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Long Time Coming: Errant Messages, Lost Letters & Misdirected Mail

A post card sent from Chile in 1991, has finally reached its intended recipient.

"A postcard sent from South America has been delivered to its intended recipient 30 years after being posted.

Neil Crocker sent the card from Chile in 1991 when he was serving with the Royal Navy, returning from the Falkland Islands, on board HMS Cumberland.

The card finally dropped on to the doormat at the home of his father-in-law in Portland, Dorset earlier this week.
Mr Crocker said he was "shocked" to see it after three decades.

The ship had been returning from a three month tour of the Falkland Islands and stopped for five days in Valparaiso on the Chilean coast."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-58179661
 
This Hawaii man's package containing a product he was returning to a vendor was itself returned ... to him ... ten years later ...
Oahu man gets package returned after 10 years

A lot of people are sending out holiday packages this time of year ...

But a package going missing for a decade is rare. It's exactly what happened to Sascha Schindler from Waialua.

He was sent a returned package. Not knowing what it was, and not having recently ordered anything, he thought maybe it was a surprise Christmas present.

But then his wife saw the date on the front - June 27, 2011. It was marked returned to sender.

Inside was a parachute bag Schindler had ordered from a company in Belgium. It was too small, so Schindler went to return it.

It was that package that was sent back to him 10 years later. Schindler says he has no idea where it was for the last decade.

We reached out to the U.S. Postal Service. They told KITV4 they were unable to determine what happened, and say the tracking system used for packages doesn't go back that far. ...
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SOURCE: https://www.kitv.com/news/top-stori...cle_02bf4f4a-4f35-11ec-a571-9f31dc7edda0.html
 
Sometimes the delay is on the final / receiving end of the transmittal process. A nondescript cardboard box that sat in a City College of New York mailroom for many months (while the college on-site activities were suspended due to the pandemic) contained an anonymous donation of $180,000 in cash.
Cardboard box filled with a $180,000 cash donation mailed to The City College of New York. The package sat in a mailroom for months

Physics professor Vinod Menon doesn't get much mail at the office, so when The City College of New York (CCNY) returned to in-person classes this semester, he was greeted with some junk mail and a nondescript package in a battered cardboard box.

Menon, the chairman of the physics department, at first thought it was some sort of memento sent by a former student, but when he opened the box on September 1, he found stacks for $50 and $100 bills -- $180,000 in all. ...

There was an unsigned letter in the package explaining that the donor graduated "long ago" from The City College of New York with a double major in physics and mathematics, then got an MA in physics there and went on to get a double PhD in physics and astronomy.

"Assuming that you are (a) bit curious as to why I am doing this, the reason is straightforward: the excellent educational opportunity available to me -- which I took full advantage of at CCNY (and Stuyvesant High School) -- gave me the basis to continue to develop," the letter said.

The donor said they had had "a long, productive, immensely rewarding" scientific career.

The box of money weighed 4 pounds, 8 ounces and it cost $90.80 to send by 2-day Priority Mail from Pensacola, Florida. It had been delivered to CCNY on November 12, 2020 -- long after the school had moved to distance learning in March because of the Covid-19 pandemic. ...

Before CCNY could keep the money, officials had to make sure that it wasn't the proceeds of some sort of criminal activity.

Investigators from the school, The City University of New York (CUNY) system, NYPD, US Postal Service and the FBI and Department of Treasury determined the money was clean.

They were not able to identify the donor -- there was a name on the package, but it didn't match anyone in the CCNY alumni records. The return address didn't solve the mystery either, Menon said. ...

"I'd like them to know that firstly, we are thankful for the gift. I'm really honored that he or she decided that this was the right place to spend that kind of money on," Menon said. "And I'm also proud of the fact that the person had a wonderful career based on the education that they received at City College."
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FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/us/ccny-cash-gift-mystery-trnd/index.html
 
A Minnesota woman received a letter addressed to her house in 1953. She used social media to track down descendants of the originally intended recipients and turned over the letter to a surviving family member.
Letter that arrived 68 years late returned to family

... Susan Nordin, who moved into her home in the Morgan Park neighborhood of Duluth in October, said a mysterious letter recently appeared at her home. ...

"I looked at it just like this, and I said, 'Oh, it's from Copenhagen, and it's from 1953'" ...

The letter, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Ed Nelson, announced the birth of a baby named Jimmy.

Nordin enlisted the help of the Morgan Park Community page on Facebook to help identify the family who used to occupy her home.

She said locals on the page were able to help contact Connie Anderholm, Ed Nelson's granddaughter, who lives in Ohio.

Anderholm, whose mother sold the house after inheriting it from her late grandparents, said the letter was authored by her parents and announced the birth of her brother, Jim. She said her father was deployed to Germany at the time and the couple was in Copenhagen when her mother went into labor. ...

Nordin said contacting Anderholm also solved the mystery of why "Jim and Connie" was engraved on her back steps.

"My grandpa Ed did that, I'm pretty sure," Anderholm said. She said her grandfather did a lot of the construction on the house himself.

Anderholm said the letter was a nice reminder of her brother, who recently died. ...

She said the rest of Jim's family was also excited to learn about the letter.

"I messaged his daughter, my niece, and she called me and said, 'I can't stop crying,'" Anderholm said.

It was unclear how the letter came to be lost in the mail for nearly seven decades.
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/12/28/long-lost-letter-arrives-68-years-late/4291640716840/
 
A WW2 soldier's letter home to his mother was found and finally delivered to his widow 76 years later.
WWII soldier's long-lost letter delivered to his widow 76 years later

A World War II soldier's letter home was delivered to his widow in Massachusetts 76 years after it was mailed from Germany.

The U.S. Postal Service said John Gonsalves' letter to his mother turned up in late December at a processing and distribution facility in Pennsylvania, sparking a search for the U.S. Army sergeant's family. ...

Gonsalves' mother, the intended recipient of the then-22-year-old's letter, was found to be long dead, and Gonsalves died in 2015.

The USPS was able to find Angelina "Jean" Gonsalves, the sergeant's widow, living in Woburn, Mass.

Gonsalves said receiving the 76-year-old letter and reading her late husband's words from a time before they had even met was emotional. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/0...ed-to-his-widow-76-years-later/4701641495122/
 
A New Jersey man received two letters that had been mailed to (what's currently .., ) his address 75 years ago. It's not clear the US Postal Service were in possession of these letters during the long delay.
Two letters arrive at New Jersey home 75 years after being mailed

A New Jersey man said he was left perplexed when a pair of letters arrived at his home that had been mailed to his address 75 years earlier.

Gary Katen said the first letter that arrived at his Hackensack home was postmarked May 4, 1946, and bore two 1-cent stamps and a 6-cent stamp. ...

Katen said the mystery deepened a few weeks later when a second letter arrived. He said both letters appear to be correspondence between a man and his New Jersey in-laws. The letter's author described a trip to California with his wife.

Katen said he was unable to find any answers at his local post office, and a search of local property records to find the owners of his home in the 1940s hit a dead end when it turned out some public records were destroyed by a fire several years ago.

Katen said he is still hoping to find family members of the letter's author. ...

United States Postal Service spokesman Xavier Hernandez offered one possible explanation for the late arrival of the letters.

"What we typically find is that old mail pieces, like these, are found by someone and then deposited into one of our collection boxes," he said.

"Old letters and postcards can also be purchased at flea markets, antique shops, and even be purchased online, then they are re-entered into the system. In most cases, these incidents do not involve mail that has been lost in the network and later found," Hernandez said.
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/02/09/letter-arrives-New-Jersey-home-75-years-late/9251644445757/
 

Greetings from 1980: Dutch postcard finally arrives – 42 years late​

A 64-year-old Dutch woman has welcomed the news that she is finally to receive a postcard from her sister, despite it arriving 42 years late.

The card, saying simply “Greetings”, signed Veronica, Jan and Matthijs and addressed to Ludwina and Piet Verhoeven in Nieuw-Vennep, south-west of Amsterdam, was posted in the summer of 1980 from Hoeven in the southern province of Brabant.
“My sister Veronica sent that card,” Ludwina Verhoeven told the local broadcaster Omroep Brabant. Both her husband, to whom it was also addressed, and brother-in-law, who co-signed it, have since died. “Jan is my brother-in-law; he died four years ago. My husband, Piet, left us in February. That is why I think it is very special to receive this card.”

Verhoeven said she was not sure why the card had not been delivered to her at the time. “The address on it is the right one,” she said. “In fact, I still live there. And how come it has suddenly resurfaced now?”

The Dutch post office was at a loss to explain. “In the past, when the mail was sorted manually, cards sometimes got lost,” a spokesperson told the public broadcaster NOS. “Or it could have been delivered to the wrong address in 1980 and stayed there until now.”
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Here's the mystery of a postcard delivered in Vermont more than a century after it was postmarked.
Giving thanks for a postcard that just arrived after a 101-year journey

BRATTLEBORO — Town letter carrier Viv Woodland knew something was strange the moment she tried to deliver the postcard.

It wasn’t simply that the person it was penned to, Holland L. Smith, didn’t live at the listed Brattleboro address. The color of the sunny California orange grove on the flip side looked more like sepia. The stamp was purchased for a penny rather than the current 44-cent rate. And the postmark seemed to be a year old — from ’21.

On second look, make that 101 years old — from 1921.

So begins the story of a head-scratching postcard and what the family of its late recipient hopes people will see as its larger message.

It all started March 28, 1921, when a telephone operator named Lena bought the card that pictures the succulent city of Pomona, California, framed by a backdrop of frosty mountains. ...

Some 2,863 miles away, Smith was a 14-year-old ninth-grader at Brattleboro High School living in a duplex full of family — including his grandmother, who had adopted Lena as a baby. ...

Smith worked as a radio sportscaster, newspaper correspondent, teacher and track coach before serving as principal of Burlington High School from 1950 to 1964, assistant superintendent of schools from 1964 to 1971 and a member of what’s now the Burlington City Council from 1946 to 1952 and 1964 to 1968. ...

When Smith died in 2000 at age 94 — leaving four children, 14 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren — the Burlington Free Press called him “Mr. Everything.”

Fast-forward to this fall, when Woodland found a card in her delivery bag with two postmarks: The first from Pomona in 1921, a second on the other side reporting, “Sacramento CA, 20 Oct 2022.”

The carrier can only speculate about its whereabouts over the past century. ...
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FULL STORY (With Photos): https://vtdigger.org/2022/11/24/giv...d-that-just-arrived-after-a-101-year-journey/
 
Postmarked in 1995.

A letter that was posted nearly 30 years ago has finally reached its destination..

John Rainbow was "shocked" to get the letter from 1995 through his door in Wylam, Northumberland, after it was posted in Bridgwater, Somerset.

Mr Rainbow, 60, said: "We opened the letter, had a look at it and thought, 'Blimey, this is a bit strange'.

"It was for a previous resident of the house, they must've lived here at least 12 to 15 years ago."

The envelope has a Royal Mail first-class postage stamp and was franked in Bridgwater in 1995. On the back is a 1995 franking stamp from Alnwick in Northumberland.

"It is in perfect condition, it's not like it's been lying around, it just looks old," Mr Rainbow said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-64331592
 
This one took over 100 years to arrive!
The chap held onto it for a while until he realised that the postmark showed it was from 1916 and not 2016.
(I would have thought the extremely old stamp and the 'proper ink' writing in the obviously extremely old envelope would have given it away, but hey...)

A letter written in February 1916 has arrived at a flat in south London more than 100 years later.
The envelope, which has a Bath postmark and a 1p stamp bearing George V's head, arrived at Finlay Glen's flat on Hamlet Road, Crystal Palace, in 2021.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64647166
 
Trevp666 said:
This one took over 100 years to arrive!
The chap held onto it for a while until he realised that the postmark showed it was from 1916 and not 2016.
(I would have thought the extremely old stamp and the 'proper ink' writing in the obviously extremely old envelope would have given it away, but hey...)

A letter written in February 1916 has arrived at a flat in south London more than 100 years later.
The envelope, which has a Bath postmark and a 1p stamp bearing George V's head, arrived at Finlay Glen's flat on Hamlet Road, Crystal Palace, in 2021.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64647166
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As a former Post Office employee I can imagine how the delivery came about.

The letter has resurfaced from somewhere in the sorting process - down the back of a cupboard that's been removed during renovations, say - and some wag has suggested delivering it as normal to see what happens.

Legally, the letter would have to be delivered to the address given anyway, although if the postage were inadequate the Postie can knock and ask for the difference.

The Post Office will have a record of who was on that 'walk' on the day and delivered the letter. It's only a mystery outside certain circles. :wink2:
 
I think it's about time we heard from one of these people (who find them stuffed down the back of bits of furniture). Because there must be quite a few of these people about. And we never hear from any of them. You'd think they'd like to speak up.

Personally I find it a stretch of the imagination that there are bits of furniture in post offices or sorting offices that haven't been moved since 1916. Actually it's surely quite a stretch that there are even any post offices or sorting offices that have actually existed in the same building since 1916?

Have these things got lost several times? Or have they in JOTT fashion mysteriously disappeared from a postbox and then reappeared back in the postbox after decades? I know there are postboxes that have existed in the same place since 1916. It seems a bit far fetched to invoke the paranormal. But the 'ordinary explanation' also seems pretty far fetched to me!

it's very mysterious
 
Assuming Norwood delivery office serves that address it appears to be too recently built. Old envelopes with the letters inside turn up at collectors' fairs and the like so there's always a chance someone saw it and thought it would be a jolly jape to claim it had just been delivered.
 
Erinaceus said:
Assuming Norwood delivery office serves that address it appears to be too recently built. Old envelopes with the letters inside turn up at collectors' fairs and the like so there's always a chance someone saw it and thought it would be a jolly jape to claim it had just been delivered.
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Aha but the envelope would have been opened already, wouldn't it, surely? How could anyone resist opening an envelope for 100 years?
 
Like spreading random acts of chaos instead of random acts of kindness?! The sender would never get the 'benefit' of seeing the person's response to the letter's arrival. Unless it got reported I suppose.

(actually, sounds like the cosmic joker to me... I can't help my fortean mind)
 
Hmm.

How about 'he found the letter had slipped through a gap in the floorboards in the house and decided to say it had just been delivered'?

I'm just rambling now :rofl:
 
My example of the back of a cupboard was inspired by an experience of Techy's, when he posted an envelope from work into a bank's night safe. The letter didn't arrive and there was unpleasantness.

After some furious exchanges between Techy, his boss and the bank, the letter was found down the back of a cupboard.
It had slipped off when the employee who opened the night safe had put it and others down while he scratched his nose or whatever.
Just using one of those little blue stationery baskets would have saved all that argy-bargy. :chuckle:

Things go missing. Sometimes they are found and 'filed' elsewhere and forgotten until someone else comes across them. If the item is a letter it can be posted. See what happens. :evillaugh:
 
Another down the back of a cupboard case?

A postcard addressed to a student at a boarding school has arrived 66 years after it was sent.

Staff at Adcote School, in Shropshire, were amazed when among the morning post was curious correspondence addressed to a Miss D Kerr from her mother. Stamps on the postcard suggest the original postage date as being 1957.

Adcote head teacher Diane Browne said she thought she had received a vintage-style postcard but soon realised she had a minor mystery on her hands.

"My first reaction on seeing the postcard was complete disorientation," she said. "When it dawned on me what had actually happened, I was in complete shock."

While the modern postmark on the card is dated 21 April 2023, a pre-decimal blue 1d stamp appears with a green 1.5d stamp. Each depicted Queen Elizabeth II and was issued, the school said, after her Coronation in 1953. There was, the school added, also an old postmark, suggesting the card had entered the postal system previously, although the date was proving too hard to read. But going by the type of stamps used, and a price hike in late 1957, the suspected postage date was either June or July of that year, according to the school. Just what happened after that is unclear.

Ms Browne praised "Royal Mail's conscientious attitude" and wondered whether a worker found the card "possibly when a piece of furniture was moved, and instead of tossing it aside, they have honoured the commitment to deliver it, although a little later than expected".

But there is still detective work to be done to determine the identity of the intended recipient.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-65561884
 

Lost French love letters from the 1750s reveal what life was like during wartime​


Scores of French love letters from the mid-18th century have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written.

The letters – sent to French sailors by wives, siblings and parents – never made it to their intended recipients, but they offer rare insight into the lives of families affected by war.

"I could spend the night writing to you," wrote Marie Dubosc to her husband. "I am your forever faithful wife. Good night, my dear friend. It is midnight. I think it is time for me to rest."

Dubosc would not have known her husband had been captured by the British, and that he would never receive her message. She died the year after she sent the letter, and likely never saw him again.

3_anne-le-cerf_nanette_-love-letter-to-husband-jean-topsent_credit-the-national-archives_renaud-morieux_custom-60acae3b69d839416e222cff1edd3a826c95576f-s1200-c85.webp


Sent between 1757-58 during the Seven Years War, the letters were mostly addressed to the crew of the Galatée warship, and the French postal administration forwarded them from port to port in hopes of reaching the sailors. But when the British Navy captured the Galatée in April 1758, French authorities forwarded the batch of letters to England.

There they remained unopened for centuries, until the historian Renaud Morieux of the University of Cambridge discovered them in the digital inventory of Britain's National Archives.

The 104 letters are written on heavy, expensive paper, and some have red wax seals. But they contain the words of common people rather than aristocrats, Morieux says – voices often missing from the historical record, like sailors' and fishermens' wives.

In one letter, Marguerite Lemoyne, a 61-year-old mother, scolds her son Nicolas Quesnel for not writing: "On the first day of the year [i.e. January 1st] you have written to your fiancée... I think more about you than you about me...In any case I wish you a happy new year filled with blessings of the Lord. I think I am for the tomb, I have been ill for three weeks. Give my compliments to Varin [a shipmate], it is only his wife who gives me your news."

Sending a letter to a ship constantly on the move during wartime was difficult and unreliable, and families often sent multiple copies of letters to different ports.

In an effort to maximize the chances of successfully communicating with a loved one, each letter had multiple messages crammed onto the paper, often from different families and addressed to multiple crewmates.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1210861222/lost-french-love-letters-1750s-seven-years-war

maximus otter
 
An improvement for the Royal Mail, this card only took 27 years to deliver.

A card has been delivered to its owner in Hull more than 27 years after it was posted.

Alphie Meleyal was sent the card from her former partner's mother in 1997.

The now 60-year-old was finally given the card after the story featured on BBC Look North.

Despite the delay, Royal Mail said it "does its utmost" to deliver all post.

An envelope with a stamp and 1997 postmark

The card was posted in Wolverhampton in 1997

It is unclear where the card has been since it was posted in Wolverhampton. It was delivered to Ms Meleyal's previous address in March.

The card was sent after Ms Meleyal split up with her then partner Mandy.

Mandy's mother, Eileen, had sent the card to express her sadness at the break up, hoping the two young women would remain friends.

Ms Meleyal said it was "amazing" the card had survived for so long and had no idea it even existed.

She said: "I was shocked but pleased as punch that someone was thinking of me all that time ago.

"At first I thought it was a joke but when I got the letter I was excited and when I found out who it was from I was really touched. I am so happy I got it."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c723p39e554o
 
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