When you hear that a god has suddenly appeared in your neighborhood, it may be tempting to assume that the sky will soon be splitting open, trumpets will sound from the heavens, or at the very least some form of mana will begin raining from the sky. What visitors at the Oakville Museum in Ontario saw, however, was quite different. A statue of Ganesh suddenly appeared without explanation, and visitors have been confused ever since over its meaning.
The statue, weighing nearly 500 pounds was discovered in the parking lot of the Oakville Museum without explanation. Soon after, when local police were called to the scene it was not to combat an unexpected slew of paranormal occurrences, but rather to help determine the origins of the statue. And as they looked into the matter, they found themselves with more questions than answers.
The statue of the elephant headed god was only a few feet high as it sat enigmatically in the parking lot daunting those hoping to move it. Theories that the statue had been nothing more than a donation were soon abandoned as police grappled with the possibility that it could have been stolen from a nearby temple. After searching for reports of stolen statues, police found that the mystery only deepened as no temples reported any sign of foul play. Given the size of the statue, standing three feet tall, they did determine that it was most likely not from a simple private collection. In addition, the god was missing two of its upper arms.
Originally, theories surrounding the object could not rule out that the missing arms may have been part of the plan and removed on purpose or could have been dropped accidentally. Either way, it’s unclear why the arms would be missing. And despite the fact that the statue found itself in the parking lot of a museum, there was very little in the way of clues as to where it could have come from – and the museum doesn’t ordinarily carry artifacts of this nature Despite this, one of the things about statues of this nature is that a damaged statue is bad luck to display. Was this an attempt to curse the museum and its parking lot with bad luck? Fortunately, nothing so sinister as that.
After a few days, and several media reports locally the origin of the statue was eventually identified – the original owner indeed came forward declaring he had hired someone to remove the broken-armed piece. Though there is still some mystery over why it ended up in a parking lot rather than the appropriate disposal site. And so we’re left wondering how a 500 pound statue ended up so far off course and what turn of events transpired in its presence after it was removed to take it from its intended destination so that it would end up adorning the parking lot of a Canadian museum. The mystery itself may be enough to secure the statue a place in a museum – not of 20th century history, but rather of curiosities.
Ganesh, or Ganesha is best known as the elephant deity remover of obstacles. Today Ganesh is widely worshiped in the Hindu pantheon by millions.