I give you a B+ for your story and props (I'm including the post here). Now, next time I expect an improvement.

If you want to make paper look old - you don't burn it till it's charcoaled. You heat it until it yellows and pull the flame back. The closer to the edges you apply more flame, but not so it looks like it came out of the barbecue. You need to just be patient and spend more time to get it right. You want gradual color change on the edges, not from white to black.

I only read the first couple pages and it seems to be written by one person or a small group at most. The style reminds me of story's written in the 50's maybe. So if a youngster wrote this pretending to be older- you did a pretty good job. Too many mistakes to be an official guide - even Disneyland has editors.

I'll read the rest when I have more time for entertainment, but nice piece of work anyway.

Oh yeah, just to add. If your grandfather did this he was pretty cool. If everyone left little puzzles on their way out - we might look a dying a bit different.

[edit on 15-8-2008 by verylowfrequency]

Got the ISBN number of the manual? Hehehe.


Here's a test:

Ask your Mother if she knew HER grandparents. If it was her Father that died.
Considering it would be impossible without some major form of life extension therapy you can call it a hoax if she knew your grandfather's parents. If all this is true, your mom was awfully young when she got pregnant with you. If I had to figure an age for the grandfather for all of this to compute, I'd say he was exactly 78.

Of course, this is all assuming your mother is his daughter.

Didn't she check out the chest to make sure there wasn't a gun or something loony in there first?

All things considered, if the manual is real, it wasn't your grandfather doing the time travelling as he would have certainly given you some sort of warning of future events to avoid as there's always something we should have avoided in hindsight.

I love you though. This is classic stuff.

Just a few quick observations, some of which have already been stated by others:

This was printed on an inkjet printer. You can see the smear from a dirty ink head in the middle of the words. Also, the ink bleeds where it was wet. Inkjet is the best technology a time traveling, space colonizing, 80+ years in the future, civilization can come up with???

The burn marks are too fresh. If the document was old, the burn marks would have broken down faster than the paper. They would be very fragile. The burns were added to make it look old.

Looks like a grease pencil or crayon was used to dirty up a few of the pages, including the cover.

Writing is in the style of a 15 year old boy who hasn’t been doing too well in English class, squeaking by with C’s or D’s.

Paper is too thin for a manual. Low quality inkjet paper from K-mart?

All looks a bit John Titor to me.
There was still some flaking on the burnt edges, i'm sure if this was an old document all the flaking would have been done.

For a theoretical time machine to work it would have to have been built by now. A time machine switched on today wouldn't be any real use for a couple decades as you can only return to the point when the machine was switched on.

I might be wrong...

I'm sorry but the document does look fake. It doesn't look like a real paper document that was scanned but more like something that was created with Photoshop or a similar program.

The burn marks are an odd touch as the seem to go along all four sides, which would tell me that the manual was surrounded by fire at some point. It seems very lucky that it survived if it's indeed real (which I doubt)

Also, I agree with the poster/s who said that the writing of the manual wasn't very good.

Here's a quick question, why would we still be using paper in the future to even print this manual on? Paper's rather primitive. I would have expected a manual from the future to be on some sort of memory card or some other medium.

[edit on 15-8-2008 by zephyrs]

Originally posted by SugarCube
I just had a thought concerning the grammar and spelling... This in no way endorses the authenticity of the document but *could* explain the odd English. This resembles some documents I have seen that have been translated from another language to English by a non-native speaker of English.

As an example, this reads as if a German had translated from original German to English but their English was not up to scratch. This could explain the use of some of the adjectives (e.g. "lovely").

Just a thought...

That was one of the thoughts I had when I read it.

I recently completed a website for the British branch of a German multinational paint company. I used the English translation of the original German product catalog (it had been translated in Germany) and some of the grammar, and the way many of the sentences were structured, is very similar to some of the grammar/structure in the OP's pages.

Not saying whether the story is real or a hoax, just pointing out one thing that caught my attention.

I'd like to get some more info from the OP... stuff that a previous poster has mentioned, like his grandfather's early history, or lack of, relatives, any other 'odd' things happening or said over the years, that sort of stuff.

Some one wanted image of me holding it.







Bit busy, I'll upload others later.
I'll come back later too look at the rest of the coments.

Welcome to ATS!

Questions:

What were the types of jobs your grandpa had when he was alive?

Could you take the pictures of the chest that the material was in? And what other stuff where in this chest?

Did he often told you fictional story as a child?

Thanks

This story was great !

In sudden I was thinking about a story for a film. Grandfather dies and leaves "Manual" for time traveling. So the boy starts learning and builds it up and the action begins.

You don't even have to read it through to think if it's fake. If it would have been real, he probably had keep the secret manuals only to himself and started learning the book or "manual".

Originally posted by verylowfrequency
If you want to make paper look old - you don't burn it till it's charcoaled. You heat it until it yellows and pull the flame back. The closer to the edges you apply more flame, but not so it looks like it came out of the barbecue. You need to just be patient and spend more time to get it right. You want gradual color change on the edges, not from white to black.

Actually, one of the best ways to make paper look old fast is to use ammonia. Just spray a bit on the back, not too much, and not the blue Windex kind, but the clear stuff. After a couple days the paper will turn a nice old yellow.

A better way, although I'm not recommending it, is to go into your local college library, find a really old book and carefully remove some of the extra blank pages that are often found in the front and back. These stand up to real scrutiny, because they are authentically, truly old and not just faked. Then your only problem is to get the proper ink (or typewriter) to cook up the document.

Good document forgery is an art form, really.

I have seen this before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by Tegmondy
Some one wanted image of me holding it.

Bit busy, I'll upload others later.
I'll come back later too look at the rest of the coments.

I don't post much on this site, I'm a lurker...but from these two pictures it most likely is a fake. Like the other posters noticed there's a smudge from a grease pencil (And kudos for you seeing that! good eye!) and it definitely looks like a project I did back in school.

I do have two questions.

1. Is that like an art bench/desk you're holding the book over? I simply ask that because if indeed you did make this yourself, I think you just gave us a picture of your workspace too.

2. Forgive the observation of this nature, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I used to work at an amusement park and we had a game where you guessed someone's age. They told us the key was to look at the person's hands. Your hands look very very young, I wouldn't say even over 15 most likely younger.

That's my input on this. If indeed your grandpa made this as a last 'hoorah' to go out on, then he's alright in my book, and he's gonna love it when my grandpa gets there...he's a horrible prankster as well!

**EDIT** changed the line 'definitely is a fake' to 'most likely is a fake' because it's not my place to be the end all decider of this, and I don't claim to know whether it is or not a fake.

[edit on 15-8-2008 by teflon_superhero]

Originally posted by Azazelus
Those staples have held up remarkably well in relation to the rest of the document, no?

That's the first thing I noticed. Doesn't look like any oxidation at all, much less any number of years.

The "president" signature on the first page is a tip-off:

It looks like it was written by a teenager or younger.