Mysterious Buried Witch Jar Found Metal Detecting | Quarter Hoarder

A strange jar buried deep in the woods would ultimately change the course of Quarter Hoarder forever.

Almost 10 years ago, I dug a sealed Mason jar out of the middle of the woods.

Inside were coins, jewelry, Bible pages, human hair, feathers, newspaper clippings of Princess Grace, strange drawings of the night sky, handwritten prayers and other things I couldn’t begin to explain.

I had absolutely no idea what I had found.

But what I didn’t realize at the time was that the jar wasn’t alone.

We had already found others.

And because I didn’t yet understand what we were looking at, some of those other jars and their contents would be lost forever.

This is one find I wish I could go back and dig all over again.

BEFORE QUARTER HOARDER WAS REALLY QUARTER HOARDER

This story goes back to a very different time for me.

Metal detecting was something I occasionally did for fun. I didn’t have a crew. I wasn’t going out every week. If I had a few hours to kill, I’d grab my detector and head to an old park, church or cellar hole and see what I could find. I had recently started putting some of my detecting adventures on YouTube too, but hardly anybody watched them. And that was okay.

This wasn’t a serious thing for me yet.

Then one day, while detecting an abandoned baseball field, I randomly met a guy named Chris who stopped to see what I was finding.

We got talking, and when Chris told me his house dated to the 1800s and was surrounded by nearly 200 acres of woods, he invited me over to metal detect the property with him.

A few days later, I took him up on the offer.

We searched around his house for a while and found some old coins and relics before Chris mentioned something that immediately got my attention.

There used to be old houses somewhere back in the woods. So we went looking for them.

SOMETHING IN THE WOODS

We walked through the trees swinging our detectors as we went, listening for anything that might tell us we’d found one of those forgotten homesites. Then the woods suddenly opened up. In the middle of all those trees was a large open area, probably around 100 feet by 100 feet. There weren’t any trees growing inside it.

There was grass. There were tulips. There were other flowers that looked completely out of place in the middle of the woods. It looked like nature had reclaimed almost everything around it while somehow leaving behind the footprint of what had once been somebody’s yard.

There had been a house here.

And within minutes, our detectors started confirming it.

Wheat cents.

Old lamp parts

Lead figures.

Belt slides

Enough everyday sort of household things that told us people had once lived here. So we slowed down and started working the area more dilegently.

But then that’s when the day took a very strange turn.

THE FIRST BURIED CONTAINER

I got a bouncy high tone on my detector. It wasn’t a perfect signal, but it sounded good enough to investigate. I opened the ground and eventually pulled out something I’d never found before.

It looked almost like two small metal bowls, one placed upside down over the other to create a makeshift container.

I separated them, and there were coins inside.

A Barber dime.

Two thick Indian Head cents from the 1860s.

And incredibly, two Flying Eagle cents from the 1850s.

This wasn’t a pocket spill. Someone had deliberately put those coins inside a container and buried them.

Even the condition of the coins was unusual. Being enclosed appeared to have protected them from much of the surrounding soil and moisture.

For someone like me who was primarily interested in finding old coins at the time, this was incredible. But it turned out the coins weren’t the strangest thing somebody had buried there.

Not even close.

THEN WE STARTED FINDING JARS

As we continued detecting the old homesite, we began uncovering more deliberately buried objects.

This time they were glass jars, and some were still intact.

*The first intact jar with items inside*

One of the jars contained old newspaper clippings along with a collection of unusual colorful stones or stone-like objects.

We opened it right there in the woods.

We dumped the contents into an old metal bowl we’d found nearby and tried to figure out what we were looking at.

Watching that footage today is difficult for me.

Chris was brand new to metal detecting, and I wasn’t much more experienced myself. At that point in my life, I was mostly interested in finding old coins.

I didn’t yet appreciate that sometimes the context of a discovery can be just as important as the objects themselves.

So we weren’t careful enough.

We opened the jars in the field. Some of the fragile material was damaged. And at the end of the day, some of those jars and their contents were ultimately discarded.

I deeply regret that now.

I’d give anything to put those objects back on a table today and examine them knowing what I know now.

Were those strange stones significant? What did the newspaper clippings say? Was anything written on those lids? Were there symbols? Did any of it connect to what I was about to find?

I didn’t know to ask those questions. And now, I’ll probably never know the answers.

At the time, all Chris and I knew was that somebody had apparently buried multiple containers around this forgotten homesite.

Then my detector gave me another signal.

Another jar

This signal eventually led me to another metal Mason jar lid about six inches beneath the ground.

As I carefully dug around it, I realized the glass was still attached. Another complete jar. But this one looked different.

There was clearly stuff inside it.

I handed Chris my camera and asked him to film while I worked it free. Eventually the ground released it.

And for the first time, I held the jar that I still own today. Through the dirty glass I could see all kinds of things.

Coins.

Jewelry.

Pieces of paper.

Pictures.

Feathers.

Objects I couldn’t identify.

The jar was packed.

I tried opening it in the woods, but the lid wouldn’t move. Then I noticed some writing going around the outside of the lid. IT was hard to see through the dirt and corrosion, so I could barely make out words. But I thought I read…

Love

Saved

There also appeared to be some kind of drawing on top of the lid but I couldn’t quite make it out.

I didn’t know what any of it meant.

But after everything else we’d already found buried around this place, I knew I wasn’t throwing this one away.

Darkness was beginning to settle in, and we still had a long walk back through the woods.

So I carefully put the jar in my bag. Whatever was inside would have to wait.

WATCH PART ONE: FINDING THE JAR

TWO DAYS OF WAITING

Then it rained. For two straight days it rained.

I wanted to open the jar outside in good natural light where I could spread everything out and film what happened, so I waited.

Meanwhile, my wife and I couldn’t stop looking through the glass. Every time we turned it, we’d notice something else.

A peach pit.

Feathers.

Locks of human hair.

Jewelry.

Newspaper clippings.

Leaves.

Photographs

Coins

And all kinds of things we couldn’t identify.

Then my wife noticed something on the lid.

There appeared to be a heart with wings extending from either side.

The drawing was much easier to see immediately after the jar came out of the ground.

Once it was exposed to the air, some of those markings began fading surprisingly quickly.

But at the time, the shape reminded us of a heart flying away.

Maybe even a soul.

We started searching online for anything that might explain what we’d found.

For the first time, we began wondering if this could be some kind of ritual or spell jar.

I couldn’t wait any longer to see what was inside.

THE JAR FINALLY OPENS

Once the weather cleared, I set up a large table outside. Then I started fighting with the lid. After several minutes wrestling with the jar, eventually the lid moved.

For what may have been the first time in decades, the jar was open.

And almost immediately, we discovered another clue. There was writing on the underside of the lid.

Despite the staining and corrosion, several words could still be made out.

Grace.

Peace.

Love.

Salvation.

There was another heart there too.

At that point, one thing seemed pretty clear.

Someone hadn’t simply filled a Mason jar with random junk and buried it.

Whatever this was, it meant something to the person who made it.

WHAT WAS INSIDE?

So I started removing the contents, one piece at a time. And with almost every object I removed, the mystery got stranger.

There were bible pages

Newspaper clipping

Hand drawn maps

A silver-colored filigree necklace.

A sewing spool.

A bird wing.

Colorful stones.

Several folded images of African artwork.

A piece of multicolored fabric.

And all sorts of other objects I couldn’t explain.

Then there was a matchbox. It looked thick like something was tucked inside so I opened it up.

Inside were several folded up pages from a Bible, and in the middle of the page there was a newspaper clipping.

When I unfolded it, I recognized the woman in the photograph.

Princess Grace of Monaco.

There was another clipping that appeared to show Monaco.

And among everything else was a small pamphlet dated 1982.

I didn’t know it yet, but that date would become another piece of the puzzle.

Then I unfolded one of the largest pieces of paper in the jar.

And the mystery went in an entirely new direction.

SOMEONE HAD BEEN WATCHING THE SKY

The sheet was covered in handwriting and drawings.

Stars.

Constellations.

Times.

Directions.

Prayers.

Names such as Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Orion appeared throughout the page.

Whoever made this wasn’t simply doodling a few stars. It appeared that someone had been observing the night sky and recording what they saw.

There were times written beside observations.

Directions.

References to the heavens.

And mixed among the astronomical notes were words and phrases that sounded much more spiritual. One section connected the Big Dipper with what was described as an Arabic funeral procession.

Another referenced the love of a Creator. And elsewhere on the page was what appeared to be another reference to Grace and the heavens.

Now look at what was sitting on my table.

Princess Grace.

Monaco.

Bible pages.

Prayers.

A bird wing.

A winged heart.

Grace.

Peace.

Love.

Salvation.

And detailed observations of the night sky.

For the first time, some of these seemingly random objects started looking a little less random.

THEN THE INTERNET GOT INVOLVED

I uploaded the videos, and something happened that I absolutely wasn’t expecting.

People started watching. A lot of people.

The comments filled with theories.

Some viewers were familiar with folk practices, ritual objects and modern forms of witchcraft.

Others knew astronomy. Others started researching Princess Grace.

And thousands of people began trying to solve the mystery along with me. One interpretation began to emerge from all those clues…

Princess Grace died tragically following a car accident on a winding mountain road above Monaco in September 1982.

Inside the jar were images connected to Princess Grace and Monaco along with an item dated 1982.

There were prayers and Bible passages. There were wings. There was the word Salvation. There were observations of the constellations with times and locations. Could the person who created the jar have been deeply affected by the death of Princess Grace?

And could this have been some kind of spiritual memorial or ritual connected with her death, perhaps intended to help or symbolize her soul’s journey into the afterlife?

But that's only a theory. I don’t know for sure. Nobody does.

But taken together, the clues made the possibility difficult to ignore.

And suddenly that heart with wings on the lid seemed a lot more meaningful.

Watch the full jar opening video

AND THEN THERE WAS THE MAP

There was another part of that large handwritten sheet that bothered me. Because it didn’t look like a star chart.

It looked like a map.

There appeared to be a larger boundary with smaller shapes or symbols marked inside it.

Elsewhere on the sheet, an Oak Tree was specifically labeled.

I couldn’t prove that this was a map of the property. I still can’t. But if it was, what did those symbols represent?

And that’s where something we had done earlier in the day suddenly became much more important.

We already knew there had been other buried jars.

We had dug them ourselves.

Could the symbols indicate locations where different jars or containers had been buried?

Then I noticed something even stranger. One of the markings appeared to resemble a heart.

And there was something very familiar about that symbol.

The jar I had kept had a heart drawn on its lid.

That’s when another question entered my mind.

What if the large area in the center of the map was some sort of religious dais, and the markings surrounding the dais were showing where other jars were buried?

What if those symbols didn’t simply mark locations?

What if they identified the location of individual containers?

A heart for the heart jar. Other symbols for other jars.

We found other jars all around this area, we just weren’t documenting.

What if the other jars we’d already opened had matching symbols on them as well?

I didn’t know to look.

And because we’d discarded them, there was no way to go back and check.

Again, another deep regret.

Maybe the resemblance means nothing. Maybe the drawing isn’t even a map.

But after finding multiple deliberately buried jars at the same site, it’s a question I’ve never been able to completely put out of my mind.

Just how many jars had been buried in those woods? And what stories did the ones we threw away contain?

THE FIND THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

While everyone was trying to figure out the jar, something else was happening. My little YouTube channel was exploding.

Remember, at this point I wasn’t a serious YouTuber. I didn’t have a crew. I wasn’t producing regular hunts. Hardly anybody knew Quarter Hoarder and honestly neither did I.

Then I uploaded these videos.

They quickly accumulated views. Thousands of views, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then MILLIONS!

Thousands of comments poured in, and my subscriber count climbed from hardly anything to well over 10,000.

And for the first time, I realized people weren’t interested in just seeing an old coin come out of the ground.

They wanted the story.

They wanted the mystery.

They wanted to research alongside me.

They wanted to help solve it!

Without realizing it at the time, I was getting my first glimpse of what Quarter Hoarder would eventually become.

WATCH PART THREE: TRYING TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY

ALMOST 10 YEARS LATER

Almost 10 years later, I still have the jar, and I still have nearly everything that was inside it.

Some of the paper and organic material has become extremely fragile, so these days I rarely handle it.

That’s one reason I’m grateful I filmed everything when I did. Those old videos preserved not only what was inside the jar, but exactly what it looked like when it came out of the ground. And watching them again all these years later has reminded me of something else.

How much I didn’t know.

Today, if I uncovered several deliberately buried jars containing unusual objects, I’d slow everything down.

I’d photograph each jar exactly where it was found. I’d document it better. I’d record where the others were located in relation to it. I’d examine every marking before disturbing anything. I’d preserve every scrap of paper.

But back then?

I was looking for old coins.

And when something came out of the ground that I didn’t understand, I didn’t always recognize that the mystery itself might be more important than whatever monetary value the object had.

I wish I had.

Because somewhere among those discarded pieces may have been the one clue that explained everything.

Sadly, I’ll never know.

But maybe that’s also part of why this particular find has stayed with me for so long, and why I try so hard to run around and document all our finds. When they’re dirty, when they’re cleaned, full shots, wide shots, closeup shots, different angles, breathing room around the edges, as much as I can.

I’ll never make this rushed error again, and my appreciation for all our found objects is different now.

Since that day so long ago in the woods I’ve found a ton of things that are much older.

Much rarer.

And certainly much more valuable.

But very few discoveries have had a bigger impact on my life than that dirty Mason jar buried about six inches beneath the ground.

No crew. No noteworthy channel. No weekly hunts. No Quarter After. No website…

Just me, a metal detector, and one very strange signal in the middle of the woods that forever changed my life.

It goes to show that sometimes the most important treasure isn’t necessarily the most valuable thing you find, but it might just be the thing that sends you down an entirely different path that lives with you forever.

THE MYSTERIOUS WITCH JAR