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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What on earth is this? (Found outside my house)

709 replies

brooklyn66 · 10/02/2017 23:22

Yesterday came home to find a bit of folded-up paper wedged in a crack in the fence wall bit (pavement goes right past it). Opened it up to find 2x2p coins inside unrecognisable writing - see pic!
What is this?

What on earth is this? (Found outside my house)
OP posts:
Thread gallery
19
PenelopeFlintstone · 11/02/2017 08:30

I agree it's very repetitive. What got me unnecessarily excited was this character in the fourth column. The second block down.

What on earth is this? (Found outside my house)
acornsandnuts · 11/02/2017 08:33

I don't think many adults would use blue ink and lined/margined paper to write with these days

Do they not? I really didn't know this. Am I part of a dying breed to use blue ink 😱

HughLauriesStubble · 11/02/2017 08:34

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

witwootoodleoo · 11/02/2017 08:36

Perhaps we're all in a horror movie and dreadful mysterious fates await all of us that have tried to read it?

TheClaws · 11/02/2017 08:36

HateSummer I have an old Buddhist devotional text written in a script very like this - right to left, loops and hoops. I'm not certain of the exact language, but I suspect (considering where it was found) it originated in the South-East India area. That's what I'm going on. Just trying to help.

londonrach · 11/02/2017 08:40

Interesting!!! (Adds nothing and not place marking)

wowfudge · 11/02/2017 08:45

I think it is someone's unusual handwriting. Some words seem decipherable. I'm going with hypergraphia as others have mentioned.

BillSykesDog · 11/02/2017 08:50

It looks like Somali script to me. Looks like someone found it and thought someone might come back looking for it so wedged it in with the cheapest coins they had.

KathyBeale · 11/02/2017 08:52

Bit late to offer my opinion but I can do Teeline and it's not that. The words are all too long and you put slashes between sentences.

When I was a kid me and my friends played spies. We had secret membership cards (they were the flaps from cereal boxes that have coloured circles on them) and left each other notes in code and in invisible ink (lemon juice). This is more complicated than anything we did but it reminded me of that!

AutumnalLeaves38 · 11/02/2017 08:52

Isn't green ink the traditional medium chosen by anyone sinister?

Blue/ black here, so you can breathe easy, OP Smile

WeirdButTrue · 11/02/2017 08:58

Reminds me of Boo Radley keeping his treasures in the hollow tree. Would seem this is important to somebody, and I also think an adult based on the quality of writing. It's strangely beautiful in its own mysterious way.

Butttons · 11/02/2017 09:01

Where is the OP? Come back OP! Let us know you're okay!!

MetalMidget · 11/02/2017 09:02

Isn't it obvious?

It's a letter from a doctor.

Talith · 11/02/2017 09:02

I read somewhere that curses or blessings are sometimes written in mirror script. You know when you see leaflets for weird hokey witch doctors gurus who can apparently cure infertility and ease financial worries etc - they sometimes come up with stuff like this. The instance I read about it was a type of Arabic which had been inverted or something. The coins being copper seems relevant to me as part of a charm of some sort.

brooklyn66 · 11/02/2017 09:13

I'm ok! Will post it on Reddit when I have 5 minutes.
It could be someone with mental health issue, I think that's entirely possible...

OP posts:
DoctorBeat · 11/02/2017 09:18

Isn't it a Jewish custom to do something like this at Passover?

quarkinstockcubes · 11/02/2017 09:22

Trying to be vague but I have some experience through work and my immediate thought was witchcraft. I was going to ask if you live in an ethnic area but you have already said that you do. Many countries still engage in this type of "sorcery".

I can definitely recognize some arabic letters along with some sanskrit letters. The sorcery that I am familiar with would be a series of symbols and repetitive statements, which looks like what your letter is composed of.

You must move house OP

PhilODox · 11/02/2017 09:23

Penelope I concur. There are also quite a few "hi" s in there also, but the rest....
The character at the ?Bottom of each column, the one repeated over and over is v like an Arabic character.
I can see now (bigger pics) that it's not Ethiopian though.
Nor Georgian (which looks v like Tolkien's elvish/sindarin for those that have read LOTR).
Azerbaijan has its own script (? Azeri) but it doesn't look like that.
It's also not anything Sanskrit derived (Hindi, Thai, Khmer, Bangladeshi etc)

I was going to post about Voynich manuscript, but someone bet me to it Grin
Hypergraphia seems most likely explanation, just the repetition, the neatness (pretty uniform script), looks like a hand that has written a lot, and purposefully, in the way an adult that had been through higher education would.

PossibiliTea · 11/02/2017 09:25

ShowMeThePotatoSalad that made me lol I agree we need JC he would have it figured out in 60 minutes.

PhilODox · 11/02/2017 09:26

Ha- x-post with quark. Ok- you see a Sanskrit character? I didn't, sorry.
I agree it seems like an Incantation, but I am guessing it's of a personal nature, I.e. to benefit the writer?

PhilODox · 11/02/2017 09:27

Sorry- who is JC? Presumably not Jesus Christ in this case...

PenelopeFlintstone · 11/02/2017 09:30

PhilODox
I found some others but it's hard to zoom in and screenshot. I googled 'handwritten vertical hiragana' though and it doesn't look very similar.

PossibiliTea · 11/02/2017 09:31

JC- It that deep sorry, or even more so depending on how you look at it.. Jonathan Creek!

quarkinstockcubes · 11/02/2017 09:32

The type of sorcery I have come across is usually intended to harm the recipient and will include an item of theirs, such as a lock of hair, photo etc and then would be buried or hidden somewhere such as a crack in the wall.

I have no idea about the 2p's though, perhaps it is a type of forrin sorcery I am not trained in Grin

If you are really curious OP I would go to some of the local places of worship and ask the religious leaders if they are familiar with something like this.

LavenderDoll · 11/02/2017 09:33

Is it not a taweez?