506: Backyard Time Machine: The Time Travel Mystery of Mike “Mad Man” Marcum
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Mike fired up the box and the lasers came to life. The machine produced a small circular area of distortion. It was a vortex about eight inches across that looked like ripples above a fire.

This was unexpected. Mike didn't know what the vortex was or if it was dangerous, so he grabbed a sheet metal screw and tossed it through the field. It vanished. Mike just stared and blinked and waited. The screw was just gone. So Mike powered down his machine and turned to head back into the house.

Then he heard something clattering. It was the screw. It rolled to a stop about two feet from the box. Mike thought he invented some kind of teleportation device. He didn't. Michael Madman Markham invented a time machine. ♪♪

Mike Markham from Stanbury, Missouri, was an amateur inventor who liked to tinker. He lacked formal science training, but he had a natural aptitude for electronics. The back porch of his house looked like a home appliance graveyard. Old TVs, radios, and CD players were all dismantled with their insides spilled everywhere. There were spools of copper wire and magnets of all sizes.

His current project was a Jacob's ladder, a device that consists of two metal rods which start close together at the bottom and spread apart as they go up. This produces climbing arcs of electricity.

But Mike had an idea for a modified version of a Jacob's Ladder. The first thing he had to do was create a transformer. Morning meets the eye. No, no, no. An electronic transformer. Transformers are electronic. Hello. How else do you think they defeat the Decepticons? By talking sternly? Do you mind if I continue? Fine, fine, fine. Go ahead.

To get the arc of the electricity going in a Jacob's Ladder, you need a high voltage power supply, typically in the tens of thousands of volts. In the United States, the standard household voltage is 120 or 240 volts. That won't do. So Mike built his own transformer. Robots in disguise. Sorry, sorry. It's out of my system now. Go ahead.

Basically, what you do is wrap two separate coils of wire around a common core. One coil is connected to the power source, so in this case, the fuse box on Mike's house. The other coil then has more or fewer turns in order to step up or step down the voltage. So Mike sat down and just started coiling wire.

After about 400 turns, he lost count. But he coiled enough wire to step up his voltage from 120 volts to 20,000 volts. Now he's got his power supply. For the climbing rods or conductors, Mike actually used wire hangers. No wire hangers ever! Ah, somebody out there gets it.

How it's supposed to work is: the voltage is applied to the conductors, the electrical pressure then ionizes the air particles between the rods, allowing current to flow. The arc starts at the narrowest point where the rods are closest together, and then the heat from the arc makes the air around it hotter and less dense. Hot ionized air has lower resistance, hot air rises, and so the electrical arc rises along the conductors.

But the arc won't start on its own. You need to initiate it manually by moving the rods closer together or farther apart. It's touchy. Also, if the air pressure changes, it won't work. If humidity changes, it won't work. Air temperature, movement, even a little bit of smoke or dust in the air, and it won't work. So Mike had an idea.

What if he used lasers to heat the air around the conductors? This would lower the air resistance, ionize it, and make the spark ignite on its own. At least, that was the plan. So he removed the laser emitters from a couple of CD players, connected his homemade transformer, and fired it up. No spark. It didn't work. As he was going to disconnect the machine, Mike saw something strange.

Hovering above the device was a sphere of distorted air. It looked kind of like the wavy mirage you see over a highway on a hot day. But this wasn't some powerful ball of energy. It was hardly visible. If you weren't looking for it, you'd miss it.

Unsure what this thing was or if it was dangerous, Mike tossed a sheet metal screw into the energy field. The screw disappeared. Mike just stood there for a second, confused. He didn't know if the screw got vaporized or what happened. Then the screw fell out of the field and landed on the ground a couple of feet away.

Now, he repeated this experiment a few times with the screw, and every time the same result. He tossed the object in, it disappeared for a second or so, then reappeared out of the energy field. Now, Mike didn't know if his machine was teleporting objects or possibly sending them a few seconds into the future.

After a few more tests, the machine overloaded. The lasers were dead and the components were fried. Now, even though all that was left of Mike's invention was a burnt-out box of parts, he knew he was onto something. So now he would rebuild the machine, but this time, instead of it being 18 inches tall, he'd build it 8 feet tall. And to do that, he'd need access to a lot more power. And Mike knew exactly how to get it.

Mike Markham was pretty sure he invented a time machine. But to really test it, he'd need to scale up his invention. His prototype was only about 18 inches tall. Now he wanted to go bigger. Scaling up the parts of the machine wasn't a problem. Bigger conductors and even bigger lasers were available. The problem was power. He needed lots of it. His house gave him 120 volts. He stepped that up to 20,000 volts for the prototype.

But his homemade transformer blew out after just a few minutes. If Mike was really going to scale and test his machine, he'd need transformers that can handle 50,000 volts or more without breaking a sweat. Basically, he needed the kind of transformer you see on power poles. But those are not easy to get, and they're not cheap. Mike didn't have $15,000 to $20,000 to put into this experiment. Besides, he'd need more than one or two transformers, he'd need a few. So Mike had an idea.

A bad idea. He knew there were six industrial grade transformers just sitting in a yard doing nothing but getting rusty. But that yard was a substation for the King City, Missouri power company. So Mike called a couple of friends with pickup trucks and in broad daylight drove to the substation, loaded up the transformers and drove away.

A few weeks later, he had his next version of the machine. The transformers were connected to the grid, new lasers were in place, and the wire hanger conductors were upgraded to 4-foot-long, half-inch metal rods. This thing was a beast. Now, the moment of truth. Mike powered up the machine. There was a loud crack, a spark, and then… nothing. His whole house went dark. The new machine knocked out the power.

Then Mike looked out the window. He knocked out the power in the whole town. It took some tinkering, but soon Mike was able to get the machine running without causing brownouts all over town. And the machine? It worked. It created an energy field or vortex a few feet wide. So Mike sent objects through the vortex. But this time, objects weren't reappearing a few seconds later. They weren't reappearing at all. The objects were just vanishing to who knows where.

One afternoon, Mike had a few friends over and they were tossing small objects into the energy field. They wondered, could a big object go through? Yeah, I'd like to send my ex-wife through. Well, a few of Mike's buddies got behind the living room couch and pushed. The couch went into the energy vortex and was gone. Boo! Yeah, that was the good news. Ah, yeah, what's the bad news? Mike's cat was on the couch at the time. Yeah, so what's the bad news?

So now everyone is just standing there in an empty living room staring at this whirling field of energy. Then they heard a pounding on the front door.

Mike opened the door and there were eight deputies on the property. The officer at the door had a search warrant. Mike's neighbors had reported a lot of weird activity happening at the house. And it didn't take long for police to put together Mike's project and report from the power company of a lot of missing equipment. So whatever experiment Mike Markham was planning would have to wait because now he's going to jail.

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For stealing the Transformers and stealing power, Mike Markham got 60 days in jail and five years probation. Now, while he was in jail, Mike thought of different ways he could make the machine more efficient. But there was no way for Mike to build any of this. He lost his house, he lost his job, he was a pariah in his town because of the brownouts. It seemed like Mike's time machine career had come to an end.

But then something happened. His story made the news. The headline was, "Kansas City Man Tries to Build TIE Machine on Porch." - A Missouri worker set out to make a tie machine on his back porch. The contraption he came up with was not completely off the mark, according to scientists.

There are theoretical physicists working on those areas, and it's not total nonsense, according to the chairman at the physics department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The Stanbury police say the voltage that Markham had diverted into the contraption caused power interruptions in and around the northwest Missouri town of about 1300.

Markham was arrested January 29th on a felony charge of stealing the Transformers from a power generating station in King City. He pleaded guilty and last month was placed on five years probation. Police said the Transformers had a capacity of 12 to 76,000 volts each, enough to easily cause electrocution or an explosion. Markham, who told police that he has two years of college level electrical engineering, said he was building a time machine but didn't have enough power for it.

That's according to the Stanbury police chief, Tom Hampton. And that headline caught the interest of someone who would change Mike's life forever. From the high desert of the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zones, all of them covered amply by this program, Coast to Coast.

I'm Art Bell. It is my honor and privilege to be escorting you through the second half of the weekend. And what a program it is going to be tonight. If you're building a time machine and you need help getting the word out, there's no better person in the world to help you do that than Art Bell. I set out to find young Mr. Markham and I found him. Michael, are you there? Yeah. Good.

Art Bell interviewed Mike Markham for about an hour and a half on the Coast to Coast radio show. Not only did Mike sound legitimate, but he clearly had considerable knowledge and expertise in electronics. And so did Art Bell. Let's say it's 400 turns in your primary and there's say there's 4000 turns in your secondary. 10 times the turns and then you'll get 10 times the voltage. Right. Watts, amps, voltages, stepping up, stepping down. Art knew about all that stuff.

If Mike was faking it, he wasn't going to fool Arbel. Well, this was, I was using square waves where I could actually, it was easy controlling the duty cycle, it was easy to control the voltage that way. Right. Because you can't find, you can't really find, it's hard to find Variax rated at megawatts. Man, I'll tell you, if you're using square waves, I bet the ham operators heard you for miles.

and he didn't try to fool anyone mike came across as humble he wasn't looking for fame or attention in fact art bell is the one who tracked mike down and convinced him to come on the air

Millions of people listened to that interview that night. And before long, people were calling in with offers. Some had transformers they would donate. Others had property he can use. And plenty of people were ready to financially support Mike in building a new, bigger machine. How do you feel about the possibility, Michael, of somebody coming along and being your mentor even more than this, maybe contributing money to build a great big gigantic version?

For the next few days, offers came in and Mike, with his new team, created a plan. He corresponded with a few physicists and picked their brains about his technology and how it could be used for time travel.

Several scientists helped Mike come up with an idea for a mechanism with rotating magnets that would make the machine easier to control. So Mike got a warehouse, all the equipment he needed, and access to more power than he could ever use. It took about a year, but he finally built a newer, larger, and highly upgraded version of his time machine. And you know what? The machine worked.

It took almost 18 years, but Art Bell was finally able to catch up with Mike Markham. Honestly, Art thought Mike was dead. And I called you madman because I was convinced you were going to absolutely fry yourself alive and turn into a french fry. There are other ways.

But Mike "Madman" Markham was very much alive, and a lot had happened since the last time he and Art spoke.

Because of Mike's last appearance on Coast to Coast, he suddenly had a lot of benefactors. He had a little money, equipment, and lots of power. Mike set up in a warehouse in Overland Park, Kansas, and there he built several iterations of his time machine. The most successful version used rotating magnets. So instead of having a small energy vortex, Mike was able to create what he called a plasma tornado.

Maybe it'll be more efficient if I use, instead of using basically heat from a laser in a cold room, the differential, the temperature difference between those two to stir the plasma may be even more efficient if I use the magnetic field to stir it. That's what I ended up doing. Use the magnetic field to do what? Basically, it's, well, in simple terms, this thing looks like basically a plasma tornado.

So how much power do you need to create a plasma tornado? Well, remember Mike's first machine? That prototype ran at 20,000 volts. Well, his next version... The one that ate the couch and the cat? Yep. What a waste of a perfectly good couch. Stop it.

Anyway, the next version used about 70,000 volts. This new machine in the warehouse, which is about 15 feet tall, it was pulling 3 million volts. That is a crazy amount of pressure. Pressure? Well, in simple terms, volts measure the pressure of force driving the electric current.

So think of electricity like a water hose. Amps are how much water is flowing through the hose, or how much power is running through a circuit. Most households get between 100 and 200 amps of power. Well, unless you got a grow room, then you need a lot more power. What did I say about this? Tomatoes! I was growing tomatoes!

Anyway, amps are the amount of power. Voltage is the pressure of the power. So imagine taking that water hose and making the end of it smaller and smaller. That increases the pressure of the water coming out of the end. So even if you don't have a lot of amps, you can still create really high voltage. That's what a transformer does. So using juice from the power company, supplemented by a couple of generators, Mike had more than enough power to run his machine. Two cylinders, one cylinder inside the other. Right.

with another basically a circle of electromagnetic electromagnets around it. So basically you got a bunch of plasma inside of it with a magnetic field rotating it. You know, what you are describing, I'm sure you've heard stories of the Philadelphia experiment, right? Yeah. Well, they described a similar electronic setup with regard to the rotating magnetic fields.

Art correctly pointed out that this is how the Philadelphia experiment was done, with high voltage and rotating magnetic fields. In fact, when Mike was arrested, he told the police he was building a time machine.

Now, of course they thought he was nuts, but several scientists said that if building a time machine was possible, Mike's technology was on the right track. Because Einstein's equations do allow for time travel. And they're blueprints. Blueprints for different kinds of time travel designs that are compatible with Einstein's theory. For example, gigantic spinning cylinders. You go around the cylinder and you come back before you left.

So now Mike started testing the machine by sending objects through the vortex. First with small objects like bits of wood, baseballs and little things like that. And they went through just fine, but they just disappeared, just like the couch. And the cat. But they really didn't disappear. They just ended up in different locations. So, what, it's teleporting stuff? No.

The objects would go in and vanish, and then about two minutes later they reappeared. But the objects ended up between 50 and 150 yards east or west of the machine.

And always east and west, never north or south. Mike thought this could have something to do with the Earth's rotation or magnetic field. And look, I know the story sounds crazy. - I don't mind it. - But these tests were witnessed by 15 people. Anyone who donated money or equipment, Mike let them be a part of the project. And those people showed up. I would have too. And it's a good thing there were so many people on hand. Hamsters are fast. - Ah, wait, did you just say hamsters? - Yep.

The tests were so successful that Mike started sending small animals through. Specifically mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs. No more cats? No. Ah, that's a shame.

Between the inanimate objects and animals, Mike had successfully tested the machine about 200 times. It seemed like varying the voltage and the speed of the magnets could adjust how far objects were traveling. Before long, Mike could make a pretty good prediction of where an object was going to end up and how long it would take before reappearing. So at this point, there was really only one final test to try. Do you mean... Yep. Mike stood in front of the vortex, took a deep breath...

and jumped. There was a flash of light, and Mike disappeared. Now, remember, Art Bell had been following this project closely. He was even planning a trip to the warehouse. But when Art checked in looking for Mike, nobody had seen him. He was just gone. The media did pay attention, and the media did, including me, nationally, went on the air and said, "Madman is gone. We can't find him."

When Mike came to, he was not in the warehouse. He was lying in the middle of a field somewhere with the worst headache he'd ever had. And there was a big problem. He had no memory of how he got there. He didn't even know his own name. So he got up and just started walking. Now, it took some time, but his memories slowly returned. Eventually, he hit Fairfield, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. And Fairfield is 800 miles due east of the warehouse in Overland Park, Kansas.

But Mike had no driver's license or ID of any kind, no credit cards, no money. So he went to the nearest homeless shelter to grab a meal and get his bearings. When he got to the shelter, he saw a newspaper. He had jumped two years into the future.

Mike took a few odd jobs and got together enough money to take a bus back to his warehouse in Overland Park. When he got there, the warehouse was empty. Everything was gone. The machine, all the videos that he took of each test, and all his notes, every bit of documentation was all gone. Men in black. Could have been the men in black, or it could have just been the landlord who thought Mike was gone, so he just stole the equipment or threw it away. No way, that stuff is still out there somewhere. It might be.

Now, Mike was pretty sure he could recreate the machine. He felt he could remember 90 to 95% of the process, but it would take a lot of money. The equipment in the warehouse was worth a couple of million dollars, but Mike still had memory gaps. He couldn't remember whose donors were. His list of supporters was in the warehouse.

And that brings us to Mike's third appearance on Coast to Coast. He caught Art Bell up on everything that happened. And although he wasn't looking for money, once again, people were ready to help. - This one guy suggests I'm actually looking at the website now. Go to, tell him to set up a GoFundMe account. - Yeah, yeah, GoFundMe or,

Art also recommended that Mike pursue a book deal. And Mike admitted that he's no author, but if he teamed up with a ghostwriter, he could certainly cover all the technical details. Another suggestion was, work with the government. No! What would you... Would you cooperate with them, or...

The thing with DARPA, well, I don't have firsthand experience with them, but I'm willing to bet they try to militarize every... I mean, basically, the check isn't free and clear. There's always strings attached. I hear that. Smut man. So Mike had options, and Art Bell encouraged him to keep working. All right, everybody, that's it. Everybody in the world wanted an update on Madman Markham, and now you've got it.

He's not gonna stop. What's next for Madman? Only time will tell. Good night. - And Mike Markham would continue his research and continue to experiment. Mike wanted to travel again, but he needed to bring things with him. So when he woke up, he could quickly get up to speed in case his memory failed again.

A big problem he kept running into was that nothing metal could go through the vortex. Well, metal could go in, but it was unpredictable. Sometimes metal would come right out like those sheet metal screws, or sometimes the metal would explode in a shower of sparks.

But after some trial and error, Mike discovered that if a metal tube was built a specific way, it would act as a Faraday cage, meaning that the tube could travel through the portal and reappear undamaged. Plus, anything inside the tube would be unaffected, including metal. So Mike continued to document his work and built a pretty large following online.

One day, Mike posted that he was ready to go through again. And this time, he would go through inside the tube, and he'd take his cell phone with him. That way, he'd have everything he needs, his notes, photographs, even money. It was a great idea. And that was the last anyone had heard from him.

As always, Art Bell kept tabs on Mike and was disappointed to hear that he was gone again. To where or when, nobody knew. But during one radio show, Art took a disturbing call. The caller had found a newspaper article from 1930.

The article described a man who had drowned. His body had washed up on the beach. The article said he was found in a strange metal drum, and the only object he had on him was a small rectangular device that nobody could explain. The man had no ID, so he was named John Doe. But some people had a feeling his real name was Mike.

When Art Bell fans talk about their favorite episodes, there are a few on everyone's list. Jonathan Reed's "Alien in the Freezer," "The Man Who Flew Over Area 51," "The Mojave Phone Booth." - Everyone loves "Mel's Hole." - "Mel's Hole" is a classic. And Mike "Madman" Markham is on that list. Art Bell loved time travel stories, and nobody could weave a tale like Art could.

The third interview Art Bell did with Mike was in 2015, and it's a masterclass in storytelling. Art already had all the information, everything from the early days of Mike building a Jacob's ladder on his porch, Mike going to jail for stealing the Transformers, the test with the animals, the warehouse, and Mike's two-year jump in time. But Art teases the story out slowly. Nothing is spoiled. He walks you through the story at the perfect pace, giving you just enough information to keep you hooked.

And we were hooked. And look, Mike Markham doesn't bring much personality to the story. But Art knows enough about electronics and physics to keep us in the loop on all the technical stuff. And Art Bell never condescended to his guests. He never ridiculed them. He made them feel comfortable because Art knew that's how to get the story.

I think this is one of the reasons why the Y-Files has success with these topics where many other channels don't. I don't condescend or ridicule. I don't talk down to you. And no matter how bonkers a topic is, I don't ridicule it. I don't have to believe a story to enjoy it. And if you believe a story that I don't,

So here's a piece of unsolicited advice to creators who cover these topics with a snarky attitude. You're making the story about you, and that's a mistake. So, Madman Mike Markham, one of the best time travel stories ever. But is it true?

Well, there's a lot of information about Mike on the internet that isn't true. In his last interview with Art, Mike even debunks some of those stories. Like he never sent a cat through the portal, but he did send the couch through, but no cat. Damn. And Mike addressed that article from 1930 where the man washed up on the beach in a metal drum. I always thought it was a great twist, but that never happened. And there's a current story going around that Mike was still alive, but homeless and died last year. Also not true.

now i don't want to dox the guy but mike is still around and unsurprisingly it looks like he spent most of his career in technology but what about the machine

Well, Mike Markham clearly knew a lot about electrical engineering. When he built that prototype on his porch, he was only 21 years old. And scientists did say that his technology was on the right track. Now, they didn't believe he could actually create a time machine, but they said if a theoretical time machine could be built, it would be done with high voltage and magnetism. Nikola Tesla thought he could possibly see through time using electromagnetism.

And Einstein proved time travel was possible with gravity. The higher the gravity, the faster time moves. And in extreme gravity, like near a black hole, time would move very, very fast. If Mike Markham figured out a way to create a vortex of extremely high gravity, in theory, that would work.

Art Bell's audience called in with lots of questions and criticism, but Mike was ready for all of it. For example, there's something with time travel stories that really bothers me.

Let's say you had a time machine that could move you 10 minutes into the future. Okay, fine. You move through time. But what about space?

The Earth is spinning 1,000 miles per hour. It's orbiting the Sun at 66,000 miles per hour. Our solar system zips through the galaxy at over 500,000 miles per hour, and our galaxy moves through space at 1.3 million miles per hour. So where you're sitting right now in 10 minutes, you'll move almost 90,000 miles in space. Time machine stories never account for this. The Earth is always in the same place.

But Mike Markham does address this. He says his machine stays in sync with the gravitational center of the Earth. So he's not only moving through time, he's moving through space. I've linked to all three interviews below. You can hear Mike fielding questions very calmly. He comes across as humble and not trying to prove anything. Remember, he didn't pursue Art Bell to tell his story. Art pursued Mike every time.

Really, the main reason to be skeptical of Mike Markham's time travel story is he's here. If I figured out how to time travel to the future, I'd do it, wouldn't you? But who knows? Mike is still young. Maybe he's working on a newer version of his time machine.

I hope he is. Now, people will roll their eyes at this story and say Mike's crazy, but the world needs more people like Mike Markham. Because when time travel is invented, and I think it will one day, it will be invented by a madman.

Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. You know, hecklefish. Buenos dias, senor. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do him a favor, subscribe, comment, like, share. That stuff really helps us out. And like most topics we cover here, today's is recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to hear or learn more about, go to the Y-Files.com slash tips. And if you want deeper dives on stories like these, check out the Y-Files Operation Podcast. I release at least two a week,

and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts. And if you need even more WIFILES in your life, check out the WIFILES Discord. It's a lot of fun, and there's something like 20,000 people on there. So there's always something happening 24/7, and it's free to join. A special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible. I dedicate every episode to you, and we could not do this without you. And if you'd like to support the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon.

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grab yourself a heck of a coffee mug and then pour something delicious in there and sip it and drink it and when it's empty stick your fist in there and then put on a heck of a t-shirt and grab yourself a heck of a talking plushy animal talking fish that's gonna do it until next time be safe be kind and know that you are appreciated

I played for Libya, scenario 51, a secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music, so I'm singing it like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends, and it never ends. No, it never ends.

I'm told.

And his name was cold And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And the werepies have three eyes All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the werepies The Mothman sightings and the solar storm still come To a god, the secret city underground

Mysterious number stations, planets are both two Project Stargate, and what the Dark Watchers found In a simulation, don't you worry though The Black Knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe it, head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And the weapons that make me all through the night

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the white balls of my feet all through the night. And the fish on Thursday nights when they chase you. And the white balls of my feet all night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the white balls of my feet all through the night.

Because she is a camel. When the feeling is right.

Wasting time.