It was deja vu when the Rev. George Murphy picked up last Monday's newspaper and saw a curious tale of time travel.

Now the Tallmadge minister has changed the ending of the story, contributing a final chapter to the work of a British man who spent a year tracking down the origins of a popular myth.

Murphy, a science fiction fan, said he read with interest about the efforts of Chris Aubeck, a Londoner living in Spain whose hobby is unraveling paranormal mysteries.

Aubeck's most recent project involved the New York City case of Rudolph Fentz, who reportedly walked out of his home in 1876 and straight into Times Square traffic in 1950, where he was struck by a cab and killed.

Aubeck backtracked through 50 years of European publications that had told different versions of the story -- an adventure that took him through six countries and landed him squarely at the grave of a Summit County man.

In an article scheduled to appear in the Spanish magazine Enigmas, Aubeck prepared to identify the late Ralph Holland of Cuyahoga Falls as the source of the story that crossed the Atlantic and made believers out of so many.

But after Murphy read the details of Holland's time travel tale in the Akron Beacon Journal, he headed straight for the book collection in his basement.

``I thought, `Wait a minute. This story seems awfully familiar,' '' said Murphy, who has been an avid science fiction reader for 40 years.

His instincts were right. Murphy found the same story in a book that predated the 1953 Holland work by two years.

The book, Tomorrow, The Stars, was an anthology edited by Robert A. Heinlein. The misfortune of Rudolph Fentz was part of a story written by Jack Finney, who had also written the time-travel novel Time and Again and the science fiction thriller The Body Snatchers.

So how does Holland fit into the picture now?

Now there's a real mystery for you.

Aubeck has been unable to find the original 1953 Ralph Holland booklet A Voice In The Gallery that told the Fentz story.

His research relied on a 1972 journal published by the California-based Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, which printed the Fentz story and named Holland as its source.

Aubeck said he believes Borderland -- a group that researches the supernatural -- was using the Fentz story to advance theories of time travel.

But did Holland believe the Fentz story to be real when he rewrote it for his own publication? He was deceased at the time of the Borderland story, but in life, he was a member of the group.

Did Holland fail to give credit to Finney when he published his version of the Fentz story? That could explain why Borderland confused a science fiction story with an investigative report.

Or was Holland simply a science fiction fan who enjoyed re-telling a good yarn -- a motivation that was misunderstood 20 years later? After all, he was president of the National Fantasy Fan Federation.

We may never know.

``I guess it's a good example of how urban legends are born,'' said Murphy, who serves as a pastoral associate with St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Akron.

Murphy noted how Jack Finney wrote his story in a realistic manner, as if a New York detective was coming clean of a bizarre case that weighed heavily on his mind.

``I can remember when I was young, being thrown off by that'' kind of writing style, Murphy said. But an adult, he added, would have less of an excuse since the Finney story was clearly labeled science fiction.

Meanwhile, Aubeck is heading back to the computer to write a new ending for his magazine article, the first of two parts slated for September.

With the addition of Murphy's discovery, Akron's part in this saga has now been doubled.

And Aubeck said Holland's role is still a significant one, even though he's no longer ``the father of Fentz.''

While Aubeck can only speculate as to Holland's intentions, his Voice appears to be a turning point when the fictional Fentz story takes a sudden leap into the realm of folklore.

``Holland's publication influenced the opinions of people in six countries,'' Aubeck said, and fueled theories of teleportation for the next five decades.

Anyone with more insight into Holland or in possession of the Voice publication can e-mail Aubeck at caubeck@yahoo.com.