Posthuman Blues

Man Finds Mystery Nail in His Neck

"Yun said there is no way Villagomez could have swallowed the nail and also has no explanation for how it may have gotten in his neck. 'I hadn't seen anything like that before,' he said." (Via The Anomalist.)

As the editor of The Anomalist notes, this case is reminiscent of the "alien implant" phenomenon, in which suspected "abductees" discover foreign objects embedded in their bodies. The few "implants" that have been removed -- by a rather gullible podiatrist -- share some interesting compositional similarities but have left the issue naggingly open to dismissal. (Of course, in theory, that could be an integral part of the alien plot. Villagomez's case suggests "they" might have decided to ramp up the absurdity that accompanies abductions by disguising their implants as common objects.)

"Implants" -- whatever they are -- are outnumbered by "scoop marks" and shallow craters similar to those left by punch biopsies. Pressed for an explanation, abductees recall -- typically under hypnosis -- alien beings taking tissue samples, apparently for a far-reaching genetic/tracking program.

Scoop marks and related blemishes are intriguing but don't fare well as evidence of anything in particular; almost anyone can find an anomalous scar on her body if she looks carefully enough. For example, I have a series of parallel grooves near my shoulder; they appeared suddenly, but I don't know how. Aliens? I can't prove ETs aren't the cause, but I strongly doubt it. In a similar vein, I once had a hard spherical object removed from my earlobe; the dermatologist who did the cutting didn't find it at all remarkable (although I do wish I'd thought to have him keep it for me).

But I'm genuinely puzzled about the nail in Villagomez's neck. Coincidentally, generations of archaeologists and miners have (unwittingly) found a plethora of tooled metal objects embedded in solid rock, forcefully implying the artifacts are millions of years old. Some researchers, notably Michael Cremo, have cited such anachronisms as evidence of a remarkably ancient civilization.

But the nail in Villagomez' neck suggests another (equally weird) explanation: Maybe, for unknown reasons, small metal objects are uniquely susceptible to random teleportation. Perhaps there's an ongoing, invisible traffic of nails, ball bearings and occasional jewelry (see Cremo and Thompson's "Forbidden Archaeology") that we notice only seldomly . . . if at all. Alternatively, "impossible" archaeological finds might signal flaws in the universe's causal structure, indicating that our reality is in fact a simulation or some sort of consensual dream.

Humans are quite adept at ignoring the "impossible." Comically enough, we deign to acknowledge it only when it happens to manifest in a man's neck -- metaphorically stuffed down our collective throat.