Have you ever read someone elses mail and discovered something interesting?

For the past 12 months that we’ve been living in our apartment we’ve been getting regular mail addressed to some guy called Dr Macdonald.

Initially we did the noble thing by crossing out our address and returning them back to the sender, but the letters have just kept on coming and coming, at least once a week without fail. Today my housemate told me he’s gotten sick of returning them so he now makes a point of opening & reading them all before throwing them out!


This reminded me of a similar thing that happened when I lived in London last year. I was living with an American guy who had been in the UK for about 8 years, then one day out of the blue he decided he was going to return to the States. Within two weeks he’d sold everything he owned, packed his bags and was gone. Over the following few months we’d constantly receive mail addressed to him which wouldn’t seem to stop, despite us returning them back, until eventually curiosity got the better of me and I decided to open one of the letters.

I found that it was a final notice from the debt collectors, telling him to cough up the £10,000 he owed the banks, or else see them in court.


Which begs the question… have you ever read someone elses mail and discovered something interesting?

Leave a comment and let me know if you have!



2 Comments

  1. As a kid I used to read my sister’s mail. All the time. I never received any letters. But she did. All the time.
    Oh, but I am not very proud of it. It was pretty mean and unthoughtful.

    1. Oh wow, it’s much more risky eavesdropping on your family’s mail cause there’s the risk that they’ll catch you doing it & you’ll have to explain yourself. Hope you never got caught though…

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