The Detectorist

Rob encounters a gentleman named Henry with a passion for metal detecting.

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Hi, I'm Rob. Tale number twenty-five. The Detectorist. After season one of the podcast, I was trying to figure out what stories I wanted to tell in this season, season two. And I have a friend that I talk to about the podcast all the time. And she mentioned, you know, that I didn't necessarily have to mind the past, that I could also tell stories that were happening to me right now. And that now that I have the podcast, I could even live my life a little bit differently and try and sort of pursue things that I would not have normally pursued for the sake of the podcast. This had not really occurred to me. I'm pretty passive and observant in life, so I wasn't sure it would actually have that big of an impact. Like I don't usually realize something is story worthy while it's happening, but I really liked the idea. I appreciated that she pointed this out. I just wasn't sure that I was actually gonna do anything with it. And then the next day, I was walking on the beach. I lived near the beach. I wasn't on vacation or anything, I was just walking on the beach. It was before sunrise, so it was still dark out, and I could see someone with a flashlight down the beach. It was the middle of sea turtle season, like hatchling season, where the baby turtles hatch out and go to the water, and you're not supposed to have flashlights on the beach during sea turtle season, because they're like drawn to the light, which can cause them to not go to the water, and then they can die. So I decided to go down and and ask the person to turn off their light, or at least, you know, let them know that in the future if they could use a red flashlight, which doesn't bother the turtles, that would be great. As I approached, I realized it was someone that was doing some metal detecting. And I'm not very confrontational, but I just started talking to him and, you know, asked him how he was doing, and he introduced himself as Henry, and then I sort of gently started talking about the problem with having a flashlight out there, and he was super receptive and he already knew, and he said, you know, he just forgot his red flashlight that morning, and then he turned it off. He said, I I just won't use a light for the rest of the morning, which was nice. And then we started talking about some other things I don't really remember, but it was about this time when that idea that my friend had introduced the day before popped back into my head. And I started thinking about how can I turn this moment with Henry into a tale for the podcast. And I just started kind of going through all the old episodes in my head, and the thing that came to mind was tale number 15, which is about an abandoned storage unit. And if you haven't heard that episode, you don't have to go back and listen. In that episode, I asked someone that owns a storage company, you know, where they like rent out storage units to people. I asked them what was the weirdest thing they had ever found in an abandoned storage unit. And I guess that idea easily connects with a metal detector. So I said, Henry, what's the weirdest thing you've ever found with your metal detector on the beach? And he said, I'd rather show it to you. And I said, Great. And Henry did not live where I lived. He drove down to the beach every Friday night, slept in his van when he got there, and then got out to the beach before anyone else was there. So he said if I came back to the same place next week at the same time, that I would see him, and he would bring the weird thing with him. And so that's what I did. I came back the next week, and he was nowhere to be seen. Never saw him on the beach, walked up to the parking area like there's a public parking lot, he wasn't there, he was a no-show. I tried again the next weekend and he wasn't there again. I decided to try one more time the weekend after that, and he was there. He was in the parking lot at his van, he was not on the beach. He would actually already finish doing his metal detecting and was about to leave. So I spoke to him standing at the back of his van as he was loading up and getting ready to go. He said that he had gotten really busy at work and just hadn't had the energy to come back, which makes sense. I said no worries. He said he had totally forgotten about our conversation, so he had never put the thing in his van that he wanted to show me. And, you know, since this is a podcast, I said, Well, why don't you just tell me? You don't actually have to show me. He said that he was on the beach one day with his metal detector. He got a hit and started digging, and it's like two or three feet down, it was way down. There was a coffee can, and he got it out and shook it, and there was something in it. He opened it, and it was a skeleton, a small skeleton, and then there was a note in there, like a piece of paper folded up, and it said Dear Tommy, thank you for being the best bird you could have been. I love you. I miss you so much. Your friend Ben. What he had found was a pet bird that someone had buried, and then a note from a child who had obviously loved the bird. And you know, it's not great to bury like coffee cans, but that sounds like just the sort of thing that I would have done when I was a kid, so I got it. And that's definitely not what I was expecting. I also thought to myself, if that's the kind of thing that you should keep, you know, there's almost something holy about it. Should Henry have just put that back? Anyway, I thanked Henry for the story. I was about to leave. As I said, I was standing behind Henry's van with him, and it was wide open, and inside the van, I could see that there were just like tons of milk crates, you know, like plastic milk crates, full of golf balls, and also what looked like several sections of chain link fence. So I just asked him, you know, what's that about? He said another thing he did that was sort of like metal detecting was he would magnet fish. That's like where you tie a magnet to a rope and you throw it into water and you drag it along, and it picks up things that stick to the magnet, things that are made of metal. He liked to magnet fish at golf courses because people would get mad and throw their golf clubs in the water. Golf courses just don't let you walk up and start magnet fishing. They're pretty good at chasing people off. So he would also collect the golf balls out of the pond, and I guess that's a service that golf courses actually need. And then while he was getting the golf balls out of the pond, he would also magnet fish and get all the golf clubs that were in there too. And then he could sell those. Those were worth way more than the golf balls. And it's not like there's some device that you suck golf balls out of a golf course pond with. You just climb in there and grab them out by hand, and they're usually, you know, buried in muck, um, but the ponds aren't very deep. And the pieces of fencing, those were to protect him from alligators. He would take the sections of chain link fence, which look to be about five feet long each, and connect them in the water and create a kind of cage or fence around himself in the water. He had ten pieces of fence so he could create a rectangular workspace that was like ten by fifteen feet. He could then get in the middle of that and work freely knowing that there were no alligators with him. It was a fairly impressive setup. I enjoyed learning about it, and then he asked, You probably want to know what the weirdest thing I've ever found magnet fishing is. And I said, Yes, yes I do. And he said, It's not really something I found, but it's something that happened. I said, Okay. He said he had his little fence out there in a golf course pond one day. And he had not actually gotten anything with his magnet, but he had been getting tons of golf balls. He had been in there for several hours, and he noticed some weird movement in the water, inside the fence with him. He kept working, and then he he heard a splash, and then two giant eyes slowly breached the surface of the water and were staring at him. It was an alligator that was he said it was ten feet long. That's a very big alligator. And it was inside the fence with him. Henry freaked out, actually climbed over the fence and got out, and uh was able to free the alligator, but he said that, you know, there were no holes in the fence or there was no gap where something could have gotten in. So when he had set up his fence initially, he had accidentally enclosed the alligator in there with him. And, you know, he was just moving along the bottom, grabbing golf balls, and I guess every time he got close to the alligator, it just moved out of his way. But I mean, it's not that big of a space. Like I said, 10 by 15 feet, so he was very close to a very large alligator for a very long period of time. And um, I really like that story. And while it's probably not safe to confine an alligator and then climb in a cage with it, because you're putting it in a desperate situation, it doesn't really surprise me that the alligator didn't bother him. What it sounds like is the alligator just stayed as far away as it could from him the whole day. As he moved around, the alligator moved to stay away from him. And then the moment the alligator had the chance to get out of the cage, it left. It's a nice example of something that I think is true of a lot of animals that we are scared of. They want nothing to do with us and do everything in their power to get far away from us as fast as they can. So those are the stories that Henry told me. Henry also made an observation that he was similar to me because I liked weird stories and he liked to find weird things, and we were both sort of engaged in the pursuit of small mysteries, which I totally agree. We are similar in that way, and I really like that about Henry. I'm happy I met him. I had some additional editing help from Ben Lamb. The cover art is by Marcella Johnson. She also came up with the title of the podcast. Our theme music is by Mitchell Harditch. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and at robtellstales.com. This podcast would have not been possible without Ben, Marcella, and Melanie. Thank you, and thanks for listening.