Mike Marcum: Did He Invent a Time Machine?
A Diagram of Mike Marcum’s proposed time travel machine. Copyright Mike Marcum. Image source: anomalien.com.
In 1996 and 1997 a man named Mike Marcum appeared on Art Bell’s radio show, Coast to Coast Radio, to talk about his experiments with time travel.
It is said that not long after this he disappeared. A few months later someone called in to Art’s show with a story about a man who was found dead on a California beach in the 1930’s, his body mangled within a strange metal tube and with a device on him that resembled a cell phone. Could this be the first documented case of time travel?
Mike Marcum’s Time Travel Experiments
Mike Marcum was 21 years old and studying to become an electrician when he began messing around with the idea of creating a time machine. He enjoyed playing around on his front porch with his new found electrical skills and modified the laser from a CD player to reduce air resistance between two poles.
A Jacob’s Ladder Device in action. Photo credit: Brian Klutch
He created what is known as a Jacob’s Ladder. This is a device that causes an arc of electricity to travel in a cyclical way between two metal rods.
Marcum noticed something strange about his device. It had created a heat mark on his porch in a circular shape as if a vortex had been created around his device.
Marcum decided to try throwing a sheet metal screw through the vortex to see what would happen. He claims that the screw disappeared for half a second before reappearing a few feet away.
After a few more experiments the CD laser caught on fire. Marcum decided if he was going to have to build the device from scratch he might as well use bigger transformers. Unfortunately he didn’t have the money for these so he resorted to stealing six 300 pound transformers from a power generation site in King City, MO.
His experiments with these giant transformers caused blackouts in his neighborhood which allowed the police to track him down and arrest him. He was sent to prison for a few months for the theft of the transformers.
A photograph of Mike Marcum.
After he was released from prison in 1996, Mike Marcum was invited to come on Art Bell’s radio show and discuss his experiments. He told the story of his time travel experiments so far and vowed to only do things within the law from now on. He gave out his cell phone number on air and received hundreds of calls from listeners offering him new ideas and financial help.
Marcum got in trouble with the law again and was evicted from his apartment for allegedly using his time machine to transport a cat over a block away. Marcum claims this was untrue.
After appearing on Coast to Coast radio Marcum was able to create a much bigger time travel experiment that he intended to test on himself. Art Bell asked him to appear on his show again a year later.
On his second appearance on the show Marcum claimed his new time travel machine was similar to the one used by the US military in the Philadelphia Experiment, using a rotating magnetic field.
He claimed it was now big enough for a man to walk into and he would be ready to try it out on himself in just a few weeks. Art asked Marcum what he would take with him in the machine and he replied ‘just my cell phone’.
An article in Nexus online magazine claims that after appearing on Coast to Coast radio a second time Marcum was gifted over $20,000, a warehouse in Kansas City and over a million dollars worth of equipment to continue his experiments.
Mike Marcum built his machine several feet in the air inside his Kansas City warehouse and began throwing guinea pigs in side the circular vortex as it formed. Marcum claimed the guinea pigs would disappear inside the vortex and reappear in the warehouse parking lot every time either on the east or west side of the building, never the north or south.
Marcum decided to test the time machine on himself in 1998. He jumped into the arc and claims woke up in a farm field in Ohio, cold, hungry and miles from the closest town.
He ended up making his way to a homeless shelter in Cincinnati and realised it was now the year 2000. He had somehow lost 2 years during his journey. Marcum returned to his warehouse in Kansas city only to find it empty with no trace of his notes, records or the time machine.
The article telling us of the Kansas City experiments has since gone offline and it is difficult to verify its accuracy.
Where is Mike Marcum Now?
A video telling the story of Mike Marcum and his time machine
A few months after Marcum’s last appearance on air a Coast to Coast listener called in with a fascinating story. He had discovered news reports from the 1930’s of a man whose body was found washed up on a beach in California.
His body was found completely mangled inside a metal tube with a strange device next to him which would match the description of a cell phone. Did Mike Marcum really succeed in his time travel ambitions and end up dead in 1930?
Probably not. At least not yet anyway! It turns out Mike Marcum is still in fact very much alive. He started a gofundme a few years ago to try and further his experiments and get back to the mainland.
A man claiming to be Mike Marcum on a paranormal forum claimed that has continued to work on his time machine research to this day.
It turns out Mike Marcum is on facebook! You can follow him here and see what exciting time travel experiments he is working on now.
Do you think Mike Marcum succeeded in creating a time machine or will we need to keep waiting for someone to finally figure out time travel? Let us know in the comments!
If you enjoyed this article you may also like to learn about time slips and missing time stories.
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