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Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with Me Richard mcclan smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Hoping
Speaker 1: for a Spark, we heard the bizarre story of Miguel
Speaker 1: Showsaf Yana and Manuel Parada d'cruze, who in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six were found dead lying in the undergrowth of a
Speaker 1: forest covered hill in southeast Brazil. The men's deaths and
Speaker 1: the peculiar circumstances surrounding them has come to be known
Speaker 1: as the Lead Masks case. Though there are numerous theories
Speaker 1: as to how they were killed, certainly the wildest would
Speaker 1: have to be the notion that the men had somehow
Speaker 1: died while attempting to access another dimension. Whether we believe
Speaker 1: it or not, there's something eminently compelling about the synchronized
Speaker 1: sighting of a strange ball of light seen in the
Speaker 1: hills around the time the men were thought to have died,
Speaker 1: as if they had somehow succeeded in creating a rip
Speaker 1: in the very fabric of space. Some have suggested this
Speaker 1: strange light may have been the result of natural phenomena
Speaker 1: caused by a thunderstorm that was said to have broken
Speaker 1: out on the afternoon that the men died. It has
Speaker 1: been suggested that whatever this was may also have killed
Speaker 1: the men. Either way, it appears Miguel, Josef Jana and
Speaker 1: Manuel paraded a cruise were very much interested in the
Speaker 1: idea of communicating with other worlds, even if they didn't
Speaker 1: actually manage to do it, And just like them, thirty
Speaker 1: two year old Granger Taylor from Vancouver Island also had
Speaker 1: an extensive knowledge of electronics and a burning desire to
Speaker 1: visit another world. Is two is a tragic tale clouded
Speaker 1: in mystery. On the night of November twenty ninth, nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Bob's Grill in the city of duncan On, Vancouver Island
Speaker 1: was full of people sheltering from a growing storm. Outside.
Speaker 1: One customer, dressed in logging boots, denims and a sweater,
Speaker 1: sat quietly by himself, picking his way through his food
Speaker 1: and occasionally staring out of the window as the wind
Speaker 1: and rain lashed against the glass. Server Linda Baron recognized
Speaker 1: the man as Granger Taylor, a regular who, though he
Speaker 1: didn't talk much, was always pleasant and easy to deal with.
Speaker 1: Baron watched as he finished up the last of his food,
Speaker 1: then grabbed his keys from the table and headed back
Speaker 1: out into the storm. Moments later, she locked him jumping
Speaker 1: into his dats and truck, and watched as he pulled
Speaker 1: away and drove off into the night. Granger Taylor was
Speaker 1: never seen again. The following day, at his parents farm
Speaker 1: at Simonos Lake, his parents, Grace and Jim, found a
Speaker 1: note taped to their bedroom door, Dear mother and father.
Speaker 1: It read, I have gone away to walk aboard an
Speaker 1: alien ship, as recurring dreams assured of forty two months
Speaker 1: interstellar voyage to explore the vast universe then return. I
Speaker 1: am leaving behind all my possessions to you because I
Speaker 1: will no longer require the use of any Please use
Speaker 1: the instructions in my will as a guide to help,
Speaker 1: love Granger. Ripping it off, Jim spotted a map that
Speaker 1: Granger had scribbled on the back of it. No one
Speaker 1: since has been able to fully ascertain its significance, though
Speaker 1: some have suggested pinpointed a spot on Waterloo Mountain, roughly
Speaker 1: fifteen kilometers away from his home. Naturally, fearing the worst,
Speaker 1: over the next few days, Granger's parents searched everywhere they
Speaker 1: could for him, calling hospitals and even scouring Waterloo Mountain
Speaker 1: for any sign of their son, but nothing could be found.
Speaker 1: When they finally got round to reading through his will,
Speaker 1: they found that, curiously, he'd crossed out the words death
Speaker 1: and deceased and replaced them with departure and departed. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it was a stupid thing to hold on too. Of course,
Speaker 1: he hadn't actually departed on an interstellar voyage. But then again,
Speaker 1: where Granger was concerned, you could never be too sure.
Speaker 1: Born October seventh, nineteen forty eight, Granger Ormand Taylor was
Speaker 1: raised in Duncan, a log town in Canada's British Columbia,
Speaker 1: nestled on the shores of Vancouver Island. When Granger was
Speaker 1: barely a child, tragedy struck the Taylor family when his
Speaker 1: biological father drowned in an accident on Horn Lake. He
Speaker 1: was subsequently raised by his mother and stepfather. At grade eight,
Speaker 1: Taylor dropped out of school after apparently telling everyone that
Speaker 1: he'd already learned everything he could ever need from the
Speaker 1: academic system. After growing infatuated with mechanics and engineering, he
Speaker 1: began working at local mechanic shops and quickly adopted welding, electronics,
Speaker 1: and reparation as new skills. Those around him said Granger
Speaker 1: could fix and repair just about anything. Soon he began
Speaker 1: restoring vehicles, initially working on a car, then progressing to
Speaker 1: a bulldozer, until eventually he restored an abandoned steam engine,
Speaker 1: bringing them all back to their former glory. As his
Speaker 1: experience grew, Taylor served as a mentor to neighborhood children,
Speaker 1: passing on the skills he'd learnt in his formative years.
Speaker 1: Having mastered wheels on the ground, his attention soon turned
Speaker 1: to the skies. His next restoration masterpiece was a World
Speaker 1: War two P forty Kitty Hawk, which he painstakingly brought
Speaker 1: back to life piece by piece. The shy, softly spoken
Speaker 1: boy was well liked and known locally as a gentle
Speaker 1: giant who had often put on displays at the farm,
Speaker 1: powering up his vehicles for any who wanted to see.
Speaker 1: Though some uncharitably considered him to be a bit of
Speaker 1: an oddball, the one thing that everyone could agree on
Speaker 1: was Taylor's brilliance or genius, bordering on insanity. As his
Speaker 1: best friend Bob Keller once said, Keller and Taylor bonded
Speaker 1: over a shared love of smoking, pot and science fiction,
Speaker 1: and it was during these early times together that Taylor
Speaker 1: began to talk more extensively out aliens, UFOs, and other
Speaker 1: life forms. Before long, he became infatuated with the idea
Speaker 1: of interstellar travel. As his obsession grew, Granger even built
Speaker 1: a spaceship in his own backyard, Slightly cartoonish like the
Speaker 1: spacecraft he would have seen on sci fi television shows
Speaker 1: of the time, it was never intended to fly, but
Speaker 1: more as a place to hang out, kitting it out
Speaker 1: with a TV, a stove, and even a couch that
Speaker 1: he occasionally slept on. But as he spent more and
Speaker 1: more time pondering the subject of space travel, he began
Speaker 1: to think seriously about how such a machine could be powered.
Speaker 1: Here's something you didn't know about me. I'm a terrible sleeper.
Speaker 1: Getting to sleep is fine, but once I'm up, whether
Speaker 1: it's the cat deciding it once fed at four am,
Speaker 1: or the little human in the other bedroom having a
Speaker 1: bad dream, there's no going back. Suddenly my mind is
Speaker 1: awash with what feels like every thought I've ever had
Speaker 1: in my entire life. I'll get another hour at best
Speaker 1: if I'm lucky, but not anymore since I've found the
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Speaker 1: At some point, Taylor became increasingly dissatisfied with real life
Speaker 1: as he continued to dabble in drugs, in particular LSD
Speaker 1: and acid. Though his family maintained his drug use was
Speaker 1: always a vehicle to expand his mind and further his knowledge,
Speaker 1: rather than a simple abusive problem, there were signs that
Speaker 1: it was beginning to get out of hand. Taylor told
Speaker 1: those around him that he was in contact with extraterrestrials
Speaker 1: and was experiencing recurring dreams about alien abduction. He also
Speaker 1: claimed to be telepathically communicating with beings from another galaxy,
Speaker 1: and spoke often about traveling into outer space. One time,
Speaker 1: Granger said to Bob that he'd been offered passage to
Speaker 1: distant parts of the galaxy where he'd be able to
Speaker 1: see extraterrestrial technology. This, for Taylor, was everything he'd been
Speaker 1: working up to, as he became firmly convinced that he
Speaker 1: had a greater purpose to fulfill elsewhere away from our planet,
Speaker 1: and then he disappeared. In the months following his disappearance,
Speaker 1: Granger's family exhausted all their efforts to find him, Yet
Speaker 1: Granger being Granger, they were never quite able to let
Speaker 1: go of that one glimmer of hope that maybe, just
Speaker 1: maybe he would return forty two months after he'd left.
Speaker 1: For every day leading up to that seemingly arbitrary date,
Speaker 1: Granger's parents even left the back door unlocked and their
Speaker 1: son's room unchanged in the faint hope that he might
Speaker 1: one day walk back into their home. And so it
Speaker 1: was on June twenty ninth, in nineteen eighty three, exactly
Speaker 1: forty two months to the day after he departed, that
Speaker 1: Granger's parents and step brothers stayed up all night, their
Speaker 1: eyes turned to the heavens, waiting for any sign that
Speaker 1: Granger might be coming home, but nothing appeared. It was
Speaker 1: six years after his disappearance on March twentieth in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, that a group of forestry workers near Swackers,
Speaker 1: also known as Mount Provost, stumble upon something unusual set
Speaker 1: back off a trail overlooking the Cowitch and Valley. It
Speaker 1: looked like a blast crater, covering a radius of a
Speaker 1: few hundred feet, thickly overgrown with vegetation. When the Royal
Speaker 1: Canadian Mounted Police investigated the area soon after, they found
Speaker 1: vehicle parts scattered throughout the fauna, including part of a
Speaker 1: wheel lodged in a tree about sixty feet from the ground. Eventually,
Speaker 1: after a thorough search involving scent dogs, the police uncovered
Speaker 1: some bone fragments, the largest of which was a fractured
Speaker 1: area of upper armbone measuring six inches long. It seemed
Speaker 1: reasonable to assume that the site could be related to
Speaker 1: Granger's disappearance. However, since this was a time before the
Speaker 1: robust DNA testing we have today, without teeth or anything
Speaker 1: else identifiable, the police struggled to tie this to the
Speaker 1: missing man. After weeks. Carefully scrutinizing the vehicle parts, they
Speaker 1: eventually made some headway. Serial numbers on the wreckage correctly
Speaker 1: matched up with those of Taylor's dats and pick up.
Speaker 1: Some small fragments of material were also found, which Taylor's
Speaker 1: mother was able to positively identify as part of a
Speaker 1: top that she'd crafted for him. But just what on
Speaker 1: earth could explain the violent scene had he actually tried
Speaker 1: to blast off into space as it happened. Taylor's stepfather
Speaker 1: confirmed that dynamite was often used on their farm to
Speaker 1: clear areas and blow up tree stumps, and some appeared
Speaker 1: to have gone missing back on that fateful stormy night
Speaker 1: in November nineteen eighty. Neighbors had also reported a loud
Speaker 1: boom on the evening of Granger's disappearance, though this was
Speaker 1: easily lost amongst the chaos of the unfaltering storm that
Speaker 1: was battering the town at the time. The coroner's office
Speaker 1: pieced together the details and came to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: Taylor had taken dynamite in his truck, and either deliberately
Speaker 1: or accidentally, it had detonated Granger. Taylor's missing persons case
Speaker 1: was consequentially closed with his death to find simply as undetermined.
Speaker 1: Some have speculated that Granger may have meant to take
Speaker 1: his own life, since he was experienced in handling explosives,
Speaker 1: it was felt unlikely he would have an accident of
Speaker 1: such proportions. His close friend Bob Keller, however, disputes the
Speaker 1: police evidence and finality to the case, claiming that the
Speaker 1: truck parts didn't match up. The truck found by the
Speaker 1: police was blue, but Bob insisted that he and another
Speaker 1: friend had helped to paint Granger's truck pink before he disappeared.
Speaker 1: Either way, it seems whatever the truth is, it is
Speaker 1: now far out of reach. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Donna McCarry smith. Unexplained will be taking a short midseason break.
Speaker 1: We'll return with episode ten on Friday, March fifth. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you
Speaker 1: can now do so via Patreon To receive access to
Speaker 1: add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com forward
Speaker 1: slash Unexplained pod to sign up Unexplained. The book and audiobook,
Speaker 1: featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
Speaker 1: the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores.
Speaker 1: All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show.
Speaker 1: Where have you listened to podcasts? And feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
Speaker 1: reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter
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