Monday, March 20, 2017

An Unexpected Mystery - part 1

I received an unusual envelope in the mail today.

It actually arrived on Saturday, however I didn't check the mail over the weekend.  The outer envelope was post-marked March 15th and came from New York. Inside was a sealed enveloped that appears to have originally been sent to this company in Norway.


The contents were... strange.  A half page hand-written note, a comic book page, a newspaper clipping, two pages which appear to have been torn out of a diary, and an article printed from the internet.

I was baffled.  I thought someone sent this to me by mistake.  There is no name on the handwritten note, the internal envelope went to a company, not a person.  I checked the tracking number on the outer envelope and that only confirmed that it came from New York.  I googled the company, and with a few clicks I discovered that this is some kind of mystery to solve or story to follow... I'm still not entirely sure what I've been sent.  But it seems as though it was meant for me.

And I'm completely impressed and delighted by this!  It is like I'm being sent an X-File for Indiana Jones!
In order to protect the mystery from accidental spoilers, I'm inserting a jump break - click to see the entire post if you don't mind being spoiled.



I looked at the originating company's website just long enough to see a positive quote from Neil Patrick Harris, and then I closed the window.  I don't want to accidentally come across any information about it.  I *think* there will be more mysterious envelopes to follow, so if I'm correct then this is Part 1 of the Unexpected Mystery.  Here are the contents of the envelope, in the order in which I think they are meant to be read.

handwritten note

front of comic book page

back of comic book page

article page 1

article page 2

article page 3


Two pages from a diary (written front and back)





Newspaper clipping

My conclusion thus far: in 2002, Hugh Jones and his friend James Cullens, discovered a sunken island off the coast of Norway which contained a dry cave.  Within the cave were ancient drawings of a god/sea creature (from the description I'm picturing Cthulhu?) The Norwegians gave the two divers a finder's fee, which they used to extend their vacation to a diving spot in Mexico.  Before they had a chance to dive, Hugh had nightmares about drowning, wrote about wanting to dry out.  Hugh seems to have hiked to the top of Pico de Orizaba in Mexico to do just that (though his autopsy shows that his lungs were filled with fluid)  Hugh's body was discovered in 2015.  At this point in the information, James is still missing.

I used Google to translate the comic book page, according to Google it says:
"Do not scare the boy more Jens! He has not said a word on several days"
"Is this what you said?"
"Is it that?"
I'm wondering if "Er det Dette du sa" is supposed to be "Is this what you saw", not "said".

The questions I immediately have are... what was James dreaming about, and where did he end up going?  Did Hugh climb the mountain by himself?

5 comments:

Gino said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gino said...

This is strange.

Jade said...

I'm intrigued both by the potential story being told and by who would have thought to sign me up for this.
If it was D, he is playing innocent remarkably well (I really don't think it is him, he was just as baffled as I was until I googled it and found out this is a company) K2 had heard of the company but already concluded it was out of her price range as a gift for me.
This first package has arrived just close enough to my birthday to make me presume it's a birthday gift (or it could be a very late-arrival Christmas gift?) which I think narrows the field down to family, since I don't think very many of my friends are that aware of when my birthday is - and of those that do, I can't imagine they would spend that much on me. Even among extended family, I can't imagine they'd spend that much on me.

I've done well with not digging *too* far into the company itself, but I did find a couple reviews that have suggested there are several "levels" of story one can order, and the mailings might be spread out quite far... so I suppose I should stop trying to jump on the mail truck and just patiently wait for whatever installment might come next. (I specifically left the company name out of my post so that people didn't accidentally come to my page via google and end up having their own story spoiled)

Anonymous said...

My friend just received the same package and it was his birthday a few days ago. I found you when I Googled the names of the two divers. We're up in BC. I wonder what this is!

Sam said...

I just received this today or maybe yesterday, very confused but intrigued, am I supposed to follow like a rabbit-hole to figure this out?