Tag Archives: public library project

Mystery!

Some of our loot.

Put on your think­ing caps, because zoinks, we’ve got a mys­tery on our hands.

We’ve been Tweet­ing and Face­book­ing about it as it has been hap­pen­ing, but we’re going to lay the series of events out for you right here. We want to know what you think.

About 6 weeks ago, Direc­tor Andy found a 50-cent piece on the front steps of the house, just out­side our out­er doors. The 50-cent piece was paint­ed gold. A week or so passed, and he found anoth­er one with a pen­ny next to it. Soon, we start­ed find­ing 50-cent pieces every cou­ple of days, either on the front step or on a table inside our gar­den that can be reached through the fence fac­ing 15th street.

This past Sun­day (12/18/11), Week­end Man­ag­er Lind­sey found one on the front steps when she opened, anoth­er one on the steps lat­er in the day, and a third on the table in the gar­den when she locked up. Today, we found one at the front door at noon (it was­n’t there when we opened at 10:00) and one more when we closed for the day.

We’re stumped.

15th and Locust is a busy inter­sec­tion dur­ing the day. The neigh­bor­hood is teem­ing with high school stu­dents from Con­flu­ence Acad­e­my across the street and res­i­dents from Locust, Wash­ing­ton Avenue and oth­er adja­cent streets are always out and about and walk­ing their dogs.  Con­struc­tion work­ers from the Pub­lic Library project are every­where, and we always have gen­er­al down­town foot traffic.

Camp­bell House has had its share of mys­ter­ies over the years. We occa­sion­al­ly get mail addressed to mem­bers of the fam­i­ly — we’ll post some of those tomor­row — and we’ve always had reports of super­nat­ur­al activ­i­ty, but this is the first reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent ongo­ing puz­zle. Because of the 50-cent pieces, we’ve been more enthu­si­as­tic than usu­al to unlock the doors and work in the gar­den to see what we’ll find.

And maybe this is some­one’s Christ­mas gift to Camp­bell House. The dona­tion is cer­tain­ly nice, but what a sto­ry! The mys­te­ri­ous donor had giv­en us some excite­ment over the last few weeks, and we appre­ci­ate the dai­ly rid­dle it brings.

What do you think? Com­ment here, on our Face­book page, or tweet us at @campbellmuseum. We’re look­ing for­ward to your take on this hap­py lit­tle happenstance.