Ian Punnett welcomed author Jason Offutt for a discussion on his book What Lurks Beyond, which details a litany of paranormal activity found within 100 miles of his home. "Bigfoot isn't just seen in the Pacific Northwest and UFO crash stories are not just found in Roswell," Offutt explained, "they're everywhere, you've just got to go look for them." As such, Offutt uncovered tales of a mysterious object that fell from the sky, a ghostly entity that children called "David," and a horrific axe murder attack that claimed eight people, all within his 100 mile radius.
He detailed one tale which took place a mere 25 miles from his home and is well-known to longtime C2C listeners: alleged time traveler Mike "Mad Man" Marcum, who was made famous after being interviewed by Art Bell. Marcum, so the story goes, claimed to have created a time machine out of a Jacob's Ladder. Trying to fashion a larger version of the machine, Marcum stole transformers from the electric company and subsequently ended up in jail. Following his release, Marcum attempted to recreate the time machine and then mysteriously vanished in 1999. However, Offutt revealed that he had found one witness who knew the 'time traveler' back in the early 2000's. According to this person,Marcum told him about the time machine and described a gadget that strongly resembled the iPhone as well as modern video games. "He's convinced that Marcum did build his time machine and did go to the future and now he's gone again," Offutt reported.
Offutt also recounted the story of 'Jim the Wonder Dog,' an English setter from Marshall, Missouri. According to legend, Jim was a psychic dog, able to find people amongst a crowd based on attributes such as their hometown or the color of their shoes. As if this ability was not strange enough, Offutt marveled, the astute canine would obey commands in English, Spanish, Latin, German, and also written orders. In addition to that, Jim is said to have predicted "seven straight Kentucky Derby winners, presidential elections, and the sex of an unborn baby." So revered is the dog's legacy in Marshall that the town erected a statue in honor the canine. While Offutt confessed that this particular tale fell a tad outside of his 100 mile radius, he quipped "I had to include it because, c'mon, it's a mind-reading dog."
In the final hour, Offutt was joined by Travis White, a victim of demonic possession who is the subject of a chapter in What Lurks Beyond. According to White, he began sporadically seeing an entity in his childhood, but the incidents took on a more sinister turn following a near death experience where he was in a coma for 18 hours and died twice. After that, White said, he began "seeing it daily, hourly, almost every minute it would be with me" and it would urge him to abandon his father and girlfriend. The being even showed its face to White, who described it as "mangled, scarred, like it had been burned, just a vicious, ugly, ugly thing." Ultimately, a prayer session with his father seemingly freed White from the possession and he has not had any further serious encounters with the entity.
Mel Gibson & Hypnosis
In the first hour, renowned hypnotist Rick Collingwood talked about his work with Mel Gibson and how hypnotism can be used to eliminate anger. Collingwood, who is credited with having trained Gibson to become a hypnotist, was reticent to comment extensively on the star's recent scandal. That said, he stressed that "we don't know what led to this" and that people should keep from judging Gibson based on "one conversation." On whether hypnosis could be used to eliminate a person's racism or anger issues, Collingwood asserted, "absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent." He described such feelings are merely a pattern of behavior and that once the brain is told that it is a "worthless pattern," it will become erased from the mind.