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

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
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Long time coming (long delayed mail and other blasts from the past)

Repaired spectacles turn up 12 years later

A pair of safety glasses sent off for repair have been returned 12 years later.

In 1991 research chemist Alan Fosker took the spectacles to a local opticians, who sent them away.

Now they have arrived back but are no longer any good to the 63-year-old. Not only is he now retired but he has gone through several prescriptions since.

The glasses arrived back at the opticians on Monday. Staff contacted the grandfather-of-five, who wondered what spectacles they were talking about.

"I had completely forgotten about them," said Mr Fosker, of Pencoed, south Wales. "They must be pretty dusty by now."

In 1991 the glasses were sent to the supplier, who forwarded them to a firm based in Newbury, Berkshire. Four years later that firm was taken over by Bayer - the same company that Mr Fosker had worked for in Bridgend.

A spokesman for Bayer said: "Our buildings have been undergoing refurbishment for about 18 months and the outward mail and post rooms have both moved.

It sounds like they got lost in our system and someone conscientious has discovered them recently and popped them in the post box."

Mr Fosker, who had been working on vaccines for hay fever in 1991, will not be collecting the now-redundant glasses.

"Who wants a pair of glasses which are not the right prescription any longer?" he said.


Story filed: 15:18 Thursday 16th October 2003

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_829408.html?menu=news.quirkies
 
Long time coming (long delayed mail and other blasts from th

Post office delivers mystery -- a 1922 postcard


By RICK NEALE
Staff writer

News Herald/EMILY HEMMIS


PORT CLINTON -- In September 1922, Roscoe St. Myer penned a message to his wife on the back of a romantic postcard, promising to write back when he heard from her again. He affixed a 1-cent stamp and mailed it to her rural Port Clinton home from someplace in Berea.

His postcard arrived at the Port Clinton Post Office -- almost 82 years later.

The historic correspondence arrived unexpectedly last week in a routine mail shipment from the U.S. Postal Service distribution center in Toledo. Postmaster Kay Tobey said she had no idea how the yellowed postcard ended up in the shipment, or where it originated from.

"Check this out. This is so cool," Tobey said, holding the postcard in her hands. "It's amazing that we can even still read it. It was done with pencil.

"I've never received anything like this before in all my years of service."

The mysterious postcard is postmarked Sept. 14, 1922, and was mailed to Mrs. Roscoe St. Myer, Port Clinton, Ohio, on the RD3 rural postal route. Tobey said rural routes during that era did not use numbered addresses -- carriers simply delivered mail to the appropriate houses.

The front of the postcard depicts a pair of lovers embracing and the title "Couldn't Resist You." Following is the text of the message, presumably written by Roscoe St. Myer:

"Berea

Sept 13-22

Dear Wife

Well got here all O.K. Everybody glad to get the lunch. Thought it was fine. Not much doing today no races yesterday. So did not miss anything. Will write more when I hear from you."

Adding to the mystery, the following sentence was written in blue pen across the back of the card: "I met her at my mailbox -- Lucky me -- John."

Tobey speculated that the postcard may have been accidentally placed in the mail by a collector. If Port Clinton postal employees had not taken special notice, she said the postcard could have ended up at a U.S. Postal Service mail recovery center in Atlanta, Ga., where it would have likely been tossed into the trash.

Tobey said her efforts to locate the St. Myer family have been unsuccessful. She even consulted Bernie Tibbs, a retired longtime rural postal carrier, who had no knowledge of a possible address.

"I think that their family would love to have this card," Tobey said. "This is quite a keepsake for somebody."

---------
Information wanted

Anyone with information regarding the 1922 Port Clinton postcard or the Roscoe St. Myer family should contact the city post office at 419-732-3322.

http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/news/stories/20040408/localnews/196519.html
 
Jun 8, 8:05 PM EDT


Mail Delivered After Nearly Two Decades

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) -- Trisha Collins-Lavigne waited 19 years to see Nina Roxanne's plastic face again. The Cabbage Patch Kids doll, which arrived at her home recently, was mailed to her almost two decades ago, after she left it on a tour bus in London.

The package carrying the doll was one of nearly 1,000 delivered over the last month after years in a former postal worker's home.

In late April, workers started cleaning out a duplex in the Wakefield section of South Kingstown where a former post office employee had lived and notified police of mail found piled in the home.

Inspectors found 900 to 1,000 items dating from 1985 to 1998 and bound for addresses served by the West Kingston post office, where the employee worked, said Donald Marshall, manager of the Postal Service's Southeast New England district.

"Most were in very good condition," Marshall told The Providence Journal.

Marshall declined to identify the former postal worker, but said the individual had been fired in 1998 after being prosecuted for obstruction of the delivery of mail. She had worked for the post office for eight years.

In that year, postal inspectors from Providence and Boston found the female carrier with several dozen parcels inside her car. At that time, there wasn't enough information to warrant a search of her apartment, said Michael Gendrone, a postal service spokesman.

In 1999, the mail carrier was fined 0 for the misdemeanor charge, said Thomas Connell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Connell also would not release the individual's name. He and Marshall said it is unlikely she will face additional charges because she has already been prosecuted on the 1998 charge.

Source
 
A friend was telling me that she found stacks of mail that had been dumped in her mother's garden last week. It contain hospital appointments, medicine and letters that did have cheques in them. She phoned the postoffice and they didn't want to know. She also said that a friend of her mothers had been sent £20 in a birthday card and when it arrived through her door the money was missing and there was a note attached saying that next time she should send £100 instead.
 
hallybods said:
She also said that a friend of her mothers had been sent £20 in a birthday card and when it arrived through her door the money was missing and there was a note attached saying that next time she should send £100 instead.

Weird - I posted a report here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=390256#post390256

but it does have a UL feel to it - there is a lot of concern at the moment about using Asylum Seekers, etc. as temporary postmen and it could stem from this I suppose - I mean why would they leave a note??

Emps
 
You're right the second part does smack of an UL. Could be as her mother had told her what a 'friend' had said.

Bizarrely I met her whilst I was on my way to college, she was going to have her photo taken by the local paper. When I spoke to her later she said they made her stand next to the offending mail with several letters clutched in her hand while looking angry. She said it was the strangest thing she'd ever done.
 
Weird this, something happened this weekend which belongs in this thread.

Last week, my girlfriend recieved a post card from her friend. She was on holiday abroad (only france I think?), and was having a great time. So when my gf spoke to this friend on saturday, it was natural for her to ask if she had a good time then, and to share some stories. Only the reply was:
'I've not been away this year yet, I go in a few weeks time. I sent you that post card last year?!'
it had been over a year since the card was sent.

Why, in this day an age, can it take a year for a single card to get such a short distance, in going abroad terms. I understand the card could have been stuck somewhere in a postal office, and someone had just found it, but this friend apparently sent out around 10 cards.

None of them arrived at their destination. My gf's was the first.
 
The postal system is a very mysterious thing.

Back when I was in high school, living in Canada, I had a pen pal in Belgium. We wrote each other frequently, probably a letter every couple of weeks or more. I had sent him a letter at one point, and unusually, many months went by before I received a reply. He told me what had happened: the post office had spilled ink all over the address of my letter, rendering it illegible. Somehow, after months had gone by, they finally deciphered it, and sent it to him in an envelope along with a sheet of stamps to make up for the inconvenience! I believe the postal service in Belgium may be much better than it is here in the USA. ;)

Once I received in the mail a lettuce leaf. It had my name and address printed on it with sharpie pen, but no return address or postage, nor any other printing on it, and was not in any kind of container or envelope.

Also, I had a friend who lived in New Orleans, and received a letter from California once which had his name and street address on it, but no city, state, nor zip code, so I wonder how the hell it got to him... and why perfectly addressed letters with sufficient postage often never reach their destinations.
 
The mail system here in the UK claim to be reliable by delivering on time and offering top class service.
Yet I have seen the documentaries and have family members that have worked for them, and all is not what it seems!

Yet again, I guess that's the same with any country. They always deliver my letters to I'm not complaining :)
 
US mail delivers ... 37 years on

AP, Pennsylvania
Thursday July 29, 2004
The Guardian

A card posted to Pennsylvania by a woman on holiday in New Jersey 37 years ago has just arrived. Dorothy Orth, of Seelyville in north-eastern Pennsylvania, baffled her daughter when she called on Saturday to thank her for the card.

"What card?" asked Janet Richards, of Port Jervis, New York. When her mother said it was from Asbury Park, New Jersey, she remembered.

"I sent that postcard in August 1967, when my husband and I were on our fifth wedding anniversary," she said. Ms Orth received it on July 17, almost 37 years later.

A 23 cent stamp had been stuck beside the original four cent stamp and the zip code had been added. The card was postmarked August 19 1967 at the Asbury Park post office, and July 14 2004 in Brooklyn, New York.

Credit for the belated delivery goes to Ernesto Perry, of the undelivered mail unit in Brooklyn. The postcard came to light behind a machine that was recently moved, Mr Perry said. "We always try to send back mail whenever possible."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1271214,00.html
 
A similar thing happened to me today. I got a phonecall at work from the postroom, asking me if anybody up here in the office knew who this bit of internal post addressed to 'x' was really meant to go to, because nobody in the post room knew who 'x' was - perhaps I should ask 'y', the person who seemingly sent it. However, after a bit of head scratching we worked out that the reason why nobody knew who it was that was supposed to receive it was because both the sender ('y'), and the receiver ('x') of the post had resigned several years earlier. It seems that this intrernal letter had managed to disappear for a couple of years, before mysteriously resurfacing.
 
Letter arrives - 286 years late

Germany's postal service has set a new record after a letter was delivered to the correct address 286 years late.

The letter from a Lutheran church official in the town of Eisenach was sent to officials in the nearby town of Ostheim in 1718, authorising them to pick a new clergyman after the death of the former holder of the office.

But it was delivered by mistake to a different Ostheim near Frankfurt, and ended up in the town archives.

Karl Schneider, 73, a local historian from Ostheim-vor-der-Rhoen which should have received the letter almost 300 years ago uncovered the mistake while discussing archive material with a colleague from the other Ostheim where it was mistakenly sent.

Schneider matched the letter with names and events in his own town's history, and the letter was finally delivered Wednesday.

In the early days of Germany's postal service mail delivery was done by cattle merchants, as the royal post only connected the main cities.

Schneider added: "It was probably the earliest example of a letter sent to the wrong address as well, but at the end of the day it didn't affect history too much. Ostheim-vor-der-Rhoen did get its new clergyman - despite the letter being lost."

Source
 
Vital letter 60 years 'too late'

An old soldier has received a heartbreaking letter 60 years after it could have changed his life.

Ken McKernan, 79, from Liverpool, should have received his mother's letter while he was serving with the Royal Fusiliers in World War II.

Mr McKernan, who was brought up by relatives after his mother emigrated to the US when he was a boy, thought she had forgotten about him.

"If only I had known I would have definitely gone to join her," he said.

The letters from his mother, written in 1944, ended up in a cigar box in a Dutch museum before they were returned to him after an international search to track down the author via relatives in the USA.

They expressed a mother's love he never knew.

"When I did not receive any mail from my mother I presumed she'd forgotten about me," he said.

"My life could have been a totally different story."

He added: "The first thing I saw when I opened the bundle were the words, 'My Darling Son'. I wept when I read the content."

His mother, who died eight years ago, moved from the family home in Liverpool to America when he was a youngster.

He remained in the UK with relatives as he did not want to be uprooted from his friends.

"It is heartbreaking to read my mother's words from all those years ago," he said.

"It has given me some peace to know that she was thinking about me at that time."

Mr McKernan was 19 when he landed on Juno beach in Normandy during the D-Day landings.
He also fought in Holland during the war but has no idea how the letters found their way to the museum.

The correspondence included two long-lost letters sent by his mother from her home in New York which are signed "Goodnight and God be with you, all my love, your loving mother".

The bundle also included a number of letters and photographs sent by a sweetheart.

"I was astonished when I was told about the letters, I couldn't quite believe it until I'd seen them for myself.

"I have no idea how they ended up in Holland and why I never received them.

"They are obviously very treasured possessions and I am so happy they have finally reached me - even if it is 60 years late."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 138667.stm
Published: 2004/12/31 18:08:47 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
Undelivered postcard returned to sender - 37 years later

Associated Press
Jan. 25, 2005 08:40 AM

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - A postcard that Navy recruit Dennis Bosley sent to his mother has been returned - 37 years after he mailed it.

The yellowed postcard intended for Beatrice Bosley arrived in her son's Morgantown mailbox Saturday inside an envelope with no return address.

"It's just weird," said Bosley, 55. "I'd like to find out who sent it to me and what happened to it. I have no idea. I've called all my family, and they have no idea."

Bosley mailed the postcard from boot camp in 1968 and he later served on the destroyer USS Waldon during the Vietnam War. Nine days after he returned to Morgantown, his mother died.

Dennis Bosley called the post office and was told a question mark was written on the envelope by a postal carrier to indicate its origin was unknown.

"It looks like they just put the same address that I had on the card," he said. "I'd just like to find who sent it."

Source
 
German post delivers Hitler card

German postal staff ensured a postcard to Adolf Hitler sent from England got to its destination, despite the Nazi leader being dead for 60 years.

It was sent to "Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, Reichstag, German Parliament, Berlin, Germany", from an undisclosed address.

Deutsche Post marked on the card that the address was incorrect and that the unidentified sender should be informed.

Without referring to Hitler directly, it added future mail should be sent to the German Bundestag, or Parliament.

The letter was stamped with, "Mail corrected due to insufficient address - please alert sender. Ascertained address: Deutsche Bundestag, 11011 Berlin," according to the German DPA press agency.

Deutsche Post said the delivery of the postcard was evidence of the service's good work.

A spokesman for the postal service told German publication Der Spiegel it had no right to remove mail from circulation simply because the addressee is dead.

A spokesman for the Bundestag confirmed the postcard had been received by their mail handlers.


------------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/e ... 254265.stm

Published: 2005/02/10 14:36:50 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
1972 Crash Survivor's Wallet Recovered


Feb 24, 11:49 PM (ET)

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) - One of 16 survivors of a 1972 Andes plane crash made famous by a book and movie has gotten his wallet and jacket back 32 years after leaving them in the mountain snows.

Eduardo Strauch, who survived 72 days in high mountain snows, received the aged wallet, drivers license and other personal items Wednesday, a week after they were found in the Andes by a mountain climber.

Strauch, now a 57-year-old architect and father of five, was aboard a flight with fellow rugby players, relatives and friends when their plane crashed high in the Andes on Oct. 12, 1972.

"Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors" by Piers Paul Read publicized the story with accounts of how survivors ate flesh from some of the victims to survive. The story was later dramatized in a Hollywood movie.

A Mexican hiker chanced upon the items just yards from the site where the plane went down.

The hiker passed the items on to a local hotelier took who gave them to Alvaro Mangino, another Uruguayan who survived the flight and happened to be in western Argentina at that time. Mangino delivered to Strauch.

"This is just a feeling that's impossible to describe," Strauch told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It's incredible, amazing that this episode continues to speak for itself."

Source

He is also believed to have asked if they'd brought back any "special meat" as he still had a hankering for it ;)
 
POW postcard arrives 60 years late

A pensioner in the Czech Republic has received a postcard he sent 60 years ago from a prisoner of war camp in France, Czech daily Mlada fronta Dnes has reported.

Karol Brozda, 79, from Cesky Tesin in the north of the country, sent the postcard to his parents as a soldier in a US army prison camp in France in February 1945 to let them know he was alive.

Brozda received the item of post several days ago after it was forwarded by a family in Poland who received it by mistake several weeks ago and says he has no idea why it took so long to arrive.

"It brought back memories of the war and everything I experienced. They are not good memories at all," he said.

Brozda, who is Polish, was forced to join the German army in 1944 when the Nazis occupied the region. After a month of training he was sent to the battle front.

He was injured after being shot in the arm in France but after a few weeks returned to the battlefield.

"I decided to go over to the other side and fight against the Germans," he said.

After a short stay in the prison of war camp Brozda joined the Polish army abroad in Britain. He returned home after the war in 1947.
-AFP

Online version here. No photos of the postcard tho :(
 
Article Published: Tuesday, April 05, 2005


News from bizarre world we live in

By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen, Times-Herald writer

Ready for some more strange and wonderful world news?

Seems that random missing mail that never arrives may not be languishing in some dark and lonely postal basement, after all. It may, in fact, be piling up in some postal worker's garage.

The Associated Press reported recently that Indiana police investigating a domestic dispute found several bags and boxes of undelivered mail, dated between 1996 and 1999, in a mailman's home.

Police were reportedly told the mail hadn't been delivered because there was too much of it. The mail will reportedly be delivered now. Better late than never, I guess.

Source
 
100 year old tombstone finally finds home

Tombstone arrives 100 years late
The tombstone of a famous Queensland doctor will arrive in the Torres Strait next week, after it was mistakenly sent to South Australia nearly 100 years ago.

Dr Joseph Wassell was renowned on Thursday Island for saving lives during a Spanish flu outbreak in the first World War.

The quarantine manager on South Australia's Torrens Island, Ian White, found the doctor's tombstone in a boatshed and realised it was in the wrong place.

Mr White says he believes someone got the address wrong.

"Torres Strait and Torrens Island sound very much the same; the locals in South Australia call Torrens Island TI and the locals in the Strait call Thursday Island TI so the confusion could well be there," he said.

Last Update: Tuesday, July 12, 2005. 3:26pm (AEST)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/20 ... 412630.htm

Phew! Rest in peace, doctor! Finally!
 
Although slightly off subject, I'll post anyhoo... A few years back I worked in a warehouse. Every day we had a Royal mail lorry to fill with all the orders we'd picked. The lorries would often have random things in them, but one particular truck had a huge pile of opened christmas cards in it, literally a couple of hundred! Another time, a co-worker noticed a letter wedged in the frame of the lorry trailer. It was July or August, and the postmerk was from Dec, he gleefully opened it and was pleased with the tenner he found inside. I'm sure Auntie Fanny and her little nephew/niece were not so full of joy however! Also if you ever receive catalogue items that are broken, then I can say that the heavy and fragile items are often used in tests of throwing prowess by meatheads that work in warehouses. (note: I'm not of the 'meathead' variety, and I'm aware that most warehouse workers don't fit into this catagory either. However if you have worked in a place like this, you will also be thinking about the racist/homophobic git with the skinhead and England tattoo!)
 
Snail mail in Sweden; postcard lands 50 years later

Snail mail in Sweden; postcard lands 50 years later



A Swedish postcard bearing a lottery number arrived 50 years after being sent to a retirement home on the Baltic island of Gotland.

The card to a former employee at the Avallegarden retirement home in Klintehamn was mailed by a friend in Finspang, some 150 kms (93 miles) away on the Swedish mainland. Sent in October 1955, it arrived last month.

"Now and again a letter that has gone astray like this surfaces somewhere ... but it is very unusual," Swedish Post Office spokesman Markus Trautmann said on Monday.

The postcard included the number of a lottery ticket that the two women bought together, local paper newspaper Gotlands Allehanda reported. It was not known if they won.

Snail Mail
 
Misdirected or Lost Mail

I thought we already had a thread on this, but I can't find it:
Festive card has 5,000 mile trip

A Christmas card sent by a pensioner to her nephew, two miles away, was delivered accidentally via Iran.
Edith Gover, 83, sent the greeting from a post box in Kingswood, Bristol, on 15 December to her nephew, who lives in nearby Bitton.

When the card arrived nine days later, on Christmas Eve, it bore a post mark from the Iranian capital Tehran.

Mrs Gover said she was surprised that the card made the 5,000 mile round-trip so quickly.

Shock return

She said: "'It was quite a shock to think that the card had gone so far, but still managed to turn up at my nephew's house.

"Although the Post Office have made a mistake they certainly put it right very quickly."

A spokeswoman for the Royal Mail said: "It is very difficult to pinpoint, but it is more than likely it is an extremely rare case of where international mail has been attached in some way to inland mail."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4590708.stm
 
Missing Austrian postcard mystery

A holiday postcard sent from Austria in 1972 has finally turned up at its destination in Kent 34 years later.
Anne Murphy was a 19-year-old on her first trip away without her parents when she wrote the postcard in the resort of Walchsee.

It only arrived at the former family home in Otford this year and was delivered by hand to Ms Murphy by the current owner Marion Wills.

Royal Mail said it thought the postcard had been lost somewhere in Austria.

Ms Murphy, who now lives in Shoreham, less than three miles away from Otford, said Ms Wills tracked her down through a mutual association with the Women's Institute.

"She found out that I was living in Shoreham and from a mutual friend she came to my address and showed us this postcard that never came to my parents.

"I was absolutely amazed, I couldn't believe it."

The postcard told of her first day in Walchsee with her friend Kathleen Maxwell, from Canterbury, and their experiences in the "pretty little village".

It still bears the original Austrian schillings stamp and a franking mark from the summer of 1972.

Ms Murphy said: "It's a mystery, it must have just been tucked away in a dark corner somewhere.

"Whether it was in England or Austria, we'll never know."

Her mother Barbara Jennings, who moved to Devon, has now got a photocopy of the 34-year-old postcard.

"I was utterly amazed it had turned up," she said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4644190.stm
 
Letter delivered 56 years late

Now that's what I call snail mail.. :D

Letter is delivered 56 years late

A mystery letter posted to a Cambridge University college 56 years ago has finally been delivered.
Trinity College porters were surprised when the faded letter, posted in London on 3 March 1950, turned up.

The faded handwritten letter, addressed to George Green, reads: "George, will meet at Monty's next weekend. Is 2pm acceptable? Love Gwen."

Trinity College said staff were checking their records to find out whether Mr Green was a student.

The college's head porter David Hales said: "It is a bit of a mystery. We are going through our archives to see if we can find out any more about it.

'Certainly strange'

"It is possible that George was a student, but we haven't got a clue whether Monty's was a place, or perhaps a friend's house."

Royal Mail spokesman James Taylor said: "As it has a postmark, it is extremely unlikely that it has been in our system all this time.

"A postmark shows it has already been through so it must have been put back again only recently.

"It is possible that it may have got caught up in a large envelope and sent to a wrong address. It is certainly a strange one."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 773687.stm

Published: 2006/05/15 14:58:01 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
i have also heard of people re-posting letters that they may have found, or have been left and forgot...

this could account for some items turning up years later...


(plus return to sender is a free service offered by royal mail...always put a return adress on in case items cant be delivered....remember its free ;) :D )
 
Mailed snake sparks postal panic

A woman caused panic in a German post office when a 1.5m (5ft) albino python snake she was trying to send through the mail broke free of its packaging.
The 28-year-old woman had sold the snake over the internet and was mailing it to its new owner labelled "glass".

"Staff accepted the package and put it in the back of the office - they had no idea what it was," police said.

"All of a sudden, they noticed that it started moving around and then saw a big snake wriggling out of it."

One of the workers at the western city of Mechernich's post office wrestled the escaping snake and put it in a container.

It is not illegal for people to send snakes via mail, but the woman will be investigated by police over a mistreatment of animals charge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5215506.stm
 
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