The note left by Cole Drinnid.
This is the tale of Cole Drinnid. By: Zachary Imhoff
Mr. Drinnid was a kind, decent, gentleman, with the respect of everyone in his town. He resided in the town of Little River, and his abode was the largest house in the town square. Drinnid was known for throwing immense parties and knowing just about everyone in the town. No one really knows how or when he arrived in Little River, one can just say that he has always lived there.
Some said that he grew up in the west side of town as a poor boy and changed his name to earn the respect of the people; others said he never aged and he had lived on the square three centuries ago. The real fact was: no one knew Cole Drinnid's story.
While everyone knew Cole Drinnid himself, not one person in the town of Little River could tell you where he came from, who his family was, or how he got to be so rich. Cole Drinnid began to earn himself the title of the "Jay Gatsby" of Little River.
Then Cole Drinnid disappeared.
It was the night of April 30th, 1967. Drinnid was throwing what is known as his last and most infamous party. The party's fame is not just caused by Drinnid's disappearance, but the discovery of what was living in his basement.
Drinnid had a moth farm in his basement. If one were to go downstairs, they would not notice the secret entrance to this strange farm. There was a secret door hidden behind a gun cabinet that led to a long hallway filled with rows of tanks of moths. When authorities finally made a count, there were over three hundred moth tanks. No one in the town knew why.
Drinnid's disappearance was the source of the discovery of his moth farm. It was around 11:28 P.M. and Drinnid had just finished toasting his guests for coming to his party. Once the toast was over, the behavior of the party returned to normal with guests chatting this way and that, switching conversations with one another every minute or so.
It was at that moment when a guest who drank far too much had stumbled and knocked over an expensive statue of Drinnid's. The statue rocked to the side and smashed into pieces on the floor. The room fell silent and everyone waited to see what Drinnid would say. After two minutes of waiting, Cole Drinnid made no appearance. His guests and employees began to look around the room and see if he was simply not speaking.
"Mr. Drinnid", one of his servants called out. "There has been an accident in the ballroom!"
There was no response, silence. Three servants left the room quickly in an attempt to find the whereabouts of their missing employer.
Within an hour, Drinnid was yet to be found. A small search party of guests who were sober enough to look began to split up on various levels of the house to find their host. The guests searched all the rooms on the top floor, main floor, and in the attic. They had yet to search downstairs in the basement.
Due to the size of a basement, not all the guests searching could go down, so a party of ten descended into what appeared to be a private office.
Drinnid's office was also a private lounge. There was a billiard table in the center of the room, a large sofa to the left and a bookcase filled with hundreds of tales of classic American literature. Next to this bookcase was the gun cabinet. The search party did not find anything, and they reported to the head butler that Mr. Drinnid was nowhere to be found.
The head butler contacted the authorities, within half an hour, there were two patrol cars parked outside Mr. Drinnid's home. The police called the party off and all of the guests had to leave. It was fifteen minutes till 2:00 A.M. and the guests should have been home already. The police checked all of the rooms the guests searched through and received the same results. Mr. Drinnid was not in his house, he had simply disappeared.
That was when an officer found that the appearance of the gun cabinet in Drinnid's office looked peculiar and he pressed along the back wall of the cabinet. It swung open to reveal a room filled with moth tanks.
The next day there were newspaper reporters, detectives, and officers going in and out of Drinnid's home. Taking pictures here and there but the most were taken of the bizarre discovery within the basement. The police made another discovery in Drinnid's office that just added more puzzlement to the mystery.
On Drinnid's desk there was a note that was scrawled in messy handwriting. It was clearly Drinnid's and it based on the quality of appearance, it was written in great haste. The words on the note were not in English, nor to this day have they been found to exist in any language. The note read:
پدرش. W RGOABABD. MLIAOL. WTBIMPANTD. X. MLIABO AIAQC. ITTMTSAMSTGAB.
The authorities had no idea what they had just read. It was clearly written with the English alphabet, but the words appeared to be pure gibberish. There were enough questions involved to get the national news’ attention.
Where did Cole Drinnid go? Why did he have a hidden moth farm in his basement? What does the note on his desk mean? Why are there certain phrases crossed out? Why was the note written with such urgency? How could Drinnid have disappeared so quickly after he gave his toast? Why did no one see him leave the ballroom?
These questions reached national status and the disappearance of Cole Drinnid quickly became one of the biggest mysteries of the decade. Professors of Latin, Romanian, Spanish, Greek, Mayan, and Native American history and language were just a few of the hundred that came to Little River in an attempt to crack Drinnid's code.
A few other puzzling pieces of evidence were collected from Drinnid's office. There was an article about the development of Western civilizations in the 19th century, a sketch of a desert, and a photograph of a solar eclipse. Despite the level of confusement added from these pieces, none of them could puzzle more than Drinnid's note.
Some say it was a suicide note, others think it was some sort of message. Only one word in the message was able to be translated and that was "father". It was scrawled at the beginning of the note in Persian. No one is necessarily sure as to why "father" was written as the first word. Often people propose the idea that the note was a brief letter to his father, but that does still not provide an explanation as to why Drinnid disappeared.
To this day, the disappearance of Cole Drinnid remains one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. Little River, Maryland had achieved infamous status for a long period of time due to the incident, but eventually the state of Little River had dwindled down back to a small town.
Cole Drinnid's home is now the public library and his basement office is kept in the exact same condition as it was left since the night he disappeared. The office is open for investigators and spectators to view, but no further progress has been made on the mystery since the night Cole Drinnid disappeared.