Treasure hunter makes heart-wrenching discovery on beach
A mother buried her most precious treasure at the beach, and the letter she left behind is a tear-jerker...
While some people go to the beach to collect seashells, others go hunting for treasures like washed-up jewellery and old coins, which could potentially be worth a lot of money.
Treasure hunters rarely find anything as precious as Rose DeWitt Bukater's Coeur de la Mer necklace, aka the 'Heart of the Ocean', from 'Titanic' - mainly because it was never a real treasure. However, now and again, beachcombers find something so special that they can't even put a price on it.
SEE: 112-year-old Titanic menu finally revealed
A metal detectorist in America stumbled on something priceless but worth a heart's weight in gold to the mother who buried it there.
The man found a trinket buried in the sand that contained ashes and a letter.
"I found this buried 6 inches down on the Oregon coast. When I saw the piece of paper, I thought it might have been geocache related," the Reddit user, Leading_Ad_9732, wrote.
According to National Geographic, "geocaching is a type of global treasure hunt of people looking for caches, or hidden stashes of objects. Geocaching may also be described as a series of hide-and-seek games, where hiders provide online clues for seekers. Seeker use global positioning system (GPS) devices to find hidden caches."
However, what the Reddit user found was not something left behind by a geocacher but a mother who lost her son.
Her letter read: "This is the ashes of my son Steven Genberg. If found, please be respectful & put them back. Thank you. A grieving mother.”
The man who found the ashes and letter believes there could be more out there.
"Based on the amount of ashes, I’m guessing there’s a few more of these out there in more of his favourite places. Yes I did put it back," he wrote.
Sad but interesting find
byu/Leading_Ad_9732 inmetaldetecting
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Reddit users were touched by his "profoundly sad" find.
"A friend of mine lost his 15 year old a few days ago, the grief is out of this world. I'm a father of 3........ Am a veteran who has known loss (in and out of combat)....... It hits so much different when it's a child, the world just stops," one user wrote.
The man who found the ashes confirmed that he respected the mother's wishes and put them back. He wondered if other beachcombers had found the ashes.
"The lid was painted metal with a plastic liner on the threads so it was easy to open with no corrosion. I’m guessing the mother didn’t think about us when she chose that container but then again she did leave a note. Based on the location, I’d be surprised if I wasn’t the first person to dig this up."
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Main image credit: iSock/Voyagerix