Where Did It Go?
Lost and found and sometimes never found.
Misplacing personal objects is often one of life’s unexpected annoyances and other times can lead to enduring mysteries regarding the lost that is never found. Sometimes it can be assigned to absent minded thoughts. Such as when you come home to an unexpected event, toss your keys anywhere, and proceed to take care of the surprise you didn’t anticipate. Then comes the question. “Where did I put the keys down?” Then starts the search for the keys. We live in a world of distractions so losing things is a common part of life. Sometimes the missing keys are found and sometimes not.
Nevertheless, memory issues can occur and if too frequent will require the examination and therapies recommended by a physician. Frankly, losing an item and after much searching, finding it in a location you least expected, with no memory of placing it there can be disturbing for many people. Am I losing my mind? Was it a memory black out? Or was I being absent minded? In a lot of these situations one can be doing a simple task while the mind is pondering more complex thoughts and patterns. I generally have it just before I go to bed and I can’t recall if I locked all the doors or not. It’s a simple thing that one does by rote before retiring. The thought nags me so I get up to find all doors locked for the night. Sometimes only “muscle memory” is required for the mundane activities.
The actual loss of something is often a mystery, compounded even more so if the lost object is never found (unless one is elderly with dementia or diagnosed with memory issues). Other times things not known to be lost appear in unexpected places. I had it happen when I was going through a pile of clothes at the foot of my bed and found a small box that would hold a ring. It did. It was my late mother’s engagement ring and wedding band. It was perplexing to find this to say the least. How did it get there in a pile of my clothes? Or is my memory this bad? I had never thought to look for it as there was no need to. I would assume it was buried with her. This important keepsake is in its safe place now. My life is filled with mysteries.
Lost And Found
Probably one of the best stories I’ve ever heard on a lost item comes from a friend of mine that related a story told to her from her son who in turn learned it from his girlfriend. While on vacation in North Carolina she was enjoying a day on the beach when she saw something glittering in the sand. Picking it up, she thought it resembled the bracelet she had been told about by her grandmother who had lost it on the very same beach decades earlier. Returning home she showed it to her grandmother. Yes, that was it! The very same bracelet. She offered it to her grandmother after such a long absence but she in turn told granddaughter to keep it. It was hers now.
What are the odds? But amazing things like this happen in life since the lost is sometimes not actually lost, but hidden from us till a time of reveal. It’s a mystery within a mystery.
Here are some examples of lost and found from posters on Reddit. (Please note, these are not edited so there will be issues with spelling, grammar, etc.)
Blackmore_Vale
My Apple Watch. Put it on charge so overnight, woke up the next morning and it was gone. Looked high and low but couldn’t find it anywhere. About 6 months later my mum found it just sitting on the mantle piece
Deleteuser
Years ago all of our forks went missing. Just our forks. There is only 2 of us, no kids. We bought a restaurant pack of forks. A few weeks after buying the new forks all of our old forks reappeared in our flatware drawer.
Beatlemania_713
Not necessarily something of value to us but to someone else. When I was around 8 or 9 my mom was doing taxes for people at our old house. She had this guy's papers and everything ready to go he was coming within a couple days. When he came to pick them up we couldn't find them anywhere. I don't recall what exactly happened with that part being that I was 8 or 9 and didnt care about taxes. Well a few weeks go by and I'm heading upstairs to the bathroom ( our house had just one bathroom and it was upstairs with the bedrooms) I happen to notice this bag at the top of the steps and tell my parents about it. They come up and it's the guys missing tax papers
Git_Off_Me_Lawn
I think I shared a story in the glitch in the matrix sub a long time ago about my gone missing story.
I fell asleep in my chair, thought my keys fell out, tore the chair apart and they weren't there. Just for the fun of it, I tore apart the other chair just in case, no keys.
When we were finally moving out, I reclined that second chair, the one I don't sit in mind you, to make it easier to fit through the doors and the keys just fall out on the floor. My wife would have reclined this chair a hundred times by this point, but one of the last times there would be someone in the house, it kindly gave the keys back.
Lost And Never found
I’ve got a few lost and never found items. The one that aggravated me the most is my truck and house keys, the first time I ever totally lost any keys.
In the morning of July 2024 I drove my truck to the top of the driveway to put the trash in the bin. Arriving back at the house I was walking back to the house and noticed some long flower branches with thorns and almost stepped into them. I entered the house and got some clippers and proceeded to clip them. Then trimmed some leaves on the front porch. I reentered the house to wash the clippers in the kitchen. At some point I noticed my keys were not in the small glass dish on the table where I always place them. I thought I had possibly locked them in the truck. I have a spare truck key and I opened the locked door. No keys in the ignition, nor anyplace in the cab, under the seats, etc.
I retraced my steps and looked everywhere even though I had not gone far outdoors and only went to two small places at the front of the house. I checked the interior of the truck cab again looking to see if the keys had fallen somewhere. I looked everywhere I could have imagined I was out or could have been.
To this day still missing. I don’t know at what point they went missing even though I have a good memory of my actions and where I went. No other distractions other than the need to prune the thorny limbs. I am fully aware of my actions and the locations I went to that morning. I am perplexed to this day.
Once again from the posters at Reddit:
weeble182
Christmas Day 2012.
I opened a card from my aunt with her classic £10 Burtons giftcard inside. I stumbled while holding it, it flew into the air and promptly disappeared from existence. We tore that room apart looking for it and it just simply wasn't there.
mandyhtarget1985
I was checking myself in the hall mirror just before i went out. Set my lipgloss on the hall table while i brushed my hair and the lipgloss rolled off the table. I watched it fall and roll underneath it. Moved the hall table and it wasnt there. Turned the table upside down, nothing. No gaps in the floor boards, no gaps in the skirting, nothing else on the floor in my small hallway. It just vanished into thin air.
RunawayPenguin89
A mate was chucking a tennis ball against her bedroom wall while chatting away to her room mates, tennis ball just didnt come back. She looked everywhere for it then gave up
Was staff accommodation in an old castle and even after gutting the room for repainting we never found it. Into the void / time portal and donked some poor victorian butler on the side of the head
NinetysRoyalty
My cat has a favourite toy, it’s a fish made out of catnip from Wilkos. Well he lost it one day, I assumed it would turn up, it never did for weeks and cat was desperate to find it. My mums cat had the same toy but she never played with it so it was like new, she let me have it for my cat because that damn fishy is all he ever plays with. A couple days after I bring it home, it vanishes like the other one. I look everywhere, under everything, I tore the place up to find fishy but I couldn’t find either. A month passed, I come home one day and there my cat is playing with the OLD fishy. A week later it disappears again, I do the same thing, I even try and get my cat to lead me too his fish and digging through all the random nooks he goes to. It’s been three months and there’s been no sightings of either fishy, my cat walks around looking for it all the time, it’s very sad.
Paranormal Cause?
On the far end are encounters with the paranormal where missing objects can be common. This is seen commonly with poltergeist hauntings. I experienced a bit of this in my post “Breakdown Of A Hunting.” I only had one minor disappearance of a bank deposit slip filled out for my father and placed on a cleared area on the table for him to find. When he goes to pick it up, it has vanished. I had to fill out a second one. The original was never found.
Another side of the paranormal here is rooted in Latin culture are the Duende entities. Duende (do-wand-day) in Spanish means ghost or goblin. They are folklore humanoid creatures similar to elves, pixies, leprechauns, etc., and are of various sizes. Their behavior can be noted as mischievous pranksters causing chaos. They can be protective—meaning protection that requires gifts such as food, candy or shiny objects. These beings are taken very seriously in the cultures of Mexico, the Philippines and the Latin cultures of Central and South America. Online many video’s exist of these creatures but there is no verification that any of these videos are real. Nevertheless, don’t try and talk people out of their beliefs. After one experiences the supernatural, the definition of reality is forever changed. I know, I’ve been there.
In Closing
Ultimately, it all may be the result of a forgetful mind. When completing a simple task and the mind is troubled by something deeper and more complex, the simple task is not remembered. It does make one wonder when things disappear and reappear in unexpected places. It happens. Life with its mysteries roll on.
As one Reddit poster Barnagain remarked in the Lost thread:
My will to live's around here somewhere.