One day I got in an elevator and saw something that caught my eye and left a lasting impression on me. This was in the fall of 2005. At the time I was working for a staffing agency in Stamford, Connecticut. My office was in a high-rise building downtown, not far from the train station.
The elevators had little TV screens that would show the day's weather, a few news blurbs, maybe a human interest story, and some advertisements - lots of them. Most of the ads never registered with me. I would look away when they came on. But one ad was preponderous. It featured a garden gnome and made no mention of the company the ad was promoting.
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| Where do Alien Abductees Go? |
I can still remember, two thoughts entered my mind. One was how stupid it was, what a waste of money it was, to make no mention of the name of the company. That kind of nonsense had contributed to the Dotcom Bust just a few years earlier. Well-funded tech companies had blown millions of dollars on poorly executed advertising campaigns which yielded no results.
The other thought I had was, hey I know that gnome! I had seen this gnome before, had I not? I had never paid much attention to garden gnomes. It seemed like a silly concept, something kitschy that people did to ornament their homes instead of investing in some landscaping. I knew there were different types but really they all looked the same to me. Yet, I had seen this guy before; this garden gnome in the ad on the elevator, I had seen him before.
After that I started seeing this gnome in other places. It stuck with me. It worked. Fifteen years later, many readers can probably remember this was an ad for a travel website. It was very successful and even won some awards.
The premise of these Where is my Gnome ads was based on a real life prank. Someone stole a garden gnome out of someone else's front yard, took it on a trip, snapping pictures of it in famous places, and then returned the gnome with a photo album of his journey.
This got me thinking about aliens. Also, eating snacks, watering my plants, and walking the dog make me think of aliens. But back to gnomes, I thought about people like Travis Walton, one of the most famous alien abduction cases. Travis was taken from a worksite, held for a few days, and then released at another location. This is a common theme to other abduction cases.
I cannot say I am one hundred percent onboard with alien abduction stories. Many are just too far out there to believe and some people who tell the stories can also be a little unusual - although perhaps that is just the folks who choose to tell their stories. They have nothing to lose by speaking up. The more successful and level-headed abductees keep their mouths shut for fear of destroying their credibility. At least that is the pattern with UFO sightings. Why would it be different with abduction cases?
At any rate, tin-foil hats notwithstanding, there are a few very credible and believable abduction stories, Walton's being one of them. What do aliens do with the people they abduct, I have wondered. Why take someone, hold them for a few days, and them return them? I have pondered the question of Why do Aliens Abduct People before and come up with some possible answers but really, we in the general public have no way of knowing. So until some aliens hire a PR firm and publish an official press release, I will go on speculating about it.
Where do Alien Abductees Go?
One thought I have had is maybe abductees are Traveling Garden Gnomes, of sorts. Maybe the reason some people are abducted by aliens and then returned home (or close to home) is the aliens think it is cool or funny to take some pictures of the humans. They may go to different places with the human, like people do with the garden gnomes, and then when they get back they cannot remember exactly where they found the guy so they put him back a mile away. Distance may be relative (with a small R) for someone who traveled many lightyears to get here.
It could be that there is no real travel at all, just a park the ship behind a billboard, snap a few selfies with the human, post them to Spacebook, and then put the guy back in his yard. Do aliens snap selfies? Clearly I am personifying aliens to an extent which is unrealistic. Most accounts portray aliens less like the people/creatures encountered on Star Trek and more like a silent boogeyman slipping in and out of the shadows. Although there are probably many thousands of civilizations with the ability to get from there to here (wherever there is) and statistically there should be a bell-curve of how they act, meaning that many of them may be similar but there will be some that are far different from the others.
Whatever it is, I thought it was a cool concept to liken alien abductees to Traveling Gnomes. I am not making light of the experiences these people go through. I have heard it is extremely traumatic and as someone who experienced a 5-7 minute long close encounter I know what terrorizing fear is and the trauma that it leaves behind. But at a conceptual level it was funny to think about people as some aliens' Traveling Garden Gnomes.
Hit me in the comments and let me know your thoughts.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
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