Among the many stories of disappearances, the most unusual are those in which people who disappear, literally to nowhere, suddenly reappear. Sometimes many kilometers away from their former location, and almost always with bizarre, albeit vague, accounts of their mysterious journeys. But there are times when people don't remember anything at all and can't give exactly any details.
Moreover, in some cases, these incredible appearances occur where search teams have already searched. And not just once, but several times. The fact that they could simply have been overlooked is almost impossible.
The strange disappearance and reappearance of Stephen Kubacki in the same state of Michigan in the late 1970s. And that's just the story we now know about. And how many similar stories there were that occurred in earlier times that have gone unrecorded, we can only guess. And what lies behind these strange disappearances?
‘The Michigan Triangle’ is a famous, anomalous stretch of land and water where many people, planes, and even ships have disappeared. It's never ceased to amaze researchers for a long time.
So what happened to 23-year-old student Steven Kubacki in Saugatuck, near Lake Michigan? On the morning of 20 February 1978, he announced to his family that he was going skiing at the frozen lake. He travelled to the lake often and knew the area well. His trip to the lake did not alarm his family. A day later, when he never returned, his family filed an official missing person's report. A massive search for the missing student was organized. Eventually, Kubacki's skis and poles were found on the shore of Lake Michigan. In addition, tracks presumed to belong to him led to the lake. Near the lake shore, they broke off on a steep bank.
It wasn't clear where he could have gone. There were no cracks in the ice anywhere. It seemed to have literally vaporized right on the slope. Even stranger was the fact that later that day, after a thorough search of the area, Kubacki's rucksack suddenly appeared next to the skis. And, strangely enough, in a place where everything had already been thoroughly searched.
However, that was the last we heard of Stephen Kubacki. He was missing. And few people believed he was alive anymore. That is, until fifteen months later, when the whole story of his mysterious disappearance took an equally bizarre turn.
On 5 May 1979, the doorbell rang at the Kubacki home. Stephen's father opened the door and was shocked to see his son standing in front of him. He had let his long-lost son into the house. From what little Stephen could remember, he said he woke up in Pittsfield with no memory of how he got there. He woke up confused in a grassy field. He had no idea how he'd ended up so far from where he'd disappeared. He was wearing unfamiliar, strange clothes. He also had a strange bag with him, containing several maps he was unfamiliar with. Pittsfield, a Massachusetts town, was 720 miles (nearly 1,000 kilometers) east of where his skis and backpack were found near Lake Michigan.
The appearance of Stephen Kubacki alive and well attracted a lot of interest from the press and local television crews. But soon they began to turn away from the student they had found, because he could not satisfy their interest at all. He only replied that he had absolutely no memory of where he had spent those 15 months or what he had done during that period. Moreover, he had no psychological problems because of this incident. The medical examination showed that he was absolutely healthy both physically and mentally. Whether this is true or Kubacki just did not want to talk about his adventures, only he knows.
Doctors decided that Stephen had a rare temporary amnesia known as dissociative fugue. In a fugue state, people lose awareness of their identity and can have memory lapses. They leave home and travel in a confused state of mind. But if he had walked that thousand kilometers in an amnesiac state, he would have been spotted by the locals and the police, who would probably have committed him to a mental institution. But no one had seen or contacted him in those 15 months. And no-one ever realized where he was. In the end, he was never recognized as ill, and the doctors soon gave up on him.
In further Stephen Kubacki, recovered in college, got a degree in linguistics, long after working in this specialty. He never lost his passion for travelling. He was often seen with a backpack leaving on another trip. But travelling around America a lot, he never had anything like amnesia again.
And was it amnesia? It was just a man who had fallen into some dimension and then got out safely.
The entire area has a rich history of strange occurrences. For example, in 1921, the Rose Belle was found capsized in Lake Michigan. All eleven crew members were missing. The vessel was damaged, but there was no sign of what had happened.
Even stranger, on 28 April 1937, Captain George Doner, who was aboard a schooner on Lake Michigan, apparently disappeared from his cabin, the doors and windows of which were locked from the inside. When a concerned crew cracked the door to enter, he was nowhere to be found, and there was no sign of him leaving the cabin.
In 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 also disappeared over Lake Michigan. It was presumed to have crashed, although no wreckage or bodies were ever found.
The list goes on and on. And how encouraging that there are examples of safe returns from the ‘Michigan Triangle.’
