The note left by Cole Drinnid

Mr. Drinnid was a kind, decent, gentleman, with the respect of everyone in town. He resided in Little River, and his abode was the largest house in the public square. Drinnid was known for throwing immense parties and getting to know everyone. 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 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 that no one really knew Cole Drinnid's story.

While everyone knew them man himself, not one person in town could tell you where he came from, who his family was, or how he got to be so rich. He began to earn himself the title of the "Jay Gatsby" of Little River.

Then… he disappeared.

It was the night of April 30th, 1967. Drinnid was throwing what is known as his last and most infamous party. The disappearance is not the only thing that caused the party’s fame, 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 really knew how to explain this hidden mystery.

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 everyone 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. 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, he 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 of the servants left the room quickly to find the whereabouts of their missing employer.

An hour had passed and he 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. They 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 everyone could go down, so a party of ten descended into the private office.

This 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. After doing a round of the room they did not find anything, and they reported to the steward that Mr. Drinnid was nowhere to be found.

The steward contacted the authorities, within half an hour, there were two patrol cars parked outside of the home. The police called the party off and guests had to leave. It was fifteen minutes till 2:00 A.M. and they should have been home already. The police checked all the same rooms once more and ended up with the same results. Mr. Drinnid was not in his house, it seemed like he had simply disappeared.

That was when an officer found that the appearance of the gun cabinet in the office looked peculiar. He approached the wall where the cabinet lay and pressed along the back wall. The hidden door swung open to reveal a room filled with moth tanks.

The next day newspaper reporters, detectives, and officers were going in and out of the home. Taking pictures here and there, but the bizarre discovery was the most captured image. There was more, the authorities made an other mysterious discovery in that same office space. On the desk there was a note that was scrawled in messy handwriting. It was clearly Drinnid's and based on the quality of appearance, it was written with great urgency. The words on the note were obviously 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.

It appears no one really knew what they had just read. Although the letters were familiar, the word formation was complete gibberish. These questions finally reached national status.

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?

When these inquiries finally became national, 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 to crack Drinnid's code.

A few other puzzling pieces of evidence were collected from the office that night. 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 confusion added from these pieces, none of them could puzzle more than the scribbled note.

Some say it was a suicide note, others think it was some sort of cryptic message. Only one word in the message was able to be translated and that was "father". The word was scrawled at the beginning of the note in Persian. No one is necessarily sure as to why "father" was the first word in the sentence. Often people propose the idea that the note was a brief letter to his father, but that still doesn’t provide an explanation to the disappearance.

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 an extended period of time due to the incident, but eventually the state of this location 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.