Nearly a year later, the dolls are still there, now with items including furnishings and a service dog, all mysteriously appearing under the cover of night
Don Powell was sliding the usual assortment of envelopes from the mailbox outside of his home when he noticed something out of the ordinary:
A tiny doll couple was sitting on a love seat inside the mailbox. A small sticky note was also tucked inside.
“We’ve decided to live here,” the message read. It was signed from Mary and Shelley.
Powell, 72, said he initially figured that somebody must have left the wooden dolls inside his mailbox last August by mistake.
He and his wife, Nancy Powell, had a custom-designed mailbox installed about four years ago to resemble the contemporary white house they’d moved into in Orchard Lake Village, Mich., about 30 miles from Detroit.
“We could understand why dolls would want to move into such a nice mailbox, but we were still perplexed,” Don Powell said, adding that he laughed when he took a closer look at Mary and Shelley because “as dolls go, they are extremely unattractive.”
Powell said he considered tossing the couple and their sofa into the trash can, but then he had second thoughts.
“I asked the neighbors whether anybody had left dolls in their mailboxes, and everyone told me no,” he said. “So I thought, ‘This must just be a joke, and whoever left them here will come back to get them.’ I moved them to the back of the mailbox to see what would happen.”
A few days passed and nobody retrieved the dolls, he said, noting that he and his wife soon discovered that the small couple had acquired an end table, a throw rug and a pillow.
“I also have a sense of humor, so I left a note of my own, saying that what the home really needed was a refrigerator stocked with food,” he said.
The fridge was never delivered. But over the next several months, additional items mysteriously showed up: a four-poster bed, a painting and a wood-burning stove, to name a few.
More than eight months later, Mary and Shelley are still living rent-free in the mailbox, to the delight of neighbors who now follow updates by Don Powell on Orchard Lake Village’s Nextdoor page.
Powell first posted about the tiny squatters on Aug. 21, hoping that someone might help solve the mystery about why the dolls had suddenly appeared inside the mailbox, 30 yards from his front porch.
“A homeless couple has taken up residence inside our mailbox,” he wrote on Nextdoor. “I have included photos of what it all looks like, so you don’t think I’m making any of this up.”
A Christmas tree and tiny presents were found inside Don and Nancy's Powell's mailbox in December. (Don Powell)
“Some people initially thought that I had planted the dolls myself, but that is definitely not the case,” Powell said. “All I did was provide a mailbox. Somebody else decided to make it into a home for Mary and Shelley.”
Nancy Powell said she can vouch for her husband.
“Our two sons even wondered if he was doing it, but it was honestly a surprise to us,” she said. “Don is the kind of person, though, to play along with it. It’s some ‘feel good’ fun that we all need now in this crazy world.”
The Powell’s next-door neighbor, Terry Falahee, said he also believes that Don Powell did not move the dolls into the mailbox himself.
“It’s just somebody out there who is having some fun, giving us all a little community humor,” Falahee said, noting that there are 25 homes in the subdivision, connected to three other neighborhoods of similar size.
“Whoever is doing this is obviously somebody who is incredibly artistic and clever,” he said. “Don has a lot of skill sets, but doing something this detailed with dolls isn’t his forte.”
Powell works as a psychologist and is the president and CEO of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine, an organization that helps hospitals around the country implement wellness programs.
After he and Nancy moved into their home in Orchard Lake Village about five years ago, he said they decided to pay a local craftsman $250 to design a mailbox resembling their house, with lots of windows on the top and sides to let the light in. Nine months later, their mailbox was ready.
The interior of the box is roomy, measuring 26 inches long, 15 inches wide and 10 inches high, Don Powell said, adding that it also has solar-powered ceiling lights to illuminate the mailbox at night.
Although a person can be fined up to $5,000 for putting items without postage inside somebody else’s mailbox, Powell said he could not imagine alerting the authorities and evicting the dolls.
“I asked our mail carrier if there would be a problem delivering our mail with the dolls in there, and he told me no — there was plenty of room,” he said. “He also said he got a kick out of seeing what was going on inside my mailbox.”
Every month or two, particularly around holidays, the Powells find something new tucked inside the box for Mary and Shelley.
Last Halloween, the doll couple temporarily disappeared and were replaced by two small skeletons, he said, and at Christmastime, a decorated tree was left with tiny presents. Powell said whoever left the gifts took them back right after Christmas before he could open the boxes to see if anything was inside.
The doll couple has also acquired a cat, he said.
“It’s getting a little crowded, especially because their cousin Shirley has also moved in with a service dog named Maggie,” Powell noted.
“The note left in the mailbox said they were all grateful to find a one-story, because they’d previously lived in a Dutch-style dollhouse,” he said. “I’m assuming that place had more stairs.”
After packages were left for the holidays, Powell said he added a tiny addition of his own outside the mailbox: a miniature letterbox.
“I decided it made sense to give them one, since their tiny letters were getting mixed up with ours and could get lost in the mail,” he said, noting that whoever is adding things to the mailbox appears to enjoy creating miniature correspondence and packages bound with string.
Powell said he now doesn’t want to know who is responsible for the mailbox saga because he’s hoping it will continue for months to come.
“People in the neighborhood are enjoying it and stop by sometimes to ask questions,” he said. “They want to know what we’re charging for rent and who mows the lawn. Some people ask if I’ve thought about installing an outdoor camera, but personally, I like the mystery of it.”
“The Fourth of July is coming up in a few months,” Powell added. “I can’t wait to see what Mary and Shelley will be up to then.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/05/02/mailbox-doll-mystery-michigan/
