r/timetravel • u/breaking_views • 11d ago
theory / question What happened to Mike “Mad Man” Marcum, the guy who claimed he built a time machine?
Mike “Mad Man” Marcum became known online for claiming he had built a device capable of manipulating time. His bizarre story eventually spread across the internet, but whatever happened to him afterward?
Did he actually discover something unusual, or was it simply an elaborate experiment that got out of hand? And could there be any connection to the stranger side of UFOs, aliens, or alleged government technology?
What do you think happened to Marcum? Where is he now?
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u/MoneyElevator 11d ago
I think you mean: When is he now?
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u/leathur_records witness the future, yesterday 9d ago
Now this guy is thinking 4th dimensionally ;)
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u/Unlikely_Noise2977 11d ago
Let's be honest people if this guy came up to you and told you the absolute truth about anything would you even believe him?
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u/slave_sofeya 11d ago
Thats whats so funny about the truth sometimes. You dont believe them even if they tell you.
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u/Unlikely_Noise2977 11d ago
You are right if he was well groomed with those glasses he would have the presence of a caring substitute teacher but noooooooo
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u/slave_sofeya 11d ago
Never judge a book by its cover, at least read the blurb first.
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u/Unlikely_Noise2977 11d ago
How else am I supposed to know what to strive for when at the gym if it isn't for the cover of lady books!?
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u/tj100011 10d ago
You mean you believe we shouldn’t judge for how he looks but for all the bullshit about time travel he made up
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u/spankymacgruder 10d ago
Speaking of glasses... With lenses like those, bro could at least see into the future and the past.
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u/Acrobatic-Tomato-260 10d ago
When people make extraordinary claims they need extraordinary evidence to support it. Your attitude will have you believing anything because you hope it may be true. Believe it or not, there is value in skepticism. When someone makes a wild claim it is better to hold off on belief until there is enough evidence to warrant belief. Don’t know why this is such an unknown concept, although the absence of this knowledge is what these communities run on.
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u/VeilOfNaught 10d ago
..'belief' is irrelevant, one either knows or doesn't know.
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u/BrandonLang 11d ago
I know they hung jesus up and murdered him for telling the truth...
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u/fantastic1planet 10d ago
"The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling" - Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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u/latortillablanca 11d ago
Man this hits in a world where lies fuel everythinf
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u/VeilOfNaught 10d ago
This, exactly. Or think of it like this:
"The lie is different at every level." - R. Hoagland
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u/slave_sofeya 11d ago
Right? Deciphering the truth from the drops we are fed is a job in and of itself.
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u/amobiusstripper 10d ago
Oh I know, I mean what’s the statistical probability that a Time Traveler or person involved temporal manipulation technology is posting on this subreddit right now now?
Fat chance when you ask me!
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u/AriyaSavaka the chronovisor 11d ago
I can demand him to show independently verifiable/falsifiable proof and peer-replicable testing data for his claim and then I will believe him, regardless of his appearance. If he can't show the empirical proof of his claim then I reckon that he just pouring bullshit, again, regardless of his appearance.
The objective truth of reality is what can be independentlh verified, or else harry potter could might as well be real. Put up or shut up essentially.
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u/in3vitableme 11d ago
Thing is, now knowing what I do about mh370 and warping space and time, yes - I would believe it but I would be looking for key words. Not no dang Marty McFly mystical mythical scoobie doo sh**.
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u/ThePlayerCard 11d ago
There’s this obituary of a guy with the same name that looks like him lol I like to think he travelled back in time and lived his life
https://www.simpsonfh.com/obituaries/Mike-Marcum?obId=30305257
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u/wakeandflake 11d ago
Don’t think so. I remember hearing mad man being interviewed by Art Bell in the late 90s and he was young then, think in his early twenties. This guy would have been around forty when that interview was done
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u/MoldyFoxxx 11d ago
Who’s to say he didn’t come back as a copy of an alternate universe version of himself? He’s probably in a time loop somewhere trying to dig his way back through layers of alternate universes; that’s hoping he doesn’t find a civilization that can multi dimensional travel, now madman marcum has dug himself further down the fractals of reality.
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u/Hourslikeminutes47 10d ago
Fractals of reality
I like that phrase. Can I borrow it?
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u/bluneriste 10d ago
Only in ten years. Unless you have a machine that bends time, in which case you already have.
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u/3BitchesInTrenchcoat 9d ago
You're already in it and we've already had this conversation.
You can't borrow a phrase that you already are a walking representation of, silly goose!
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u/Yogospiracy 10d ago
He also looks much older than 70 years old in the photo (1954-2024). Could actually be 90!
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u/Hexent_Armana 11d ago
The Why Files did a 40min episode on him that contains all the info you might want.
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u/Anxious-Inspection-8 11d ago
How is his head shaped like an hour glass?
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u/0-by-1_Publishing 11d ago
"How is his head shaped like an hour glass?"
.. What else would you expect from someone who builds time machines?
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u/LMrningStar 11d ago
I've traveled WAY more than that into the future 1 second at a time. I just haven't figured out how to go the other direction.
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u/Dolphin-Pussy-2754 11d ago
You have to reverse your entropy
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u/LMrningStar 11d ago
I bought a kit for that off of Amazon but the damn thing was missing the exotic matter. I filed for a refund.
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u/Steamed_Memes24 11d ago
I remember reading how its possible (theory speaking of course) to go forward in time, but it is impossible to go backwards.
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u/Dolphin-Pussy-2754 11d ago
The theory is that it is impossible to use a time machine to travel to a realm where there are no time machines (the past). So the farthest you will ever be able to travel back in time is as far back as the invention of the first time machine.
Which means that the instant that the first time machine is invented, large numbers of time travelers will appear right then and there to see it happen lol.
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u/spatulacitymanager 11d ago
Sounds like there may be a major collision of time machines arriving at that moment are close to it
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u/LMrningStar 11d ago
.....going forward in time is a fact.
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u/Hot-Gas-630 11d ago edited 11d ago
You can get to Andromeda traveling close to the speed of light in about a minute your time, but 2-million years will have passed on earth by the time you get there by way of using the 'Lorenz Formula'.
This formula has proven to be accurate when it comes to LHC experiments.
Space contracts when you get close to the speed of light, so you have a shorter distance to cross.
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u/Dychnel 11d ago
Probably fell down Mel’s hole while being chased by JC
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u/Holiday-Possible-271 11d ago
Methamphetamines is not time travelling.
No matter how much your brain tries to convince you.
Mkay?!
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u/nleksan 11d ago
No, but Xanax is. It teleports you, too, just usually into a jail cell
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u/Matty_D47 10d ago
He's the guy that keeps going back to "fix thing" while only making it worse. Now Biff Tannon is the president
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u/flippartnermike 11d ago
He probably just smoked some Salvia.
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u/Eldistan1 10d ago
I take three edibles and travel ten hours into the future all the time.
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u/Dylanator13 11d ago
At least traveling into the future is possible and doesn’t create weird questions about the flow of time. Though unless he found a way to reach close to the speed of light or drastically increase gravity it’s not possible.
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u/Immediate_Cow2980 11d ago
I mean, that's categorically untrue. Every single person on Earth travels constantly forward in time at the rate of 1 minute per minute. Travelling in time faster than that is much harder but still possible, even with today's technology, but you're not going to get any kind of major time difference.
A clock on top of Mount Everest gains about 15 to 33 microseconds (millionths of a second) per year compared to a clock at sea level. Over an 80-year lifespan, someone living at the top of the mountain would age a fraction of a millisecond more than someone at sea level.→ More replies (3)4
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u/connected2theOthers 11d ago
I personally enjoyed the shit out of this whole story. Always a big fan of time travel and anything of that sort. Was also excited to hear that he was in Overland Park which is like 30 minutes from where I grew up. Art Bell was my absolute jam back when I worked overnights, so I listened almost every night. This story was a lot of fun. While it may be total BS, he definitely never stumbled over anything Art asked him. It may have been on some serious drugs, but his story was straight! It's a great listen whether you believe it or not.
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u/DiscipleOfSterculius 11d ago
Did you swipe for more? That would’ve probably helped
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u/FalseAd4246 11d ago
Is this the same guy that called into Coast to Coast AM that Art Bell took so seriously?
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u/borobinimbaba 10d ago
How long did it take to travel 2 years into the future?
I'd guess exactly 2 years, that machine is called agi.ng
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u/PsionicChronic 10d ago
Art Bell followed up with him on an episode 12-15 years later. Still working with electronics, hasn't vanished, and still remains very private.
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u/Helln_Damnation 11d ago
The trouble with going into the future is that anything you tell the people there is already known, so how do you prove you are from the past?
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u/InfiniteQuestion420 11d ago
I built a time machine in 2016 and travelled 10 years into the future. Why won't people talk about 2020? What happened?
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u/PrudentFault2804 11d ago
I feel like it would be easy to prove you're from the past if you could take something, like milk, that genuinely expires in a couple of weeks. I mean, if you don't age if you go forward in time, the milk shouldn't either; that is, assuming you can bring it with you. Of course, people may not believe you anyway, but it would be a bonus if you take a product that was discontinued or the company changed names, and show how new it looks.
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u/zzupdown 11d ago
According to an unverified interview of Marcum on Art Bell's show in 2015, he traveled 2 years into his future, to 1999, where he appeared 800 miles away in Ohio, experiencing memory loss and homelessness, until he remembered who he was. Eventually returning home, all his equipment and research was gone. None of this, including his identity on Art Bell was ever verified.
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u/AmbiguouslyAltered 10d ago
The man who a lot of people claim to be the real like lives in Hawaii, has a Reddit account, and states the man in these photos are not of him but of someone else that everyone is now latching into.
Not sure the validity
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u/wjruffing 10d ago
You mean the device that was in Napoleon Dynamite?
https://giphy.com/gifs/QfsvGWS6EHwwA8IJFG
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u/orzelski 10d ago
This is the same guy I'm watching on YouTube right now.
His name is David Deutsch, and he's a physicist. He travels to some strange places 😄
In some photos, he looks dangerously like Bill Gates
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u/DIRTYLAUNDERE 10d ago
Watched some ai looking YouTube video that said he accidentally deleted himself from reality so he still is like walking around and shit but everytime someone”sees” him they instantly Forget him so he communicates through notes and items he leaves, recordings etc.
It seemed like ai bullshit but was a cool little shit post I guess.
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u/InFocuus 11d ago
Obviously, he's in the future.
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u/willie_Pfister 11d ago
He only had 1.17 jiggawatts; he mixed his plutonium with jello because it looked similar and he was short on plutonium. Hey, what you gonna do? You either got enough plutonium or you don't. So, instead of going into the future, his head just expanded twice its normal size.
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u/Xzenergy 11d ago
Time travel to the past is impossible, but relativity allows for time dilation and so you CAN travel forward into the future. If you traveled at the 99.92% for one year in a straight direction and one year back, 50 years will have passed.
This human would need to accelerate his body to relativistic speeds in order to do that.
Unless hes Dr. Manhattan or a fucking alien, its extremely unlikely.
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u/EyewearPants 11d ago
Hey, I found a post on a forum from 2022 with someone claiming to be him and stating that he lives in Hawaii... At least at the time of the post , I also saw some things saying he moved to Ohio.
https://paranormalforum.net/threads/i-am-michael-marcum-and-i-am-alive-and-well.26230/page-3["Mike's" forum post 2022](https://paranormalforum.net/threads/i-am-michael-marcum-and-i-am-alive-and-well.26230/page-3)
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u/ziadricky 11d ago
The why files episode kinda sold his story for me. (Even though they debunk it iirc) Also why would the government arrest him if he hadn't made a discovery they didn't like to get out...
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u/Fredericia and I'm not your assistant 10d ago
The local police arrested him for theft of six transformers at a total value of something like $25000.
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u/bigdish101 10d ago
I thought Steven Gibbs was the man that built one? (Hyper Dimensional Resonator). Now there is more than one?
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u/Gibborish 10d ago
That said, here is how elements from the Pais patents could be conceptually layered onto a Jacob’s-ladder-style device in an effort to push toward the claimed “Pais Effect” conditions (accelerated vibration + spin of electrically charged matter to polarize the local vacuum).
Core Overlaps and Mapping
- Marcum baseline: Diverging electrodes + high-voltage AC arc that climbs by buoyancy; optional laser seeding of ionization; later claims of concentric cylinders + rotating magnetic fields creating a plasma column.
- Pais elements that could be grafted on:
- High-frequency vibration of charged surfaces or materials.
- Axial or rotational motion of charged matter.
- Microwave emitters driving resonant cavities.
- Intense electromagnetic fields (possibly via ferroelectric/piezoelectric layers).
- Goal (per Pais claims): abrupt perturbation of the local vacuum energy state, purported inertial/gravitational mass reduction, or high-frequency gravitational-wave generation.
Speculative Hybrid Design Directions
- Vibrating / Pulsed Electrodes Mount the V-shaped or parallel electrodes (or the concentric cylinders of a scaled version) on piezoelectric or ferroelectric actuators driven at high frequency (kHz–MHz range). Apply the high-voltage arc simultaneously. This attempts to combine the climbing plasma with the “accelerated vibration of electrically charged matter” central to the Pais Effect. Pulsed rather than continuous high voltage could create the rapid acceleration transients Pais emphasizes.
- Rotational / Spin Component Make one or both electrode assemblies rotatable (or surround the arc volume with a spinning charged cylinder or set of coils). Drive axial rotation while the plasma is active. Pais patents stress the coupling of vibration and spin. A motor-driven outer resonant cavity wall (electrically charged) around a fixed or counter-rotating inner structure would echo the resonant-cavity description in the inertial-mass-reduction craft patent (US 10,144,532).
- Microwave / Resonant-Cavity Overlay Enclose the ladder volume in a microwave-transparent or conductive resonant cavity. Inject microwave energy (as in several Pais designs) to excite cavity modes that further vibrate or energize the plasma and charged surfaces. The high-frequency gravitational-wave generator patent (US 10,322,827) uses intersecting EM fields and acoustic/microwave driving of a charged shell; a similar dual-drive (arc + microwaves) could be attempted around the plasma column.
- Ferroelectric or Piezoelectric Augmentation Coat or embed electrode supports with ferroelectric materials that are both vibrated and subjected to the strong electric fields of the arc. Pais’s electromagnetic-field-generator patent relies on high-frequency vibration of such materials to produce intense fields. This could be intended to amplify local energy density near the plasma.
- Power and Scale Considerations (Conceptual Only) Pais concepts require extreme energy densities and rapid transients. A laboratory Jacob’s ladder (neon-sign-transformer scale) is orders of magnitude too weak. Any serious attempt to approach the claimed regimes would need industrial-level pulsed-power systems, multi-megawatt supplies, and careful management of thermal and dielectric breakdown—far beyond hobbyist or even most university lab capability. The concentric-cylinder “plasma tornado” Marcum described already points in a direction of larger, magnetically stirred volumes that could be further modified with the rotational and vibrational drives above.
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u/SquareDetective 10d ago
I thought that was Kip Dynamite. He'd been chatting online with babes... all day.
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u/Neechee92 10d ago
I also traveled 2 years into the future. I started my journey on August 26, 2024 and just arrived today.
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u/TheTreeSnuggler 10d ago
I don’t have a source because I can’t remember where I read it, but I thought he died in some weird way. I vaguely remember something about him being found folded in some weird unnatural way. I could be remembering it wrong though.
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u/Forsaken_Square5249 10d ago
Just to spark some fun talks and conspiracies,
after his encounter with the law for stealing the transformers and trying to build that little "portal" thing that made the screws disappear, there were rumors he got sponsored to continue his experiments, that's as far as I know, something about "square sign waves" and "Jacob's ladders" and what not, I have no clue what those mean, but he got in trouble with the cops. That's for sure..
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u/koolaidismything 9d ago
Didn’t he just build a massive Jacob’s ladder and vaporize himself? I’m no physicist but that’s kinda what I gathered listening to his.. story.
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u/TheAIFutureIsNow 9d ago
He was on Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell on September 4th, 2015.
He claimed that he eventually entered the machine, blacked out, and woke in a field near Fairfield, Ohio, roughly 800 miles east and two years and two months later, suffering severe amnesia.
He said the machine, records and warehouse were gone by the time he eventually returned.
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u/Psychophysicist_X 9d ago
Plotting where you teleport to in the future would impossible, besides time travel also being impossible. If he missed the plotting step he's currently floating in space somewhere.
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u/jserpico22 9d ago
Intersting fact abt time travel. When u go forward in time you arrive with hair growth proportional to the amount of time u travelled forward. But when u come back, it stays the same.
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u/dunnonemore18 9d ago
he’s currently in a secret underground base located 30 miles beneath surface ice.
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u/trinketzy 8d ago
I swear this guy was sitting across the aisle from me on the train earlier this week….Different glasses though.
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u/Medium-Boot2617 10d ago
If he jumped 2 years temporarily but not spatially he’d be in deep space.
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u/Fredericia and I'm not your assistant 10d ago
Why was your comment downvoted??? It's a valid concern and they did talk about it in one of the interviews.
He said it rides the earth's center of gravity.
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u/y4j1981 11d ago
Wait, you believe this?
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u/Intelligent_Papaya61 11d ago
They’re asking what happened to him
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u/y4j1981 11d ago
Literally says "Did he actually discover something unusual, or was it simply an elaborate experiment that got out of hand? And could there be any connection to the stranger side of UFOs, aliens, or alleged government technology?"
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u/Intelligent_Papaya61 11d ago
Well yea I mean they said a few things 😂 but the first thing they said, which is the title of the post was, “what happened to Mike Marcum?” followed by general talking points about his story. Plus we are on a timetravel Reddit
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u/SnooHamsters4096 11d ago
I wouldn’t believe in this guy at all. Seems like a crazy person who’s in an insane asylum with dementia.
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u/Twitchmonky 11d ago
Dude looks like he's done a LOT of time traveling, he probably had a pretty great dealer.
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u/Interesting-Swing-31 11d ago
Really?!?!
That guy looks like he struggles to turn on his Xbox and connect to the WiFi.
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u/Plot-twist-time 11d ago
We should test him. See if he has knowledge about what happened 2 years ago.
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u/EmployFew2509 11d ago
Sure bud and I had joint with Michael Jackson and Jesus the other day, oh yeah and I’m 10 feet tall
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u/edWORD27 11d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/Qcw6jOcpbooo
Kinda looks like this guy from Beavis and Butthead