A woman from Massachusetts went thrift shopping, a journey many embark on to find unique and sometimes surprising items.much more, sometimes worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. Priscilla Bailey from Massachusetts discovered something far beyond her expectations.
Buying items second-hand is always a gamble. In our consumeristic society, we feel the drive to buy, buy, buy.
But there are plenty of second-hand finds that still have a lot of life to give. They carry stories and mysterious histories that often remain uncovered.We can only guess at them.
At times, a mark or detail on an item may suggest its history, yet keep its full story just beyond our grasp.
Priscilla Bailey of Massachusetts bought an ornament at a local thrift store around Christmas for $2.99. She liked the way it caught the light and sparkled as it moved.
“Right now it’s hanging up there when I do my dishes. I sometimes stare at it,” Bailey said.
“Right up here on the top, right across the top, it looks like angels or Vikings,” she described to WFXT. “They look like little angels, and there’s all this work down here. It’s really beautiful.”
Well, as it turns out, this ornament isn’t any simple decoration. Bailey looked at the ornament more carefully after she bought it, and saw that there might be something inside.
After hanging it in a position where it would catch the light, Bailey saw something move. She got a flashlight to get a closer look.
“It’s small. The two spots in it are small, the size of a golf ball,” she said. The heart was filled with a powdery substance.
Bailey thinks she has found someone’s urn, with their ashes inside. Now, Bailey and her daughter, Kat Bartlett, are making it their mission to find the owner.
“At first I got spooked, for a second,” Bailey explained. “But then, it’s been in the house all this time — a couple of weeks now — and it needs to find its owner!”
“It’s beautiful,” Bartlett added. “It must have a story, so that’s my goal — to find out where and who this belongs to.”
While Bailey hopes that the owner will come forward after the news coverage, she’s going to continue to display the urn in her home. “There it sits — my spooky little friend,” she said.
“It’ll be fun seeing what happens and hopefully someone comes forward and says yes that was my grandmother or grandfather,” Bailey said. She hasn’t opened it for fear of spilling the ashes inside.
“I just thought it was pretty, so maybe it was meant to come here,” Bailey added. “Who knows?”
With the increased attention this story is receiving, it’s possible that someone with knowledge about it will come forward to reveal its secrets.