Bergmann was laid to rest in an unmarked grave
Speaker 1: in Sligo Town Cemetery. Unsurprisingly, like the Isdaar woman and
Speaker 1: the Somerton man before him, covered in Unexplained season six
Speaker 1: episode twenty two to mourn Names, that so called Peter
Speaker 1: Bergmann seemed to have gone to such an effort to
Speaker 1: deliberately obscure his identity has only intensified people's curiosity about him.
Speaker 1: One of the more outlandish theories is that Peter Bergmann
Speaker 1: was a nom de plume for none other than the
Speaker 1: elusive founder of Bitcoin, Sir Tooshe Nakamoto. Some have suggested
Speaker 1: he may have been a spy on the run from
Speaker 1: something sinister, with nowhere left to turn. Whatever his motivation.
Speaker 1: In a world obsessed with making ourselves the center of
Speaker 1: every one else's story or getting our fifteen minutes of fame,
Speaker 1: there is something undeniably poetic about how that unknown man
Speaker 1: in Sligo left us knowing next to nothing about him,
Speaker 1: and until some one comes forward with more concrete information,
Speaker 1: his identity will continue to remain Unexplained. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by James Connor Patterson and Richard mc lean smith.
Speaker 1: Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as an AV
Speaker 1: Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain smith. All other
Speaker 1: elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook
Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to
Speaker 1: and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you have an explanation or a story of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reaches online through X and
Speaker 1: Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast name assass