The Sudden Departure of Granger Taylor, Part One
On the night of November 29, 1980, a thick torrent of rain and gale force winds tear through Vancouver Island in British Columbia. In the midst of this violent storm, 32-year-old Granger Taylor, a soft-spoken, eccentric, mechanical genius, tapes a note to his parent’s bedroom door, telling them that he is leaving on an 42-week interstellar voyage with aliens. He entrusts all his possessions and his loyal dog, Lady, in their care, then vanishes in the storm. It is not until six years later, when the first clue to Granger’s disappearance is discovered.
See below for photos of Granger’s spaceship, and the note he left behind. If you have any information about the mysterious disappearance of Granger Taylor, go to unsolved.com.
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Law
Is his note a cypher?
Nick
Arguments about intelligence beyond the stars aside, this was a suicide or an accidental death. I think people have gotten carried away with Granger’s wild stories. His family certainly are upset about how much attention the UFO part of this story gets (see https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/spaceman )
The guy blew himself up, intentinally or not, on an abandoned logging road and wasn’t found for six years and the cops lost the remains for later DNA analysis. The only mystery here is how people can’t fathom the RCMP being able to lose evidence for such a low profile investigation. The RCMP is not very good at their job, especially when it comes to finding people they consider less important.
Ziggy
Except everything you’re saying is wrong and you need to watch the Never Seen Again episode that was recently released.
Sal D’Amico
Clearly mental illness! He’s not onboard an alien spaceship. This one was so obvious. What’s more likely A) An alien civilization that has the technology to build spaceships that can travel the known universe needed a human for 42 months so they could learn what from him? How a gasoline engine or a train works or B) He had an undiagnosed mental illness and accidentally or intentionally blew himself up? Think hard before you answer.
Kinley
he was super smart and rebuilt cars at 5 so I don’t think he has an illness if you watched their podcast on spotify then you would know that this world is so big that there could be other life out there this is not the only galaxy you know.
Tracy
Robert Keller, there is something I don’t quite understand about the story. When was the actual explosion? 6 years later or that night? If it was 6 years later how does that prove anything? And if the explosion was that night, why did it take someone 6 years to tell someone. I’m quite confused about that part of the story.
George
The explosion they think was that night , it was in a remote part of the woods which is why it turned took so long plus the crew that found the blown up truck did not think it was anything related to a case so they did not report anything right away.
Tracy
Thomas,
What a great explanation! I truly believe in Granger. Maybe it’s childish, but I want to believe he is on a fantastic voyage. I listened to this podcast during a terrific storm. So that was a bit weird. I love every bit of this story. And I believe in Granger and his best friend!
Ally
Thomas,
That is some pretty sound logic.. if you’re correct though, he won’t be back until November 2130.
Timothy
Wow! Great story!
Either Granger’s truck exploded when the alien craft fired it’s thrusters, or it hit Granger’s truck with a weapon as it left, or Granger is somewhere down in South America sipping margarita’s with senoritas and building narcosubs for the other kind of aliens.
ashley
AJ Mertz you do have a point there are also clues that nobody has noticed but me like how they found 2 bones and yet they didnt have anything to see the dna but yet now this day in time they do but somehow the bones they found just disappeared and so like yeah nothing is adding up i have found alot more clues too but not ready to share yet.
Thomas
A.J. Mertz,
Time passes differently from a given person’s perspective based on their speed relative to others. Meaning, here on Earth, our perception of time differs from how someone traveling at light speed experiences it. Specifically, we experience time much more quickly. People aboard a spacecraft traveling at 99% of light speed (it’s not possible for us to travel at exactly light speed, as far as relativity is concerned) would experience time at 1/2000th the speed we do, that is, at 0.05% the amount of time we would experience. That means for every minute that these spacecraft passengers experience, 2,000 minutes would pass here on Earth.
The nearest star to us is Proxima Centauri, part of the trinary Alpha Centauri system. It is slightly closer than 5 lightyears to us (4.7 specifically). That means, traveling at light speed, you would need (from our perspective) to travel for five years before you reached Proxima Centauri. However, from the perspective of people on the ship, it would only be just shy of a day (around 20 hours). Of course, many methods of propulsion can be far slower than light speed.
In his case, he said 150 years would pass on Earth traveling at 42 months from his perspective. This implies these aliens would be traveling at far slower than light speed (in that time, if they were traveling near light speed, 7,000 years would pass on Earth). This means that these aliens, if they are capable of interstellar travel, do so within the laws of relativity rather than using faster-than-light travel, and what’s more, they do so at speeds significantly lower than light speed.
What this also means is that his destination is potentially within a sphere of 150 lightyears, which includes quite a bit of stars. Assuming this is total transit time including the time spent at his destination plus the return trip, this narrows it down a bit; perhaps within 50 lightyears. This narrows it down a bit, but that is still a large number of stars. Complicating this is that Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone of their host stars are now understood to be common; even Proxima Centauri has one. Most of the stars within 50 lightyears could have planets capable of supporting life.
Considering how realistic a lot of these numbers and distances are, I get the strange feeling he may legitimately have left this planet… if so, he is probably still in transit to his destination.
Liz Newman
Wondering what was found six years later?
Robert Keller
I still miss him every day.
G
I’m sorry you lost your friend & im sorry for his family too.
AJ Mertz
Has anyone ever looked at the numbers.
Concider this, why would an alien race tell Granger that he will be gone for 42 months if that does not corespond to how long in Earth time? Would an airline tell you you are to arrive at 6pm when you are jumping time zones and really arriving at 8pm. Also look at the exact months, 42, which would be a wierd number if it wasnt connected to a well known syfi book. 42 is, in accordance to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and the original book came out only 1 month before Granger disappeared.
I have not heard the second half, but I do believe that something odd happened to him. Either he was truly taken to the sky, or did someone use Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in order to set him up to be kidnapped.