Dead Plane Crash Pilot Listed Taylor Swift As Next of Kin (She Isn't)

A few weeks ago, a single-engine plane crashed at Nashville’s airport, then sat unnoticed on a runway for several hours. Which is weird. But the story isn’t getting any less mystifying as more details emerge. Probably the most perplexing: According to the Tennessean, the Canadian pilot had apparently listed Taylor Swift as his next of kin.

She’s never heard of him.

Investigators have a lot of questions about how this unfolded. For starters, 45-year-old Michael Callan was only supposed to fly a mere 30 miles within Canada, from Windsor to Pelee Island. Instead, he turned off his transponder, flew undetected across an international border and made it to Nashville, where he may have then circled the airport for as long as two and a half hours.

When authorities reached out to the flying club whose Cessna Callan was piloting, they found that, even stranger, he’d listed pop star Taylor Swift—who lives in Nashville—as his next of kin. According to Nashville’s News Channel 5, Callan wasn’t married and didn’t have kids; his sisters were his closest relations.

Swift’s publicist told the Tennessean it was all a surprise to them, too: “The first we heard of this was when the appropriate authorities contacted Taylor’s management about the crash,” adding, “Taylor does not know this person.”

The local cops sound pretty mystified, too. A Metro Police spokesman told the Tennessean that “we don’t know what he was doing,” and he had no arrest history in Nashville.

It’s worth noting how New York‘s recently profile about the “reigning queen of pop” began, though:

Taylor Swift worries a lot about security. It’s an understandable concern. This spring, a man was arrested in the wee hours of the morning near her estate in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Police reportedly spotted him walking out of the ocean; he told the arresting officers he had swum two miles to meet Taylor Swift.