Time & Dimensional Machines: Mixed Media Sculpture
A Time Machine:
Reprinted from and by permission of:
The Octavos Scientific Quaterly.
Q4/2020 J-1618
by: Richard Langford III
On June 22 1978 Arthur Hanscom, a 98 year old farmer in rural Pennsylvania, disappeared without a trace. No relatives were ever located and Hanscom's estate eventually wound up in the hands of a man by the name of David Jacks. While renovating one of the property barns Jacks discovered a small room, which had been sealed off presumably by the original owner Arthur Hanscom. The room was filled with old tools, milling machines, and topographical maps. Hanging on the wall was a world map with nails positioned at various points around the globe and marked with strange symbols. A notebook and diary penned by the previous owner Arthur Hanscom was also found. In a far corner of the room, under a tattered old sheet weighted down with rotting fence posts, was the strange vehicle pictured here. Jacks Later remarked: “I didn’t want no part of that thing, something not right about it. I done nailed the door to that room shut and did my best to forget it, far as I can remember I never told no one neither.” However, Jacks must have told someone.
In January of 2008 a man going by the name of Emit Jefferies and claiming to be an antique dealer reported investigating an old story he had heard involving a crazy old man and an odd vehicle thought to be in a barn somewhere in Pennsylvania. After months of exhausting research and dead end leads Jefferies reports he finally tracked down a now 88 year old David Jacks. Jefferies claims it took four visits, numerus phone calls, and over five months before his persistence paid off and he was able to persuade Jacks to show him the vehicle.
Jefferies got more than he bargained for and was able to purchase the odd vehicle, Hanscom’s diary, and one of his notebooks. Jefferies reports that In Hanscom’s diary he told of being visited by a "time traveler" from another dimension. Hanscom went on to say that the traveler confided in him that he had been stranded in this dimension. Jefferies also reported that Hanscom built this vehicle for the time traveler, which in his diary, Hanscom refers to as an "Inter dimensional Time Machine and Straight-Line Attack Vehicle.” Attack what? One might ask.
Jefferies further reported in a letter that Hanscom stated in his diary that he was “directed” to build the machine in secrecy, and with only the parts he could scrounge from around his farm as to not raise suspicion. Hanscom wrote that his directions on how to construct the vehicle came from the "time traveler" through telepathy, passages from the I Ching, and obscure physics. Jefferies reports that the diary stops abruptly in May of 1978 with the last words simply being: “Gone”. Hanscom disappeared one moth latter in June of 1978. David Jacks passed away in 2009.
For reasons that are still unclear, A man in California going by the name of Lestat (believed to be the artist Stephen Lestat) was contacted by Emit Jefferies in June of 2010, and entrusted with the machine.
What is unclear is why was the machine was supposedly given to Lestat a relatively unknown struggling artist. When asked repeatedly Jefferies would never comment. Jefferies reportedly died in December of 2012 however no death records can be found.
Lestat reported that he sold the Machine in 2012. Yet this can also not be verified.
It should be noted that investigators firmly believe that "Emit Jeffreys" is the time traveler that visited Hanscom! They further believe "Jefferies" had come back for Hansom’s diary and was only here until he could once again be able to leave. (2012?). Stranger still is the fact that the name "EMIT" is an anagram for TIME. Coincidence?
When contacted and asked to comment on the machine, and his relation to the story surrounding it, Lestat only responded arrogantly with a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” If Lestat knows anything he is not talking.