In 1978, This College Student Went Missing While Cross-Country Skiing Around Lake Michigan: Nearly 15 Months Later, He Woke Up 700 Miles Away With No Memory Of What Happened
In 1978, Steven Kubacki was a twenty-three-year-old student attending Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Around campus, he was regarded as a bright young adult who tended to be a bit more free-spirited than his peers at the conservative school.
And in his free time, Steven was an avid outdoorsman. Earlier in his collegiate studies, he had traveled abroad and hiked mountains in Europe. Steven also enjoyed cross-country skiing around Lake Michigan.
So, in February of that year, he decided to go on a solo cross-country skiing trip in the same southeastern border region of Lake Michigan. But, what was supposed to be a one to two-day trip max abruptly turned into a mysterious fifteen-month disappearance.
Steven’s trip began near a town named Saugatuck on February 20. Then, the very next day, a few snowmobilers found an abandoned backpack and skis. The sight was unsettling, so the group reported their finding to authorities and suggested that a person had possibly gone missing.
And upon inspection of the backpack’s contents, authorities concluded that the items had belonged to Steven.
This prompted a search and rescue mission to unfold, in which investigators discovered a two-hundred-yard footprint trail in the snow.
The trail led past the edge of Lake Michigan before suddenly ending. At that point, investigators were pushed to believe that Steve had likely fallen through the ice and died.
However, on the evening of May 5, 1979, Steven reportedly “woke up” in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, over a year after he had seemingly died and about seven hundred miles east of where he had disappeared.
He also claimed to have awoken wearing clothes he had never seen before and with a backpack stuffed with maps. According to the backpack’s contents, Steven had apparently traveled to San Francisco, Sacramento, Reno, Utah, and Chicago.
Tomasz Zajda – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person
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Additionally, he had new glasses, sneakers, and forty dollars cash on him.
What’s even more bizarre is that Steven had absolutely no memory of what had transpired over the past fourteen and a half months.
In fact, he did not even realize just how much time had passed until he purchased a local newspaper and saw the date printed at the top.
Afterward, he realized his aunt’s house was just twenty miles away in Great Barrington, so he made his way there.
Even after reuniting with his family, though, the only thing Steven could remember was feeling cold and frightened of getting lost in the dark the day he set out to go skiing.
This unbelievable story pushed some to conclude that Steven had not been healthy or in an ill state of mind.
However, he disputed these speculations and explained how everything in his life had been coming together right before his disappearance.
“My father was going to sign over the house to me. I had three courses at school and no trouble. I left a romance in Germany. There was no trouble with girls. I had a job lined up with the Holland Sentinel newspaper,” Steven said.
In turn, others believe that his unexplainable disappearance had something to do with the Lake Michigan triangle.
Sometimes referred to as “The Bermuda Triangle of the Great Lakes,” this region spans from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Ludington, Michigan, with its southern point in Benton Harbor.
The triangle has gained an infamous reputation as being a mysterious locale where various unexplainable events have unfolded– such as shipwrecks, air disasters, disappearances, and even UFO sightings.
Nonetheless, just exactly what happened to Steven has remained an unanswered question for decades now. He has gone on to author a book entitled “Meta-Mathematical Foundations of Existence: Godel, Quantum, God & Beyond.”
Steven also earned his Ph.D. and is a practicing psychologist living in the Pacific Northwest.
However, he has refused to talk about his disappearance with reporters for decades. Steven’s ex-wife did the same, and his parents– who had previously spent thousands of dollars on a private investigator following their son’s disappearance– have since passed away.
So, precisely what happened in 1978– and if Steven knows more than he has revealed to the public– will likely remain a strange, unanswered question for years to come.
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