Cryptic notes have been popping up all around Pennsylvania in various cereal boxes and state parks — and it looks like they’re moving west.
Originally dubbed the “Schuylkill Notes” by Reddit users investigating, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the messages are said to have a sinister quality — referencing secret societies, sci-fi movies and famous names like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.
The Inquirer reported that other notes reference international conflicts and hate groups, and many have intentional spelling and grammatical errors.
“Secret society (SS) ties to terror’m, shoot’gs, staged confront’ns & other crises aren’t report’d but JFK/Lincoln warn’d of SS,” one note reads, according to the Inquirer.
While hiking in Lebanon County’s Swatara State Park, 23-year-old Zachary Zimmerman told the Inquirer he found more than a few of the notes on trees and wrapped around stones.
“I picked it up and read it, and it really doesn’t make any sense to me,” Zimmerman told the Inquirer. “It’s just a bunch of crazy stuff.”
Joe Miller of Sugarloaf Township told WJAC-TV that he found a note in a Lucky Charms Smores cereal box.
“I opened up the box. I usually open it up and take the bag out and I opened the bag like this, so I poured it out in my bowl and out came this paper that was all folded up just like this,” he said.
Though they have mainly been concentrated in the eastern half of the state and Schuylkill County, some have been seen as close to the Pittsburgh area as Johnstown, according to a map put together by a Reddit user.
The map separates the notes by where they were found, either in boxes or food items, on trails or in state parks, or somewhere else entirely.
Some well-known grocery locations the notes have been found include: Walmart, Target, GIANT, Weis Markets, Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, Dollar General, CVS and Aldi.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokesperson said the agency is aware of the situation, emphasizing that it “evaluates product defects and other complaints that it receives.” Tampering with food products, the spokesperson said, is a federal crime.
The messages have also been found along the Appalachian and other trails, including in state parks. One was found in Bald Eagle State Park near State College, for example.
Other stores like Kohl’s, Goodwill, Lowe’s and Cabela’s are denoted on the map as well.
The Inquirer reports that some elected officials have contacted the FBI. Carrie Adamowski, a spokesperson with the agency in Philadelphia, told the Inquirer she could neither confirm nor deny any active investigation into the notes.
Notes found in food items should be reported to the Pennsylvania’s FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator at 877-689-8073, and notes found in state parks and on trails should be reported to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources.
Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.