Did Steven Kubacki Time Travel Through a Portal? | Missing 411

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[Arzon]

As somebody with anxiety once said, The urge to just walk into the night and start over is pretty strong. Not in a suicidal way, just a reset of sorts. It's possible he joined a commune or other arrangement where he didn't "need" money for those 14 months, then just got a bus ticket back to his aunt's house at the end of his stint. Blanket amnesia is a strong alibi vs trying to maintain a story.

[cerebralm]

"These two groups of Christians were getting along just fine and then some Calvinists showed up."
Truly, a tale as old as time.

[thehutch]

I think it’s important to remember that in the 70s (heck, I’d say through the 90s), mental health wasn’t a thing that many tried to take care of. If you or someone in your family needed to see a “head shrink”, it was shameful. That’s why it makes sense to ME (an old) that he was unwilling to see a therapist. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[nerdherd]

One day, you see a newspaper article talking about a man who went missing three states over. "Damn, " you say, "that's wild." And then you go back to work.
Later that same day, you see a guy who looks exactly like the missing guy. Albeit, you didn't pay much attention to his face in the paper because it was three states over, no way it could be your problem. Then you realize: this guy is walking around alone and under his own power. No one appears to have kidnapped him and he doesn't look lost. "He obviously can't be the missing guy. Must just look alike. Anyways"


That's how someone can go missing, be national news, and no one realize they are looking right at him.

[lula-kester]

My grandpa has an eerily similar story about his uncle back in the 1920's. This uncle took his dog with him everywhere he went. He had a wife and kids and a farm. He lived a pretty routine rural life. He went in to town one day in his truck, with his dog, like normal. Parked downtown, near the rail road tracks. Normal. Left his dog in the truck because he was probably just going to run in to a store real quick before moving on to other errands... again, normal. But he just... disappeared. Left dog and his wallet behind in his truck. Absolutely no sign of what happened to him. He never went in the store or did any of his other errands. About 9 months went by. He just walked back in to town one day. Wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. Which was very unusual. He was a farmer. He owned one suit, his "marryin' & buryin'" suit and it was hanging in the closet at home. He had no idea any time had passed. He had no idea where he'd been or what happened or how he ended up in a suit carrying a briefcase. He just showed up in town wondering where his truck and his dog were. Only other thing I know about this story is that this incident is what got my grandpa believing in aliens. It happened when he was about 12 or so.

[JDM-is-my-name]

About the whole "how did no one recognise him" thing; the Clark Kent effect is very strange. If you meet someone and they introduce themselves with a different name and it's not someone you have been told is dangerous, you might just ignore that your new bestie looks like some dude who was on the news

[kakyoinnoriaki]

You have no idea how much I respect the fact that you don't go out of your way to throw in creepy music and editing for no reason other than to scare people more than the subject you're covering.

[ventusvindictus]

I entered a dissociative fugue back in early 2019. I have a few patchy memories from the time, but the main thing I recall is confusion at not understanding the alarm song on my phone that morning around 7:00 but knowing that I needed to be somewhere soon. I "woke up" close to noon in the campus library, a 20-minute bus ride from my apartment. The weirdest part to me is that I rarely visited that library because the business college library I used was elsewhere. My family and I launched into a surge of medical exams and the docs at Mayo Clinic decided it was likely triggered by a sleep-deprivation-induced seizure of sorts that occurred the preceding evening.

The lesson: please actually sleep. Humans are not nocturnal.

[gogglebrains]

Steven's story reminds me a lot of my brother, who (perhaps not coincidentally) also graduated from Hope College. My brother had a steady girlfriend, was doing well academically in his third or fourth year, and was halfway through a promising paid internship; but he quietly struggled with depression regardless, unbeknownst to me or the rest of the family. Unable to cope any longer, he dropped everything, broke it off with the girlfriend, and abruptly left for over a month to ride his bike around Lake Michigan. Fortunately he told us about his plans before he left, stayed in regular contact, and occasionally met up with friends or family along the way. Years later, in another depressive episode, he opened up to us about his struggles and his desire to drop everything, tell no one, and leave on his bike for good. Maybe Steven had the same impulse and actually followed through on it. Regardless, I'm relieved his story had a happy ending.

[YakubTheFather]

Having amnesia despite what people think often times people DONT want to know what happened. Often times its not because of "did i do bad" but more"how horrible was the event that i wiped the harddrive over"its acknowledging that you have a blessing that you can't recall it.

source:diagnosed with it

[Empress_Theresa]

After watching The Missing Enigma video about Steven, I'm 110% convinced that he disappeared on purpose, and after those 14 months (presumably living in San Francisco), decided to come back. The fact he went to his aunt first, and not his parents, is very telling.

[moshpitmachine]

As an ice fisher in upstate NY I'll say this. You would be amazed at how fast a hole in the ice freezes over again given the right conditions. Could only be a few hours before it looks, on the surface, like nothing ever happened

[idkanymoreman]

As someone who has experienced fugue states it always fascinates me when they are associated with cases like this. I often worry about going out in public by myself because I’m very easily stressed out in open or crowded areas, especially in my home town, because I’ve wandered off before and I’m not necessarily in control when it happens. I’m also almost always extremely disoriented, scared, paranoid, and absent (according to people who’ve witnessed it) and can be near nonsensical at times. Used to wander the halls of my school aimlessly unable to recall where I was going, where I just was, what classes I had, where they were, etc.

Dissociation is technically something anyone can do, it just needs to be “activated” by something traumatic in order to become “disordered.” It’s speculated that a lot of it is genetic, and to get a lot of the more lifelong manifestations like I have it generally has to begin in childhood, but drugs and later traumatic events can cause it too. It happens when you’re in so much distress you *have* to “get away” but are for whatever reason unable to, kinda like the minds way of shielding itself.

I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure what happened to him, but if it was dissociative that just leaves more questions than before, because what the hell would’ve freaked him out so much that he had to dissociate from it for a year??? And how did he manage to eat, sleep, and take care of himself all without anyone noticing??

[RedDeadRogue]

One quick thing about dissociative episodes, they can also occur in situations of high stress or anxiety as a defense mechanism, particularly if the person has also not slept well in the days prior to the episode. Source: me lol. Before I was officially diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), I had a dissociative episode where I started driving to work, zoned out, and snapped to several hours later having driven a considerable distance during that time with zero memory of it. I was extremely stressed due to work, college, and home life and in that moment, my brain just kind of went "Nope, we're going on autopilot for a little while."

[jaynestrange]

If Steven was in fact a Dutch Calvinist (which seems likely, since he went to Hope College), it's important to know that can be very restrictive culture, with a lot of pressure to behave in a certain way. There's not really any room to explore your own identity or deviate from that career path your family wants from you. Even now, seeing a therapist is often seen as a sign of weakness, a sign that you're not strong enough to handle suffering or that you don't trust God.

[theepicjoey]

The dissociative state seems the most likely to me, even for that long of a period of time. I know a guy who used to have a lot of those moments and once he had one that lasted for 3 months. The scary thing is that I hung out with him multiple times throughout those 3 months and there was nothing to indicate that things were diffrent than usual, yet there's 3 months that are just entirely gone from his memory.

[MsMtheory]

Love your attention to detail of Native American culture even when its not a main focus, you take the time, as a Canadian indigenous women, thank you! (You cover Can/usa ppls ❤ not more than the other either, just give thw info straight on no matter the people.) Ive been watching for a while now and your research level in these days is unparalleled 🎉😊. Miigwech!

[buggirl]

This story reminds me a lot of the story of Gabriel Nagy who was in a dissociative fugue for 23 years. In school we learned that people with this condition usually have smaller episodes before month or year long episodes, and usually brought on by extreme stress. Even if he was excited for the future, the transition from college to adulthood can be really rough so I could see that being a trigger. The only thing that doesn't add up is the lack of footprints - usually in confirmed dissociative fugue cases we have things like witness testimony or security footage that can confirm the diagnosis, but also it was the 80s so we didn't have as much nationwide news coverage, I could see nobody outside of his state knowing his name and not questioning him when he presented with an alias.

[GibbsBro]

The Missing Enigma dropped an absolutely stellar video on this same subject just yesterday. 10/10 would recommend!!

[katiemartinez]

He wrote a book that has nothing to do with his vanishing and I believe he refuses to answer questions about when he was missing even present day. I think he did it on purpose. Maybe just wanted to see the country and get some space, realized how much everyone was looking for him, and said he didn't remember what happened.