Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, Oh Hello, Do you know who this is? Yes, Stevie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got me.
Speaker 2: You have a pretty recognizable voice.
Speaker 1: I have to say.
Speaker 3: It has sort of like a pleasantly deep registered wow
Speaker 3: in a nice way, but it makes your voice very distinct.
Speaker 4: It's funny you should say this because, Yeah, one time,
Speaker 4: when I was like in middle school, my friend called
Speaker 4: my house and I picked up the phone and I
Speaker 4: was like, hello, and she thought it was my dad.
Speaker 4: She was like, hi, Rob, is Stevie home? And I
Speaker 4: just pretended that, in fact, I was my father, and
Speaker 4: I was just like, uh yeah, let me get her.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to contradict your friend.
Speaker 4: I think I was just so embarrassed that I could
Speaker 4: possibly be mistaken for an old man.
Speaker 5: Well maybe with respect to your dad, he maybe he
Speaker 5: kind of sounds like little girl.
Speaker 3: Hello, Stevie Lane, stads speaking.
Speaker 4: I'm Stevie Lane, and this is Heavyweight Today's episode forty
Speaker 4: four photos.
Speaker 1: Right after the break.
Speaker 4: There are places, according to Celtic folklore, where the boundary
Speaker 4: between our physical world and the spiritual world is porous,
Speaker 4: where Earth and the otherworldly are separated.
Speaker 1: By no more than a few inches.
Speaker 4: At these places, strange unexplainable things can happen. These places
Speaker 4: are called thin places, and this is a story about
Speaker 4: one of them. A few years ago, Jordan Kissner wrote
Speaker 4: a book about thin places. She wanted to send it
Speaker 4: to her friend Amy.
Speaker 2: So it was April seventh, twenty twenty one, and I
Speaker 2: went to the USPS that was a few blocks away
Speaker 2: from my apartment at the time.
Speaker 4: Jordan bought a brown padded envelope, put her book inside,
Speaker 4: and handed it to the postal worker and that was that.
Speaker 2: It was a really uneventful post office visit on a
Speaker 2: pretty normal spring day in Vegas.
Speaker 6: It was a sunny day in April, and I walked
Speaker 6: to the mailbox. This is Jordan's friend Amy, which is
Speaker 6: a really exciting part of my day. I really like mail.
Speaker 6: And I opened the mailbox with the little key and
Speaker 6: there's something like stuffed into my box.
Speaker 4: Something Amy had been expecting the package Jordan sent her.
Speaker 6: It says, you know, to Amy from Jordan and the
Speaker 6: addresses Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: Amy brought the package back to her house and eagerly
Speaker 4: tore it open. But inside Amy did not find Jordan's book.
Speaker 4: She didn't find a book at all. Instead, she found
Speaker 4: a stack of.
Speaker 6: Photographs, and that's where the mystery begins.
Speaker 4: Amy didn't recognize anyone in the photos. There was one
Speaker 4: of a girl wearing a blue T shirt with clouds
Speaker 4: printed on it, another of three teenagers in caps and gowns.
Speaker 4: The people were of all different ages and races. Some
Speaker 4: of the photos were in black and white, some in color.
Speaker 4: One was a polaroid. Amy counted forty four photos in all,
Speaker 4: forty four photos of complete and total strangers, And yet
Speaker 4: the package was labeled to Amy, her name written in
Speaker 4: ballpoint pen Jordan's return address was scrawled in the upper
Speaker 4: left hand corner. Struggling to come up with an explanation,
Speaker 4: Amy wondered.
Speaker 6: Maybe Jordan sent these by accident.
Speaker 4: So Amy texted Jordan, telling her she received her package,
Speaker 4: but rather than a book, found forty four photographs inside.
Speaker 2: And I was completely confused.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't.
Speaker 2: I actually felt like I couldn't totally comprehend the message
Speaker 2: she was sending me.
Speaker 1: So Jordan texted Amy back.
Speaker 6: Wait, Comma, what with two question marks?
Speaker 5: Two?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Two?
Speaker 6: And then photos question mark.
Speaker 4: Amy sent Jordan a picture of the package and all
Speaker 4: forty four photographs spread out on her kitchen counter.
Speaker 6: And she said, what in all caps? I have no
Speaker 6: idea what those photos are. I don't even I know
Speaker 6: those people, but that's my handwriting on the package.
Speaker 4: It was hard to know what to make of the
Speaker 4: whole thing. It's like Amy expected a book about thin
Speaker 4: places but got an actual thin place experience instead. Amy
Speaker 4: can't bring herself to just throw the photos away, so
Speaker 4: for an entire year now she's kept them by her desk,
Speaker 4: and for an entire year she's been studying them. There's
Speaker 4: the one of a new baby sucking on someone's finger.
Speaker 4: There's a little girl in glasses and a cheerleader's outfit,
Speaker 4: holding her leg up and smiling confidently into the camera.
Speaker 4: The more Amy looks at the photos, the more she
Speaker 4: thinks about the family that's missing them. These people in
Speaker 4: the photos are nobody's to Amy, but they are somebody's
Speaker 4: to somebody.
Speaker 6: Is there a way to find any of these people?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 6: Who are they? Do they want their photographs back? Because
Speaker 6: I would like the photographs to be returned to the family.
Speaker 6: I feel like people should have their things.
Speaker 4: A year ago, when Amy first received the package, she
Speaker 4: and Jordan tried opening a case file on the mysterious
Speaker 4: photos hoping the USPS could shed light on where they
Speaker 4: came from, but nothing ever came of it.
Speaker 2: The mail system, we feel like we understand it, but
Speaker 2: then when you really think about it, it is this
Speaker 2: complete mystery. It's like a void into which we send
Speaker 2: stuff and from which that stuff emerges again. But then
Speaker 2: when it doesn't emerge, you're like, wait a second, but
Speaker 2: what is where is it going?
Speaker 1: What is this system? What don't we know about it?
Speaker 4: There's a lot that I don't know about it, but
Speaker 4: Amy and Jordan want my help figuring out how Amy
Speaker 4: ended up with the photographs and how to return to sender.
Speaker 4: To get to the bottom of it, I'll have to
Speaker 4: navigate a mysterious, little understood world that exists alongside our own,
Speaker 4: a world separated only by an inches wide slot in
Speaker 4: a metal box. And so I step over the boundary
Speaker 4: into the world of the United States Postal Service.
Speaker 1: I start with a.
Speaker 4: Theory that Jordan, Amy and I discussed on the phone.
Speaker 4: Jordan had sent Amy the book via media mail, a
Speaker 4: discounted rate for sending things like books and CDs. From
Speaker 4: what I read online, it sounds like the Post Office
Speaker 4: searches media mail packages to prevent people from sending anything
Speaker 4: they want on the cheap and in fact, Amy noticed
Speaker 4: that the package had been taped up as though it
Speaker 4: had been resealed en route. Maybe Jordan's package and the
Speaker 4: package with the photos were both searched and then accidentally swapped.
Speaker 4: To test this theory, I call the Postal Inspection Service.
Speaker 4: It turns out out the post Office as a whole
Speaker 4: department of inspectors.
Speaker 1: Are you sort of like the James Bond of the
Speaker 1: mail service?
Speaker 5: Actually, it's funny you mentioned that my badge number was
Speaker 5: double O seven.
Speaker 4: No really, really, his name is me Halco, Dan Mihalko.
Speaker 4: He's a US Postal inspector. And what does he inspect?
Speaker 5: Postal crimes? Theft of mail, mail fraud, prohibited items in
Speaker 5: the mail such as bombs, narcotics, anthrax, attacks, pornography.
Speaker 1: I put my theory to Dan.
Speaker 4: Might the Postal Inspection Service have opened and examined Jordan's package?
Speaker 5: No, No, we don't do anything like that. The only
Speaker 5: time would ever inspect mail is if we had a
Speaker 5: search warrant so that we can't just open up mail. Huh,
Speaker 5: nobody in a postal service has that.
Speaker 4: Authority, Dan says, USPS investigators don't inspect packages without probable cause.
Speaker 5: Here's what it sounds like may have happened.
Speaker 4: So Dan guesses that somewhere along the way, Jordan's package
Speaker 4: got damaged and the.
Speaker 1: Book fell out.
Speaker 4: Another package carrying the bundle of photos could have also
Speaker 4: broken open. A postal worker might have seen the loose
Speaker 4: bundle of photos, thought they belonged to Jordan's envelope, and
Speaker 4: accidentally switched the packaging. And here's where that switch might
Speaker 4: have occurred.
Speaker 5: It used to be commonly referred to as a dead
Speaker 5: letter office, but now it's I think it's Mail Recovery Center.
Speaker 4: The Mail Recovery Center, or MRC, is located in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 4: It's where all undeliverable mail winds up. Some of the
Speaker 4: stuff they receive is truly strange. An alligator skull still
Speaker 4: covered in flesh cremation boxes Tom Nissalke's nineteen seventy one
Speaker 4: NBA championship, which had been stolen from him twelve years before,
Speaker 4: showing up at the MRC. I don't know who Tom
Speaker 4: Desalk is, but listeners might. The MRC is also one
Speaker 4: of the few places where postal workers are actually allowed
Speaker 4: to open mail to help them look for clues as
Speaker 4: to where the items or letters belong. Dan says that
Speaker 4: it's the job in part of the MRC employees to
Speaker 4: make their best guess about what belongs with what and
Speaker 4: send it on its way.
Speaker 5: They have to try to put pieces together. You know,
Speaker 5: they're kind of sluice in their own way.
Speaker 4: In their own way, don't condescend to the MRC agent Mihalko.
Speaker 1: If Dan is right, the.
Speaker 4: Original package, the photos came in with the original address
Speaker 4: might still be sitting somewhere at the MRC. So I
Speaker 4: phone up the person in charge.
Speaker 5: To ask, this is a manager.
Speaker 4: Lionel snow, Oh high, Lionel, my name is Stevie Lane
Speaker 4: and I'm a radio journalist. Do you have a moment
Speaker 4: so I can tell you why I'm calling?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 7: Not really, I mean I don't have a lot of
Speaker 7: conversation time to falup with customers.
Speaker 4: Nevertheless, I tell him about the mix up.
Speaker 7: Anything could have happened, Anything could have happened.
Speaker 8: I mean, I can tell you.
Speaker 4: Lionel tells me that, contrary to Dan Mihalko's theory, Jordan's
Speaker 4: package likely never made it to the MRC. If it had,
Speaker 4: it would probably have a special stamp on it, which
Speaker 4: Jordan's package doesn't. I ask if he has any other guesses,
Speaker 4: but he just keeps sweeping out his favorite phrase.
Speaker 6: Anything could have happened, Anything could have happened. I can
Speaker 6: make an educated guess or or not.
Speaker 1: When I press, the answer is or not.
Speaker 7: Anything could have happened.
Speaker 4: Jordan had likened the mail system to avoid into which
Speaker 4: we send stuff and from which that stuff emerges. But
Speaker 4: it appears it's also a void into which I send
Speaker 4: my questions and from which nothing emerges. Over a number
Speaker 4: of weeks, I reach out to more people at the USPS,
Speaker 4: in the Communications Department, the Historian's office, even the Postal Museum.
Speaker 3: It is a mystery.
Speaker 5: I can't really guess.
Speaker 9: You have one hundred and sixty million addresses in the US.
Speaker 6: It could have come from any one of them.
Speaker 1: Nobody is able to help.
Speaker 4: I've hit a dead end with the post Office, so
Speaker 4: I turn to the only other information that I have,
Speaker 4: the photos themselves. Is there a way to identify the
Speaker 4: people in these photographs? There's a photo of someone's pet cat,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't have a collar.
Speaker 1: With a tag.
Speaker 4: There's a graduation, but it doesn't show the name of
Speaker 4: the school. There's one photo of a man sitting in
Speaker 4: a restaurant pulling up a signed headshot of what looks
Speaker 4: like a younger version of himself. The headshot is signed
Speaker 4: doctor Pedro something MD, but after hours of photoshop sharpening,
Speaker 4: I still can't read what that something is. For every photo,
Speaker 4: I'm just one small piece of information away from cracking
Speaker 4: the case. Every photo except for one. The photo is
Speaker 4: the oldest in the bunch, a creased and faded polaroid.
Speaker 4: In it, a man crouches in the grass supporting a
Speaker 4: baby in plaid overalls, barely old enough to walk. The
Speaker 4: baby is looking down at a dog rolling over on
Speaker 4: its back playfully while the man pets its stomach. No
Speaker 4: one is aware of the camera. It seems to be
Speaker 4: capturing a private moment. And when you flip the photo
Speaker 4: over there's something written on the back Dalln Kelly and Queenye.
Speaker 4: It says, in all caps at grandparents Coxes Kelly nine
Speaker 4: and a half months Dallen Kelly and Queenee grandparents Coxes.
Speaker 4: After googling around, I find a number for a Dallon
Speaker 4: Cox in California.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hi, is this Jalon I'd called a few days
Speaker 1: before and left a message.
Speaker 9: I'm just really curious what this is all about. Honestly,
Speaker 9: I have no idea how to be involved in anything
Speaker 9: that you would be looking into.
Speaker 4: So I explain about the package of photos Amy received,
Speaker 4: about one in particular of a man with a child
Speaker 4: and a dog with a inscription on the back, and
Speaker 4: it says Dallan, Kelly and queenye At grandparents Coxes Kelly
Speaker 4: nine and a half months.
Speaker 3: Definitely, that's crazy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 5: That would be my dad.
Speaker 9: Yeah, huh, yeah, it sounds like it might be of
Speaker 9: my dad and my sister Kelly.
Speaker 1: Dallan's dad is Dalan Senior.
Speaker 4: Dallan suggests I give him a call to see if
Speaker 4: the photo belongs to him.
Speaker 5: Hello.
Speaker 4: I tell Dalan Senior all about the photo of him
Speaker 4: and his daughter Kelly. Then I texted over to him,
Speaker 4: all right, here it comes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a beet daughter. Wow.
Speaker 8: That would have been from nineteen sixty seven, probably sixty eight.
Speaker 7: She'd have been about nine months old, I would say
Speaker 7: at that time obviously is standing up a little bit,
Speaker 7: but she walked at early age like that, So yeah,
Speaker 7: that's really something.
Speaker 8: No, I don't have that picture in my collection. In fact,
Speaker 8: I don't recall ever having seen it before. Kelly was
Speaker 8: born in sixty seven, in June of sixty seven, and
Speaker 8: she actually she passed away in March of last year.
Speaker 4: Kelly died on March thirtieth, twenty twenty one. The package
Speaker 4: with Kelly's photo was postmarked April seventh, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: just one week after she died, so.
Speaker 8: That just makes it really strange.
Speaker 4: Kelly died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of
Speaker 4: fifty three.
Speaker 1: It was a shock to her family.
Speaker 5: Everybody loved her laugh.
Speaker 9: When she laughed, it was just really unique, an enthusiastic laugh,
Speaker 9: you know. I remember taking her with me to like
Speaker 9: one weekend and she learned the water ski and she
Speaker 9: was having a ball. My dad used to take Kelly
Speaker 9: at that age, when she was about a year old,
Speaker 9: down to the lake and they would feed the ducks.
Speaker 9: He'd take breadcrumbs and they'd throw them to the ducks,
Speaker 9: and she got so excited to do that.
Speaker 3: That was her favorite thing to do.
Speaker 4: Dyllan Senior doesn't recognize the handwriting on the back of
Speaker 4: the photograph, but he wonders if it belongs to Kelly's mother,
Speaker 4: his ex wife, Betty. Betty had been sick and unable
Speaker 4: to make it to Kelly's funeral. Maybe she put it
Speaker 4: in the mail, hoping it would arrive for the service.
Speaker 4: When I phoned Betty, she doesn't remember the photo, but
Speaker 4: she tells me that she did indeed mail a package
Speaker 4: of photos to her granddaughter, Devin. Devin is Kelly's daughter.
Speaker 3: This is Devin.
Speaker 1: So I called.
Speaker 4: Devan to see if I ended up with the photos
Speaker 4: that her grandma tried to send her.
Speaker 3: No, I did get a package of photos from my grandmother.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: Devin got the photos from Betty in a package that
Speaker 4: was firmly sealed, and the photo of Kelly and Dallen
Speaker 4: that one wasn't in there. Devin says she's never seen
Speaker 4: it before. As for the rest of the photographs Amy received.
Speaker 3: I don't recognize any of the people, none of them.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: Dallan Junior, Dalan Senior, and Betty all said the same
Speaker 4: thing when I sent them the photos. Somehow, then it
Speaker 4: seems this photograph, along its journey through the mail, wound
Speaker 4: up with forty three other images of other random families.
Speaker 4: Devin can't tell me anything about those other families, but
Speaker 4: she does tell me about her own. Her mom, Kelly,
Speaker 4: got pregnant with her when she was in college. Kelly
Speaker 4: wasn't prepared to take care of a child, and soon
Speaker 4: after Devan was born, Dallan Senior, Devin's grandfather, took Devon
Speaker 4: in and raised her as his daughter.
Speaker 3: I know that my mom had mental health issues, and
Speaker 3: it took over my mom's life in many ways. There
Speaker 3: were many instances in my mom's life where she didn't
Speaker 3: have the power to take care of me. And there
Speaker 3: were many years that passed by and I had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with my mom, Like I didn't know where
Speaker 3: she was. I didn't hear from her. I was unsure
Speaker 3: if she was even alive. So I've had a hard
Speaker 3: time growing up believing that my mom loved me.
Speaker 4: But Devin tells me in the last seven or eight
Speaker 4: years before her mom's death, that changed. Devin was in
Speaker 4: her mid twenties, and without explanation, seemingly overnight, Kelly started
Speaker 4: reaching out more. She would come over to help Devin
Speaker 4: with projects around the house, like painting cabinets. The two
Speaker 4: of them spent hours sitting together on the couch, playing Zelda, and.
Speaker 3: I felt like I had my mom. I finally had
Speaker 3: my mom. I was an adult, but at least I
Speaker 3: had my mom. Two weeks before she passed, my mom
Speaker 3: just out of the blue said do you want to
Speaker 3: go out and go do something together? And I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know where do you want to go? And
Speaker 3: she's like, what about that place that has mini golf
Speaker 3: and go carts? And I was like, okay, then let's go.
Speaker 3: And I hang on to that moment. Somehow, I feel
Speaker 3: like she knew that she wasn't going to be around
Speaker 3: for very long, and she was trying to spend more
Speaker 3: time with me and trying to do things with me.
Speaker 4: As for the photograph and the strange circumstances of its appearance,
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: Feel like it's weird. I just think that it fits
Speaker 3: my mom's personality to do something like that.
Speaker 1: How do you mean it fits her personality to do
Speaker 1: something like.
Speaker 3: She believed that there's something beyond death. And I've never
Speaker 3: believed in ghosts or anything or anything after you passed,
Speaker 3: but if there is something there, my mom would definitely
Speaker 3: do something like this.
Speaker 1: See you think that this is almost like a missive
Speaker 1: from your mom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's possible, and I feel like this
Speaker 3: is her trying to say I'm still here.
Speaker 4: In Jordan's book, she writes that in thin places quote
Speaker 4: invisible things like music or love or dead people might
Speaker 4: become visible, or if they don't become visible, they become
Speaker 4: so present and tangible that it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like Devon, I'm not.
Speaker 4: One to believe in ghosts, Yet after talking with everyone,
Speaker 4: I still don't know where the photo of Kelly came from.
Speaker 4: No one in Kelly's family can account for it, so
Speaker 4: after months of searching, the origins of this photo are
Speaker 4: still a mystery. But in what I see as a
Speaker 4: series of unexplainable events that began with Jordan sending a
Speaker 4: book and ended up here, Devin sees her mother, and
Speaker 4: it's precisely the unlikeliness of the that she points to
Speaker 4: as proof.
Speaker 3: I just think, if you look at all of the
Speaker 3: little pieces of how this happened, not just anybody would
Speaker 3: have reached out and tried to find the owner of
Speaker 3: a photo, I think it would have been tossed in
Speaker 3: the trash or pushed aside.
Speaker 5: I feel like.
Speaker 3: It's like a treasure.
Speaker 1: From my mom.
Speaker 3: That's how I feel huh, like my mom placed it
Speaker 3: there on purpose and got it into the right hands
Speaker 3: that would reach out to me.
Speaker 4: I'd been thinking of this as a story about male
Speaker 4: going to the wrong place, but listening to Devn, I
Speaker 4: wonder if it's actually a story about it going to
Speaker 4: the right one to Amy. And yet because the photo
Speaker 4: wound up in Amy's hands, Devin didn't get it for
Speaker 4: an entire year after Kelly's death. If Kelly wanted Devin
Speaker 4: to have the photo, why deliver it a year late?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: There have been times where I've really needed somebody to
Speaker 3: be in my house with me, and out of everybody
Speaker 3: in my family and out of all of my friends,
Speaker 3: my mom would drop anything to come and support me.
Speaker 3: And when she passed, I didn't have that safety net anymore.
Speaker 10: I had trouble at my job and I had to
Speaker 10: take extra time off. But if she's still here, that
Speaker 10: makes a difference.
Speaker 3: It's not easy losing a mom, so having this feeling
Speaker 3: that she's still here and she's still with me is
Speaker 3: is amazing.
Speaker 4: Right after a loss, there are a lot of people
Speaker 4: to lean on, but as time passes and people return
Speaker 4: to their lives, you begin to feel that loss in
Speaker 4: a new way. Houses get cleaned out, clothes get donated,
Speaker 4: and all evidence of the person fades away with the photo.
Speaker 4: Though Kelly has come back to Devon a year late,
Speaker 4: but perhaps right on time. Devin's grandfather, Dallan Senior, is
Speaker 4: turning seventy five soon. Devon told me that they're throwing
Speaker 4: him a big party. She's been working on his birthday
Speaker 4: present for months, a new family photo album, and along
Speaker 4: with all the photographs she's collected, she wants to include
Speaker 4: this one safe among the other smiling faces of Kelly's
Speaker 4: family members, where surely it won't be lost again. Now
Speaker 4: that the.
Speaker 5: Fern atures rip turned into its good will.
Speaker 3: Home, now that the last month's rant is skiming with
Speaker 3: the damage to post, take this moment to dessert.
Speaker 1: If we mentioned if we trash Feld for.
Speaker 6: Things as dan Lee.
Speaker 3: Zero.
Speaker 4: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me Stevie Lane,
Speaker 4: along with Jonathan Goldstein, Phoebe Flanagan, and Mohemi mcgouger. Our
Speaker 4: Senior producer is Khaleila Holt. Special thanks to Alex Bloomberg,
Speaker 4: mime O'Donnell, Laurence Silverman, Maureene Taylor, Estelle Ivory and all
Speaker 4: The Incredibly Patient People over at the USPS editorial guidance
Speaker 4: from Emily Condon. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original
Speaker 4: music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 4: John Jacoby, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be
Speaker 4: found on our website gimlimedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our
Speaker 4: theme song is by The Weaker Thens, courtesy of Epitaph Records.
Speaker 1: Amy has just written a new.
Speaker 4: Book, Artificial, a graphic memoir about her father's efforts to
Speaker 4: preserve her late grandfather's life identity using AI technology. You
Speaker 4: can find it at your local bookstore. Heavyweight is a
Speaker 4: Spotify original podcast. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight, on
Speaker 4: Instagram at Heavyweight podcast, or email us at Heavyweight at
Speaker 4: gimlipmedia dot com. You can follow our show on Spotify
Speaker 4: and tap the bell to receive notifications when new episodes.
Speaker 1: Drop, and one will drop next week.
Speaker 5: Hello Stevie's dad speaking.
Speaker 3: Oh that was nice, okay, great Estelle, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: What is your school about anyway,