Um, ok, I was offbase in a couple ways above, and didn’t know it.
First of all, the notHereMsg is superfluous. The mere DEFINITION of the object will give you what you need. IE
absentForms : Unthing 'adj1 adj2 adj3 form1/form2/form3';
This will resolve to a valid object, but without location will never be present and the ‘can’t see’ message will be produced. Simpler!
More insidiously, because I chose to mimic the stock answer, I did not notice that my origText definition is wrong. np_ is an OBJECT, not a text string. What you want is this:
origText = gAction.dobjMatch.getOrigText()
Sorry for the confusion!