POSTCARD MAILED IN 1920 FINALLY DELIVERED

The postcard, faded and weathered, has a postmark dated Oct. 29, 1920, and a green stamp of George Washington, priced 1 cent.

Its message is written in cursive, its front shows a witch and a goose wearing a pumpkin on its head, and its address is to a Mrs. Roy Mcqueen in Belding, Mich. It took almost a century to be delivered.

The postcard’s arrival last week has baffled Brittany Keech, the Belding resident who found it in her mailbox with some bills and junk mail, and set her off on a new mystery — how to find the intended recipient or any of the person’s living relatives.

“When I first saw it, I thought, ‘This is old,’” recalled Keech, 30. “I was shocked. Why is this here all of the sudden?”

She added, “I would love to be able to get it to a relative who is alive.”

The postcard is a personal family letter, providing the kind of quick update one might send in a text message or in a social media post today. It has a Halloween theme, featuring the gray-haired witch, the goose, an owl, a bat and cat with a broom. It also has a pun: “‘Witch’ would you rather be … a goose or a pumpkin head?”

It’s not clear where the postcard has been during the intervening decades or why it took so long to reach the address.

Letters from years or decades past do sometimes turn up in people’s mailboxes, though a spokesperson for the Postal Service said it was rarely because they became lost in the system.

“In most cases these incidents do not involve mail that had been lost in our network and later found,” said Tim Ratliff, the spokesperson for the Postal Service for the Great Lakes area.

“What we typically find is that old letters and postcards — sometimes purchased at flea markets, antique shops and even online — are re-entered into our system,” he said.

Ratliff added, “As long as there is a deliverable address and postage, the card or letter gets delivered.”

BRITTANY KEECH Brittany Keech, of Belding, Mich., recently received a postcard in her mailbox dated Oct. 29, 1920.