Does This Missouri Man Have a Piece of an Alien Craft? Part 1

Author’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on Missourian Bob White and his battle to prove that, yes, the truth is out there.

Bob White saw something strange in 1985.

He can explain it – and often does – but people don’t believe him. That is something he can’t explain.

The 75-year-old Reeds Spring, Mo., man (76 in March) was driving through Colorado with a friend around 2 a.m. when they saw a light on the roadside near the Colorado/Utah border. The light, White said, shouldn’t have been there.

“It was a huge light on the ground,” White said. “The light I saw was the size of a three-story building.”

White sat in the passenger seat and watched as his friend slowed the car.

“She was scared,” he said.

White’s friend turned off the car’s engine and headlights.

“We coasted as close to this item as we could,” he said. “She didn’t want to stop but we did.”

They sat in the car, looking at the bright light when White’s friend turned on the headlights.

“Then the thing shot up in the sky,” White said.

The light merged with other lights hovering in the sky above them.

“Two tubular neon lights with a blue light in between,” White said. “The other light shot across the sky and disappeared in seconds. I know we don’t have anything that moves that fast or that silently.”

White and his friend watched the lights streak across the sky, then another light – small and orange – broke free and fell to earth close to them.

“This thing was ejected from it,” White said, claiming the object was intelligently dropped. “If this thing had just fallen it would have shot miles from me.”

White and his friend watched the orange light shoot through the Colorado night and land near their car. It hit the ground over a hill, leaving a furrow that took him to an object he says is from the stars.

“When it landed, I followed the groove in the ground,” he said. “It came down at an angle and kind of skimmed the hillside. When I came across it, it was still glowing.”

White said he had to take the object with him.

“I walked back to the car and opened the trunk to see if there was anything I could pick it up with,” he said. He found a leather glove – that was it. Twenty minutes later, he made it back to the crash site.

“I walked back there and dropped the glove on it and picked it up,” he said. The thing had lost its glow, so White brushed the back of his hand across it. It was cool. “This thing heats and cools rapidly.”

He picked up the object – metallic, about 7 1/2 inches long resembling petrified wood – and took it back to the car.

“This thing came down out of the sky,” White said. “It was … glowing like it was on fire. I know they’re out there. There’s no doubt in my mind it wasn’t anything of this earth. It couldn’t be.”

Next week: White begins his quest to prove the object was made by extraterrestrials.

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things Fortean. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots,” is coming in May. Order yours now! FREE SHIPPING when you order online at: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849

Mike Marcum and the Time Machine

Where in the world is Mike Marcum?

Well, considering the nature of Marcum’s hobby, the question should probably be when in the world is Mike Marcum?

Marcum attempted to construct a time machine in 1995 on the porch of his house in Stanberry, Mo., because he wanted to get winning lottery numbers from the future.

“That’s right,” Gentry County Sheriff Eugene Lupfer said. “That’s just exactly right.”

Lupfer had worked the Marcum case and remembered it well. He laughed when I made the call about the time machine.

“Yeah,” Lupfer said. “I think he thought he could do it.”

In 1995, Marcum, a 21-year-old with two years college-level electrical training, had constructed a table-top Jacobs Ladder in his rental house in Stanberry.

A Jacobs Ladder consists of two metal rods with a spark going between them. In the old movies, one of these babies helped bring Frankenstein to life. And, like Dr. Frankenstein, when Marcum turned on his Jacobs Ladder, something big happened.

“Right above it, it was like a regular heat signature but it was kinda like circular shaped in the center,” Marcum said in a 1995 interview with paranormal talk show host Art Bell. “At first I didn’t know what it was. I’m not 100 percent certain now.”

He tossed a sheet metal screw into the circular shape.

“I didn’t know what this thing was so I got the notion to throw a screw in it and see what it did,” he told Bell. “I threw (the screw) in there and I didn’t see it after that.”

The screw disappeared, Marcum said, then reappeared a few feet away a second later.

Curious, Marcum did the only thing he considered logical – he built a man-sized Jacobs Ladder on his porch. But to make it work, he needed power.

“He stole some transformers,” Lupfer said. “And had them hooked up in his house and he was going to make a time machine.”

Marcum had taken six 300-plus pound transformers from a St. Joseph Light and Power generating station in King City, Mo.

“They were sitting in an electrical sub-station,” the former electric superintendent of Stanberry said. “They were in an enclosed fenced in area – padlocked.”

The former electric superintendent was willing to tell me about Marcum, but he wasn’t willing to give his name. Stanberry’s a small town, time machines are weird, and people might talk.

“Some of the transformers he had in that house, we had to go down because they (could have been) contaminated,” the former superintendent said. “He had that Jacobs ladder hooked up.”

Lupfer said, even though Marcum served “some jail time” because of his experiment, he was fortunate.

“It’s a wonder he hadn’t blown the whole block up,” Lupfer said. “When he turned it on, the houses for blocks would go dim.”

After serving his sentence, Marcum moved to an apartment in St. Joseph and was evicted while working on another time machine, according to the New York Times. Marcum announced on Bell’s radio show the rumor he’d thrown a cat through his machine, “it just ain’t true.”

During Marcum’s second, and last, appearance on Bell’s show in 1996, he said he was 30 days away from completing his “legal” time machine. By January 1997, Marcum had disappeared.

Was Marcum sane or …

“Crazy?” Lupfer said. “No, he was smart. He wasn’t a dumb guy. He just had this in his head and thought he could do it.”

And maybe he did. No one knows where he is.

Mike, if you’re out there, my number’s in the book.

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author and fan of all things Fortean. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri,” will soon be available at www.jasonoffutt.com and all major bookstores.

Readers respond to Shadow People

The 10-year-old was lying in bed when he saw something – someone – in his room.

“A tall shadow bent over my top bunk bed as I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep,” anonymous posted on from-the-shadows.blogspot.com. “But holy hell, it scared me half to death.”

He’d seen a shadow person. Since I reported on shadow people in early December, I’ve heard dozens of stories from people living in Missouri, Kansas, New York, California and Hawaii. All have seen dark, human shapes creeping through their lives – sometimes unnervingly active. Here are their tales:

Paul, of West Covina, Calif., saw a shadow person in the late ’90s while spending the night at a friend’s.

“I (woke) up maybe around 3 a.m. and see this dark figure walk across the hallway into her daughter’s room,” he said. “Chills ran down my spine. … I immediately got up and ran to her daughter’s room fearing for the safety of her child. When I went into the room, the night light was on and there was nobody there.”

Mike, of Junction City, Kan., was living in Kansas City, Kan., when a shadow person invaded his home.

“I was frequently troubled by something that would slam doors in my house,” he said.

Then, one day, he saw it.

“I was in my bathroom in the basement,” Mike said. “The only light that was on was the bathroom light. As I was looking in the mirror I saw a black shadowy figure walk behind me. It was darker than anything else around it, as if all the light had been absorbed from the surrounding area. It was standing upright and it scared the hell out of me. I immediately left the house.”

Mike saw the shadow person twice more, but he often heard it “walking and just messing with things around the house,” he said. “I have moved three times since then, and I can’t seem to lose it.”

At eight years old in 1989, John, of Wisconsin, saw a black figure in his house.

“I was sleeping in my room and I could feel something pushing the bed in my sleep,” John said. “I woke up and noticed the dark figure was standing at the end of the bed. It was dark in my room, but this figure was so dark it just stood out.”

John finished sleeping the night with his parents.

“A couple of weeks after that, my parents got into an argument and my dad slept in my room and I slept on the couch,” he said. “Everyone was sleeping when I awoke to a scream. A few minutes later I heard my mom and dad talking at the kitchen table. My dad was sleeping and felt someone pushing at the end of the bed. He woke up and saw a man.

“This thing was the darkest shade of black I have ever seen,” John said. “So much that in a pitch black room it still stands out because it is so black. It was a perfect shape of a man. I don't know if it's evil or just mischievous, but I don't think it’s a friendly spirit.”

Gary G. Ford of Calgary, Alberta, challenges those who don’t acknowledge shadow people.

“They are enough to scare the works out of most people who want to deny these experiences can happen,” Gary wrote. “But I(’ve) experienced them. I know they are real, and that makes the universe more complicated than simple-minded theoreticians wish to entertain.”

For more stories on shadow people, go to: http://from-the-shadows.blogspot.com/2006/12/shadow-people.html.

Copyright 2006 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author and fan of all things Fortean. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri,” will soon be available at www.jasonoffutt.com and all major bookstores.

Moving tombstones

Things aren’t always as they seem.

Hazel Ridge Cemetery can’t be seen from the highway. A pock-marked gravel road veers from a nameless blacktop in Chariton County, Mo., and cuts through a small swath of trees toward a graveyard that is home to Pettis Perkinson, a pre-Civil War farmer whose slave B.K. Bruce would later become the first black Treasurer of the United States.

It’s all but forgotten.

Ghost hunter Ryan Straub visits the cemetery often. The cemetery never gets tiresome to Ryan because it’s never the same.

“The environment seems to change,” Ryan said. “I’ve been to that place 500 times and every time it’s different. The whole environment changes. The trees move. The tombstones move. I know it sounds weird, but … I’ve got every section mapped out and they’re not the way they were.”

Ryan’s investigated ghosts since a car wreck at 16.

“I started seeing things,” he said. “Spirits.”

A friend of Ryan’s, Mike Haurcade, has also experienced the Hazel Ridge topography-changing phenomena.

“I still don’t really know how to explain it,” he said. “We both drew maps from memory, Ryan and I, and they both matched. When we got to the cemetery that night, some of the tombstones didn’t match the ones we’d mapped. Some of the trees were in different places than other times, and some of the larger tombstones were in different spots. So, unless both of our memories are faulty, something changed.”

Could be. Fellow ghost hunter Kurt Ostrom has seen it.

“I saw a couple of gravestones shift last time,” Kurt said, standing amidst stones that ranged from the early 1800s to 1987. Kurt said the stones didn’t just wiggle. During one visit to Hazel Ridge, a fellow ghost hunter was leaning on a stone that simply wasn’t there anymore, almost dumping him onto the ground.

Dr. Dave Oester, of the International Ghost Hunters Society, has seen this phenomenon before.

“What you describe is what we call a dimensional shift,” Dave said. “It is where a parallel dimension overlaps into our dimension transferring the other dimension into our physical dimension. This is why the gravestones shift locations ... This deals with parallel worlds.”

Ryan may have even seen the gateway to those worlds.

“I’ve come down here before and I’ve seen a mirage,” Ryan said. “I’ve had a couple of people think there’s a vortex, but I wasn’t going to walk into it or something stupid like that.”

Ryan, Mike, and Kurt have all seen things in Hazel Ridge Cemetery they couldn’t explain.

“The first time (I stayed the night) I had a pup tent spread out,” Ryan said. “I turned around to get a hammer and when I turned back the tent was folded up and in the box.”

Lights, noises, and other paranormal phenomenon throughout the world have commonly been explained away as tricks of light and shadow, atmospheric disturbances and gasses escaping from the ground. Ryan and Mike explore these avenues before pinning the supernatural tag on an experience.

“We both look at physics,” Ryan said. “We try to recreate a piece of evidence over and over until we prove it or disprove it. (But) I don’t think gasses can put a tent back in a box.”

Copyright 2006 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author and fan of all things Fortean. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri,” will soon be available at www.jasonoffutt.com and all major bookstores.