Kriti Mehrotra
While there have been many well-documented cases of UFO sightings and alien abductions, arguably none have been as perplexing as that involving Duncan, Vancouver Island native Ganger Taylor. That’s because, as explored in Hulu’s ‘Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal: Interstellar Voyager,’ he vanished in 1980 after allegedly making contact with space beings, never to be seen again. However, while officials have long ascertained that he has since passed away, many believe that he is alive and possibly fulfilling his dream of interplanetary exploration alongside strange beings.
Granger Taylor Walked Out of His Home on a Stormy Night
Although an 8th-grade dropout still living on his family’s farm in Duncan, Vancouver Island, Canada, Granger was truly a gifted mechanic with no professional training but hundreds of great ideas. In fact, not only was he a local mentor who used to teach neighborhood kids the ins and outs of machinery, but he was also a builder in every sense of the term. He had restored bulldozers, made around 28 cars, hauled an old train out of the forest to restore it, rebuilt a World War II aircraft, and even made his own spaceship.
That’s why it was hard for Granger’s loved ones when the 32-year-old mysteriously vanished from the face of the Earth, even though some of them sort of knew that it was coming. That’s because he had claimed that a radio he had built had led to him making contact with extraterritorial beings, who later appeared to him in his dreams to telepathically communicate with him. As per his alleged accounts, they had told him they were going to take him to their planet to discuss the ways of each other’s world and that he had been selected over some other brilliant minds because while they taught science and machinery, he turned it into a reality.
Granger even claimed that it would happen during a stormy night since their spaceship would need the cover to mask their light and sound, only for November 29, 1980, to turn out to be that day. So, he wrote a note to his parents, stuck it to his cupboard alongside his will that had the word “funeral” crossed out and “death” replaced with “departure,” and walked out. His loved ones and officials both spent countless hours looking for him in the years to pass by, yet it was only in March 1986 that they believed they found the location of where he met his fate – they believe he died on Mount Prevost, which was not far from his family’s residence at the time.
Granger Taylor is Believed to Have Died by Suicide
According to reports, officials actually found a massive crater in March 1986 with truck fragments, some bone pieces, and a piece of his shirt recovered from right near the site. The truck had allegedly been blown up after it was placed atop some dynamite sticks stuck to the ground, so its pieces were thrown up far, high, and wide – a tire and its rim were stuck to a tree branch 60 feet in the air. What’s more imperative to note is that the truck’s recovered vehicle identification number matched the one Granger owned and that some dynamite had disappeared from his family property the day he went missing too. Even the bones were identified as human, so despite there being no DNA analysis available at the time, the coroner determined it had to be his, leading to his being declared dead in 1986 itself.
However, some of Granger’s friends do not believe he died by suicide – he was allegedly using a lot of LSD in the months leading to his vanishing, and he had grown distant, but they don’t believe he died by suicide. As per them, despite the fact he had never really had any luck in relationships, he was not lonely, depressed, manic, or suicidal; he was simply a mechanical genius leading his best possible life. Furthermore, they claim that while the truck parts that were recovered were blue, his vehicle was actually Pepto-Bismol pink – it was the most easily identified truck in the area because of its bright pink color. But alas, officials have since asserted that the force of the blast could have simply burned off the added paint.
Granger Taylor’s Friends Have Never Believed the Suicide Theory
According to Robert Keller, who was arguably closest to Granger in the months leading to his vanishing despite being more than half his age, his mentor was not suicidal at all. The then-15-year-old has actually asserted that even though Granger claimed his international voyage would only last 42 months, he knew he would not return after that determined period because of something the elder himself had told him. In the show, he said that one day, Granger actually told him that because the planet he was visiting was on the outside of the Milky Way and was technically thousands of lightyears away, the aliens knew how to fold space to make that travel easy.
However, Robert claimed that Granger also said that this wouldn’t change the time for those on Earth — as in, even though the whole trip would age him 42 months only, thousands of years would have passed on Earth, making his return in any of his loved ones’ lifetimes impossible. As if that’s not enough, Robert also said that Granger’s brother possibly had connections with the police, so he could have urged them to close the case so as to help their elderly parents move on. Granger’s brother has since indicated he had no hand in it and that his brother is indeed dead, but nothing can actually be proven since the recovered bones sadly got lost sometime in the last four decades.
It is believed that the Taylor family applied for Granger to be declared dead a mere two months before the crater was found so as to access his will and that the missing dynamite only being reported in 1985 was simply coincidental. Nevertheless, Robert also states that he believes that even if Granger’s brother did have a hand in it, he doesn’t see it as anything wrong, as he only wanted what was best for his parents. After all, they kept their porch light on and their gate unlocked every hour of every day in the hopes that their missing son would suddenly return and come right back to them. They never even held a funeral for him, even after he was officially declared dead in 1986, with the date of his death listed as November 30, 1980.
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