I used to watch news aggregator sites for weird news almost daily. But it got to be too much – too much BS news from tabloids that really wasn’t news at all. I still love to find those bizarre Fortean gems that leave you wondering what the heck happened here. Most often, the original story is from a local source. If it’s really captivating (and sometimes you just can’t predict that), it gets syndicated and the same story/headline/video goes everywhere. There is a leap that gets made from the event being a curiosity to it being viral clickbait. That typically takes several days from the original reporting to worldwide coverage. This week, one of those things happened.
Mystery metal object on the roof
On 7 February, I saw this story on a Pennsylvania news feed: A family in the Mount Airy area of Philadelphia was shocked to find a 6-foot-long rectangular metal piece on their roof on Tuesday, 6 February. They did not hear it land on the roof, and there was no indication of where it came from.
The first inclination towards a cause of this puzzling object is to assume it fell, such as from a plane. There are several obvious factors against this. The object is light and rusted, there is no paint. Besides that fact that it does not look like it was from a plane, had it fallen from such a height, it would have done far more damage, and there would have been a corresponding aircraft incident. According to news reports, FAA investigators did visit to inspect the object and determined it was not from a plane. There was no conclusion, however, as to where it came from.
According to the weather data, there were some 16-22 mph wind gusts overnight. Could the piece have blown up there? Maybe. Or could someone have tossed it up there? Not impossible. It appears to be made of aluminum, since it’s not very heavy.
Readers always have great fun commenting and speculating on oddball events like this. Of course, as always, someone will suggest an absurd reason, such as “aliens”. I prefer to imagine it was an interdimensional apport from the past. (Just for fun.) Someone knows what happened here and they aren’t saying. So, we may never know; it will remain a strange story. It’s unlikely that, even if more useful information comes out to reveal a mundane source, we won’t hear about it. These stories are almost never resolved in public. If something more comes out from this, I will update this post.
If this was my house, I would have more security cameras in place to watch for trespassers. And I would check around for any old structure missing a part.
More Schuylkill notes appearing outside
Meanwhile, in other weird Pennsylvania news, the Schuylkill Notes appearances seem to have died down. There have not been as many reportedly found in store products but they are still being reported from walking trails where the folded notes are wrapped in plastic or brown paper and clipped to branches. A person walking along the Appalachian trail on Peter’s Mountain north of Harrisburg found many and suggested they were put there recently.
There has been no further information released about the investigation into who is doing this. It is not illegal to leave notes outside like this (unless it may be considered littering). The placement in products on store shelves, which indicates product tampering, is a serious act.
Sharon,
I believe it is very earthly in origin and design and looks like a roof piece from around a vent or chimney.
Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s a piece of roof flashing that came from around a vent pipe in a roof. You can even see the tar along the edges where it was sealed down. Probably the local kids came across a demolition site and picked it up with the intent of making a skateboard ramp out of it or something and decided instead to prank someone. Or a freak gust of wind picked it up off the roof of a nearby building.