Episode 79: Schuylkill Notes ft. Something Strange

For over seven years, mysterious, cryptic notes have been appearing in everyday products and hiking trails across eastern Pennsylvania and beyond—slipped into infant Tylenol boxes, Duncan Hines cake mix, mac and cheese, and even found tied to trees in state parks. These notes, filled with paranoid ramblings about secret societies, the Illuminati, Satanism, and anti-Semitic tropes, are typed with eerie consistency, suggesting a template rather than random scribbles. Despite being widely reported and even investigated by the FDA and local law enforcement, no one has been arrested, and the origin remains a mystery. The hosts of *Unknown Unsolved Unseen* explore the possibility that this is a coordinated act of psychological warfare, a mass prank, or the work of a single individual with severe mental health struggles—possibly exacerbated by the isolation and chaos of the pandemic. What makes it especially unsettling is that the notes are still being found today, including in a Pennsylvania state park just two weeks before recording. The episode doesn’t offer answers, but it forces listeners to confront a chilling reality: someone is quietly spreading fear through the mundane, and we may all have unknowingly encountered one. The most disturbing takeaway isn’t the content of the notes, but their persistence and reach. These aren’t isolated hoaxes—they’re a decentralized, evolving phenomenon that has inspired copycats across the U.S., Canada, and even Germany.