Granger Taylor: The Man Who Went to Space and Disappeared

Mais de 40 anos atrás, Granger Taylor deixou um bilhete dizendo que embarcaria em uma nave extraterrestre para uma viagem interestelar e depois disso ele nunca mais foi visto.

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On the night of November 29, 1980, strong winds hit Vancouver Island, Canada. In the midst of this violent storm, a shy and very intelligent young man wrote a note in a small letter on his stepfather’s bedroom door, and left his parents’ house, leaving behind all his possessions, including CAD$10,000.

He got in his truck for a trip, and never came back, disappearing forever. What makes this case noteworthy, more than 40 years after the fact, is the contents of the letter in which the man in question, Granger Taylor, left it for his parents to read:

“Dear Mother and Father, I will leave aboard an alien ship, which is my dream, for a 42-month interstellar voyage to explore the vast universe, and then I will return. I’m leaving behind all my possessions, since I won’t be wearing any more. Use the instructions in my will as a help guide.
Love, Granger.”

 
Granger Taylor

On the other side of the chart was a map of Waterloo Mountain, which is located many miles west of Taylor’s property. What relation the map or the mountain may or may not have had to Taylor’s disappearance, is just one of the many riddles associated with this bizarre case.

But if we want to try to understand what circumstances led Taylor to take that attitude and disappear, we first need to see how Taylor’s past was.

Granger Taylor was born on October 7, 1948, in Duncan, Vancouver. He had what his friends and neighbors said was an amazing ability to build and repair all forms of equipment and mechanical vehicles. One of Taylor’s oldest friends, Bob Nielson, even said that Taylor could be called an eccentric genius.

Granger didn’t like studying very much and dropped out of school when he was still in elementary school. Despite his little schooling, he was considered by all who knew him as a great self-taught. At the age of 14, he built a car from a single cylinder, which was promptly exhibited at the Duncan Forest Museum.

At the age of 17, he was able to rebuild a tractor, which more experienced mechanics had given up on recovering long ago. In 1969, Taylor hard-watered a trail through more than a mile of dense forest to reach the desolate remains of a locomotive that had been abandoned during the Great Depression. In less than two years, with nothing more than his intellect, willpower, tools and other resources at his disposal, Taylor was able to bring the locomotive back to its former glory.

The Kitty Hawk plane restored by Taylor.

Taylor’s mind remained focused on understanding the nature of motion technology, and his next passion would be for machines capable of flying. Taylor took out his pilot’s license and bought a vintage Kitty Hawk warplane, which he restored.

Always looking for something new to test his vast understanding and prowess in mechanics, Granger turned his attention to a new challenge: the seemingly insoluble question of how flying saucers could fly, which so many witnesses claimed to have seen, and most importantly, how they could make trips through outer space.

During the second half of the 1970s, Taylor spent more than half a year building and welding a flying saucer replica. It was made with discarded satellite parts, and inside were placed a TV, a sofa and a wood stove. He became obsessed with finding out how the flying saucers worked, spending hours inside thinking, and often sleeping inside. Taylor began his research on the UFO phenomenon by reading all the books he got.

A month before Taylor disappeared, he told his friend Nielsen that while inside the disc, he would have come into telepathic contact with an extraterrestrial being, who came from beyond the Milky Way.

According to Nielsen, Granger reportedly asked questions about how flying saucers work. The only thing the alien would have said was that the ships operated based on magnetism. A few days after this first revelation, a very excited Granger Taylor told Nielsen that the voice would have returned to him on his record, and this time, the alien would have invited him to “travel through the solar system”.

Flying Saucer builted by Granger.

Taylor explained enthusiastically that he would not be informed until the end of the month about where he would be picked up for the trip. However, when the location of the meeting was revealed to Taylor, he evidently chose, or was instructed, not to mention where it would be, for his parents and friends.

One night before what would be considered by many, such as Taylor’s last night on Earth (one way or another), the young man entered his stepfather’s room and had a long conversation with him. Jim had no idea this was the last conversation he’d have with his stepson. Unfortunately, Taylor’s mother, Grace, was not in Canada to speak to him because she was on vacation in Hawaii.

Taylor prepared two wills with detailed instructions on how his parents should distribute his belongings. At 6:00 p.m., a friday that would change the lives of so many in Duncan’s town, Taylor walked into Bob’s Grill for dinner.

The last person who would have seen Taylor was a woman who was working in Bob’s Grill’s kitchen, Linda Baron. She told authorities she saw him come in and have dinner alone, but couldn’t remember if anyone tried to start a conversation with him. Baron recalled that the lone genius was not prepared for the next storm that could already be predicted at that time. He wasn’t wearing his winter coat. Baron then testified that Taylor paid his bill and left the restaurant, just as the storm was beginning to destroy Duncan and the surrounding towns.

Granger Taylor was known as a mechanical genius.

That was the last time anyone saw Granger Taylor, as far as we know. Strangely, Granger’s stepfather found his coat days after he disappeared, inside his stepson’s doghouse.

At dawn the next day, Duncan’s citizens were collecting the wreckage left by the storm, and they also learned of a rumor that spread rapidly throughthe city that Granger Taylor had disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Granger’s stepfather contacted mounted police to help find his stepson, and exhaustive checks were made at various places, and analysis of documents and belongings left by Granger, but nothing about his whereabouts was discovered.

Granger’s name was then placed in the national police information system. Six years later, in 1986, Granger’s pickup truck was found by a lumberjack on a small mountain near Duncan. The pickup was partly destroyed and pieces of metal in nearby trees indicated that it was allegedly damaged by an explosion.

This explosion appears to have been caused by dynamite, which Granger could be carrying in the vehicle. It seems unclear, at least without police confirmation, whether the pieces of the vehicle allegedly found on the mountain would have anything to do with Taylor’s disappearance. But even assuming that this happened, the lack of any body in the scene only contributes to having much more mystery than certainties about that part of the case.

The Mystery’s Hypotheses

Granger Taylor’s pickup truck.

It was considered by some that Granger could have taken his own life, but then where would the body be or what was left of it?

Another hypothesis would be that Granger could have run away to disappear from everyone’s sight, making up the story of extraterrestrial contact. But if it were so, he could have just moved. In 1980, CAD$ 10,000 would be enough to start a new life, and he could certainly have found a job anywhere as a mechanic.

The third theory would be murder. Someone could have killed him somehow and dumped the body in a river and blown up part of the vehicle to confuse the investigations.

However, for any of these hypotheses to become a certainty, it would be necessary to find his body, or even, he live somewhere.

The murder hypothesis is plausible because of the lack of a body at the scene, and Granger’s never been seen again. However, in case any of these hypotheses become a certainty, it would be necessary to find his body, or even, he live somewhere.

But there’s even one more theory, that extraterrestrial contact was real, and that blowing up the truck would have been necessary to eliminate some evidence of that contact.

But Granger warned that he would take a 42-month trip. So, in that case, why didn’t you ever come back?

Would the aliens have tricked Granger to some end, or would he have simply decided not to come back, or did he really lie about his trip?

The mere fact that Taylor left his coat behind on a stormy night would indicate that he really believed that wherever he went, he wouldn’t need to wear it.

The only fact we know is that on the night of November 29, 1980, Granger Taylor disappeared without a trace.

On May 29, 1984, Granger Taylor’s 42-month expedition was supposed to end, his stepfather and mother eagerly awaiting Granger’s promised return, but he never returned home.