Documentary Reveals Truth Behind Mysterious "Outer Space Life" Graves in North Carolina

The headstone of Jack Overby. (*Mike Ward* */ Find a Grave)*

Filmmaker Lance Johnson recently made available his documentary chronicling the experiences of Jack Overby, a North Carolina man who claimed to have had “contacts and conversations with outer space life” throughout his 87 years on this planet.

Jack’s headstone is next to his mother’s, which bears a similar inscription, and together they’ve piqued the curiosity of visitors to Mount Airy, North Carolina’s Oakdale Cemetery since 2000, when Merlie Jane Harrison Overby died at the age of 96.

At that time, Jack had two headstones made, one for his mother and another for himself, and made sure each referenced the otherworldly relationships that would help define his life.

Over a decade later, in 2013, Johnson tracked the contactee down and convinced him to be interviewed, beginning a friendship that would last until Jack’s death in 2015.

Jack claims his interactions with what he referred to as “outer space life” began when he was only five months old. He had suffered a life-threatening injury when his eldest sister hit him in the head with a hammer, and the doctor called to treat him predicted he would not survive the day. To make matters worse, Jack said, his mother, who along with his eldest sister would continue this pattern of abuse throughout his childhood, had inserted a needle into his swelling brain, saying, “If my daughter goes to jail, I’m going to go to jail with her.” And as if that wasn’t horrific enough, when she lost her needle in the wound, she fetched a chicken leg from the kitchen to dig it out.

It was then that a “cluster of stars, about the size of a silver dollar, came dancing into the bedroom,” Jack said.

His father, McKinley, naturally surprised by this, asked what the stars were doing there, to which a man’s voice replied, “We are going to be in Jack’s brain.”

The stars became a man and a woman who went up Jack’s nostrils and to his brain. Once there, Jack’s forehead “lit up, just like a television screen,” allowing those present to watch the star beings work.

The helpful entities then mended Jack’s brain and skull, using tools his mother compared to knitting needles and a mixture they called bone powder.

Once finished, the beings left the way they had entered, through Jack’s nose, and he made a full recovery.

Thus began Jack’s friendship with the mysterious outer space life.

These lifeforms included a human-sized “skeleton bone man” whose Earth name was Rube, and a small, green man whom Jack’s father named Sidekick after he refused to tell them his name.

Jack reported many interactions with these entities over the years, and his testimony to Johnson left the documentarian feeling that the contactee was authentically relating his experiences. At the very least, Johnson told me and my colleague Ashley Hilt in an interview, he left with the sense that Jack was not lying—whatever had happened to him, he believed what he was saying.

In the documentary, the role that abuse and its resulting trauma have played in Jack’s life are all too apparent, and at times it may not be entirely clear if the events involving outer space life were objectively real or a psychological response to the horrific treatment Jack suffered. It’s worth mentioning, though, that Jack’s father reportedly vouched for these experiences. And even if that weren’t true, the profound human experience of Jack surviving and processing his trauma and the odd expression it took would still be interesting.

Like many contactees, Jack’s often bizarre story is told sincerely, which lends it an air of credibility that is difficult to ignore, no matter what truth it represents.

Outerspace Life: The Story of Jack Overby is currently available to watch for free on YouTube.

You can listen to our interview with Lance Johnson here.