Date: 2026 July
Exhibit No: 008
Exhibit Location: Cabinet of Misplaced Items
Catalogued by: d.b. waters
Description: My detective notebook: a small pocket-size notebook with a blue cover and a spiral binding along the top edge. Inside were scribbled observations, witness accounts, and other notes about strange supernatural events that were witnessed by our agency.
How was the artefact lost?: Lost through the passage of time, the transition between homes, and a failure to recognize the importance of the small things that helped make me who I am today.
Additional information: My best friend in elementary school, R------, and I spent recess racing around the playground in search of mysteries to solve. Boy, did we find them.
From the top of the slide we could see over the fences of several houses bordering the west side of the schoolyard. One day, while we were perched up there conducting surveillance, we had a stroke of luck: one of the houses had left their back patio blinds open. We watched a middle-aged woman open an interior door and go inside, descending into the basement.
We both gasped and looked at each other.
“The inside was made of copper!”
“Or bronze!”
“Yeah, and she’s definitely a witch!”
For the next week or two, we staked out the house during recess, wishing that she would open that door again. She never did, but that’s okay. We knew she was a witch – the good kind, we hoped. We didn’t know if the good kind or the bad kind had basements.
Another case occurred near the far end of the field. Through the swaying pine branches, we spotted a figure standing on a second-story wooden deck.
There was no doubt about it – we got a clear look: there was a ghost on the balcony.
The old man appeared to be dressed in normal going-out clothes, but he was pale and white and juuuust a bit translucent. We never saw the ghost again, nor anyone else up on that balcony, but it was a defining moment in the history of our detective agency.
No surviving records indicate whether either case was ever solved.