In the summer of 2019, Adam Smith, then 37, called the police after discovering that a box his mother had kept in their freezer for his entire life actually contained the mummified body of an infant. Smith had been cleaning out his mother’s St. Louis apartment in the immediate aftermath of her death from lung cancer.
Stories about parents leaving behind hidden items for their children are not uncommon, but they are usually benign — even sentimental. Sometimes it’s a valuable piece of comic-book history. Other times, people move into old apartments and stumble upon love letters tucked away by former occupants. These objects are rarely meant for a specific person; they are simply left behind, waiting for someone to find them.
