I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the nation's

news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

We begin in 1978 in Saga Talk, a pleasant town in western Michigan.

It's a scenic place with plenty to do along the lake.

And it's popular with tourists, though maybe less so in the middle of February.

That's a time when things should have been quiet.

But on February 18, 1978, locals woke up to see a shocking headline printed in the Herald Palladium.

Missing Student Hunted. This was not the kind of

story one expected to read in a quiet off-season resort town. Of course, there were sometimes accidents.

People got lost. Perhaps a stray tourist fell in a lake here or there.

But missing student hunted would have had a surprisingly ominous ring.

But it was true, a young man from a nearby college, a senior named Stephen Kubacki, had come to Sagaok, and he had vanished.

Stephen, who was 23, was not from around those parts.

Specifically, the Pataskey News wrote that he was raised in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.

But he lived locally and went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan, just a little ways north of Sagatuck.

On Saturday, February 18, 1978, Stephen was just nine credit hours shy of graduation.

That's when he decided to set out on a trip.

He told his roommates that he planned to ski along the lake shore. Nothing seemed odd about this particular journey. Stephen had done this before. In fact, based on his personal

history, he seemed to like just a little danger. His roommates told reporters that Stephen had

gone mountain climbing in Europe, so a meander in

or around a frozen lake was comparatively small potatoes.

As the day passed by, Stephen's roommates didn't think to worry about him.

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