By Tim Binnall
Residents of a village in England say that they are being tormented by a mysterious miscreant who has been sending them twisted letters for the past two years. The bizarre case reportedly began back in 2022 when the first of many unsettling missives were sent to the home of a woman, identified as Sophie, in the community of Shiptonthorpe. Running for a local office at the time, she explained that the letter ridiculed her effort in rather untoward terms. "It was vile," Sophie recalled, "I ripped it up, I couldn't believe where it had come from or why I'd received it." Alas, the cruel note was merely the start of a series of unnerving messages that have since been sent to multiple community members.
Similarly inappropriate letters soon began arriving at the home of Sophie's partner, Sam, causing him considerable consternation. "I was frightened," he said, indicating that the messages left the pair understandably concerned for their safety. Over time, the couple was joined by other community members who found themselves targeted by the letter writer with the proverbial poison pen, including one resident who received a particularly cruel missive that declared "I hope cancer finds you." Unfortunately, the case has proven to be something of a challenge for authorities as the mean-spirited messages do not "contain any aggressive language" and, as such, they found that "no criminal offenses had been committed."
Remarkably, the letter writer's campaign of terror has become so untenable for some people in the community that they have actually opted to leave the town due to the troubling situation. "A cloud of vitriol has fallen over Shiptonthorpe," a resident named Jason lamented, "someone has brought poison to this village." Undeniably weird and worrisome, the situation has some echoes from the past as many have compared the village's plight to a century-old case from the British town of Littlehampton, where a woman was targeted by an anonymous letter writer who sent her wicked missives. More recently, the American community of Circleville, Ohio found itself at the center of a similar unsolved mystery in the late 1970s.