A Man Showed Up Soaking Wet on a British Island, and No One Knows Who He Is or Where He’s From

He claims he’s British and even quoted Shakespeare to prove it, but there’s no record of anyone with his name ever existing.

By Braden Bjella

Published 4 months ago in Wtf

This is 35-year-old David Law — allegedly. See, Law’s story is a little weird, because while he insists he’s a British citizen, no one can find any record of him ever existing.

What makes matters even stranger is that Law doesn’t appear to be a lifelong resident of, well, anywhere.

About 10 months ago, he showed up on the shores of the British island of Jersey claiming that he had just swum there from France (about 14 miles away). According to him, he was born in London but raised in Myanmar in a family of Hong Kong Chinese aid workers. He says he was brought to Europe on a yacht in 2007, and since then, he has lived in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Only in 2023 did he decide that he wanted to return to his alleged home of the U.K., which he apparently did by swimming to Jersey.

Police aren’t buying this story, but they don’t really know what to do about it. He’s currently in jail for illegally entering the country, but when he’s released, they can’t deport him (his home is unknown), they can’t allow him to work (his nationality is under dispute) and he can’t even apply for asylum because he claims to be British.

I say let him stay — living in Britain is punishment enough!