Endless Thread - Encore: We Want Plates + Pile Of Crockery

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Endless Thread is re-releasing a crown jewel from the archives. It's the team's epic adventure to locate a mountain of dishware in the middle of the woods and, truly, it's even more ridiculous than it sounds. Originally released as a two-part story almost exactly one year ago, we've re-edited it into one jumbo "combination platter" for your listening pleasure.  So sit back, relax, and dig in!

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys, we hope you're spending time doing things that are important to you with people who are important to you. For this year's Independence Day, we're doing a rerun, but it's an endless thread hall of famer, a two-part story that we made almost exactly a year ago about an adventure we went on together that we will never forget. We'll be back next week with a full episode, but for now, enjoy this combination platter.

Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. Okay, so I'm walking past the gate that was across the road to try and see what I can see of this. Oh my God, that just scared the crap out of me. I came across a white-tailed deer that just ran, went tearing across the road in front of me. He's trying to stay alert because it is a little creepy what's happening here. So Ben has gone down the road past a metal gate.

It's definitely clearly like I do not go back here. And I'm just nervous about this whole thing. Okay, so what's up ahead? Is it technically a trailer? like a trailer that someone would live in. It's just out in the middle of the woods here. Which also makes me a bit nervous because someone's living here and I'm coming this way.

That's super scary. I thought he was just going to go down there, see what he could see, turn around. It's weird, there's like a bunch of pathways kind of carved into the woods here, which is kind of bizarre. Old tracks, old rats. Okay, this is So creepy.

This is a long way to go without Josh and Amory. We're trying to find Ben. He left the car and went to cross this fence to see if he could find the plates. Record scratch, freeze frame. Yep, that's us. The endless thread team split up in the middle of the woods. You're probably wondering how we ended up in this situation. it all started some weeks back when Amory and I were looking at a very strange post I had found on Reddit, a post that would hit the site's front page

with tens of thousands of up votes and thousands of responses. So let's rewind a bit. What is this? What are we looking at? Okay. It's posted to the WTF community. The text reads,

I was driving through the backwoods of Pennsylvania on the way to a camping spot and found a mountain of ceramic dishes and teacups in the middle of the woods, question mark, exclamation point. Okay. And the photo is of this pretty, I would say, goofy-looking dude. Yeah. He's got a weird one of those little...

Like Adventure Dad hat. Yeah, like an Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones wasn't that cool kind of hat. Yep. And then he's wearing some dorky gym shorts and he's wearing socks. High socks. He's got a beard. and he's like, whoa? And pointing at this massive mountain of dishware.

What do the plates look like, Amory? We've got a variety in here, actually. Oh, here we go. You've got the big, wide, circular dinner plate. You got your big plates? You got your big plates. You got your square plates. Oh, my God.

I'm seeing some wide, shallow bowls, some saucers. Some saucers. Some saucies. Some saucies. Some saucies. A couple saucies. They're all wetsets. White. I think these may all be the same brand of dishware.

There's something about this photo of plates. It calls to you. It does. And it is kind of hard to encapsulate with words just how absurd this is. Even the guy in the photo with this mountain of dishware is incredulous. His arms are out. He's like, what? And every time we show it to people we work with, which we've been doing for weeks, it gets a reaction. Holy moly. It's crazy. It's awesome. What am I looking at? I think it's a mountain of trash plates. I think, yeah, there's some square ones.

It looks like a pile of junk, but holy God, it's teacups? Dishes? It kind of looks like if the dining room from the Titanic washed up on shore, this is what you would find. Huge. It doesn't even fit in the fringps. of the picture. It's got to be like at least 10 feet, 12 feet high. Easily like a 15 foot, maybe a 20 foot mountain of plates? Could be a million plates, a billion plates?

I've never seen anything like this in my life. It's curious. I would like to know more. I don't know what this is for. Oh, it's for the Plate Association of America. You got it. It's perfect. It's for tonic plates. According to the original poster and the title of this post, on Reddit, this mysterious, enigmatic, giant pile of dishware is in the woods of Pennsylvania.

And everyone, including Redditors, want to know everything about it, not just where, but why, how, who? There's almost 2,000 comments on this. And top comment. Okay. Was there a mountain of Tupperware lids or mountains of left socks anywhere near there? Is that a joke I'm supposed to get? Amory.

Come on. I'm sorry. It's like things that this universe sucks out of your life. Oh, TV remote. Yeah, exactly. I totally buy that. There is a dimension where all that stuff is. Yeah, that's the Renan Stimpy joke.

These are all left socks. This is where all the missing left socks in the universe go. So my question to you is why are we doing this story? Because we don't know what the heck those plates are doing out there. It's an unsolved mystery on Reddit, which is actually really good. good at solving mysteries. There is some good news. There's this one guy who knows where it is.

It seemed like a strange sort of thing to stumble across in the middle of nowhere. In this, the year of our Lord 2019, the internet has a lot of conspiracy theories, strange stories, oddities, but not a lot of mysteries that the internet itself cannot solve. This might be one of them. This mountain of plates. Amory, we have a title for this episode. And it is based on a subreddit that is about bad plating techniques at restaurants. Like a sandwich served on a mini shovel or something.

And so that subreddit. And this episode is called We Want Plates! I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sebertson, and this is Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found in the best eco-stead. system of online communities called Reddit. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. So, we've got this plates mystery.

And whatever the full story is, we have to start with the question of where the plates are. There is an obvious way to answer this question. Talk to the guy in the photo, the guy who posted the photo on Reddit. So we reached out. And we reached out again. And we followed up. And we followed up again. We chatted him.

we personal message to him. And he eventually got back. He was like, sure, yeah, totally, I'll talk to you guys. And then he fell off the map again. Totally unresponsive. All we knew is that his name is Matt, and Matt was not around. So we went with the next best thing, another Redditor, who had come up with a very popular theory. That man is named James.

And on Reddit, my username is Agent 641. And James is proof of how this mysterious pile of plates has become internationally famous. James lives in Australia. Where in Australia? Pretty much wherever. I don't think we've done an interview with someone who's in a van. Nope. You're a very first one.

It's a real privilege. Same here. Got a kitchen sink over here. Running water. Oh. James was one of the thousands. thousands of people fascinated by this plates post. And it sort of made me wonder where they had all come from,

like why they might dispose of them all at once, and why they dumped them all in a big pile out in the middle of nowhere. And we should say here that there are a lot of theories in the comments of this Reddit post, illegal dumping of some kind, by a trucking company or by a casino. And this one makes sense in a way. Big business might need to get rid of some old plates, lots of them. Somebody at a casino might know a guy with a truck. I mean, we've all seen the Sopranos, right?

Hey, Tony, we got to change out all of our dated plates and cups. And then Tony says, but what are we going to do with the old ones? And Frankie says, hey, have the service dispose of them. And Tony says, right. That's not a great impression, but... What? I love this theory. Get out.

I love this theory that there's some mafia illegal dumping going on. Whatever the conspiracy theories are, James was focused on location first. It seemed like something that was easily visible from satellite imagery. Just a big white. Splatch. Yeah. Yeah. So the poster mentioned that he'd been going camping

and he'd taken a picture on a back road. So I thought I would start at campsites in Pennsylvania. So here's what James did. He Googled the campgrounds in Pennsylvania, because there was mention of a camping spot in the original post. About 40 popped up immediately. And he just started to go down the list. He'd pick a campground, look at it on satellite imagery,

looking around a radius of about two miles, arbitrary. But if you're looking for a needle in a Pennsylvania woods haystack, it makes sense. James also looked at the photo, and the plates seemed to be in a pretty large clearing. So he picked a number, 60 feet wide or so at a minimum, and included that in his ad hoc satellite imagery search. And I also thought about the logistics of actually dumping the plates in that spot. Whoever did that would need to use quite large trucks.

So you're discounting the possibility that either a teleporter or an alien spaceship brought them there. Yeah, I mean, that was a plan B. I was going to go with that. And there it was. Just down the road from the Tanglewood Campground in a huge swath of forest in North Central PA, a big, splotchy, amorphous, reflective blob.

You can see it too on Google Maps, near the intersection of Tanglewood Road and Sunset Lane. It's been labeled huge pile of plates. Also, pile of crockery. It's at the edge of a clearing, just off a road, near what looks like a big gravel pit, half full of water. Someone labeled the plates on Google Maps as, quote,

pile of crockery. Yes, I saw that. Was that you? No, that wasn't me. That was someone else. I did leave a review. Which review was yours? I don't remember. It was something like it's a interesting new restaurant concept. You go fetch a plate from the pile and then you just chase down whatever food you can find and pay what you want, basically. There's no stuff. Well, James, I have good news for you and potentially bad news for us, which is we're going. That's amazing. I would love to hear the outcome of that. And I do hope you stay safe. We will.

God, I hope. I haven't been genuinely concerned, but now I am. It's starting to get scarier. So we hopped in the car and drove four hours straight west from Boston. And then we put our final destination into the GPS. The three hour 30 minute drive to huge pile of plates. Are you sure you want to navigate there? Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.

Okay, huge pile of plates. And we're off. It's a huge pile of plates. I should say here that at this stage in the game, there are a few things Amory doesn't know yet. I've kept them from her because I'm excited to surprise her with the information and blow her mind. One of the surprises is I know who the landowner is.

I've done my research on the location that James found. I used something called a GIS, geographic information system. It is a kind of data and mapping technology used around the world to organize information of all kinds for map-related stuff. Urban planning, land rights, ownership. The landowner is Clifford Cross Jr. He apparently owns some sort of trucking company, and he lives nearby the plates. But I haven't called him yet, because I have this fear that if we call him, he is going to tell us to keep out.

And that request is going to end our adventure real fast. And considering the number of theories that involve some sort of illegal activity as the explanation for the pile of crockery, my plan is to get us to the property first. see if we can see this mountain of plates from the road. And then if Clifford Cross says, I don't know what you're talking about, we can at least say, hey man,

we're looking right at it. So I'm waiting for the right time to do all of this. Meanwhile, we're road-tripping. We just saw a guy on a three-wheeler. He was going somewhere fast. He looked like fun. Would you get on the back of that three-wheeler with that dude? Nope.

No. Nope, would you? I'd wrap my arms around that burly man and just go wherever he wanted to go. I'm ready. Before we left, we sent some listeners the plates post and asked them what their theories were. Erica said it reminded her of the Golden State Killer and how he would stack dishes on the backs of his victims so he would know if they'd tried to escape. Thanks for the nightmares, Erica. And Thomas thinks it's the work of a whole.

courting grandma. Corey thinks it's a factory that closed down and just dump the dishes hoping no one would find them. But my personal favorite theory came from Reddit. Okay, the theory that I am digging right now is someone noticed that this pile of plates is, I think, about 45 minutes south of Corning, New York. Have you heard of Corningware, Ben? It was a line of dishware. From a dish company in New York. Yeah, I don't remember if they had a headquarters in Corning, but I want to say that they did. They had some sort of facility in Corning. I wonder if we're going to drive past Corning.

Oh, maybe. Are we coming from that direction? Yeah. Okay. I mean, if we are, we should stop. Oh, oh, oh. What? Corning.

Holy shit. There it is. Is this Corning? Are we in Corning? We just passed a giant. white factory looking building that says corning in huge letters across the top. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No. Yes. Let's check them out. Okay. Ready? Yeah. How are you? Oh, I'll tell you what you can get for you.

Oh, I'll tell you what you can get for us. You can get us proof that the plates are from your company. So is this where Corning Dishware is made? I can't answer really any questions in terms of the media, but just let me find a shift supervisor for you. Okay. That'd be cool. So we waited for a shift supervisor to respond to the call over the intercom.

Hey. How are you? Good. How are you looking for Mark Gravlin? No. We don't know. Maybe, yes. We just talked to somebody who tried to use.

Man, Mark Gravelin's got us flustered. Once we calm down a little, we give him our spiel, and Mark delivers some news. We make all biomedical. It's all plastic here. All plastic here. Interesting. Biomedical flask. Petri dishes.

Wow. storage bottles. So there's no dishware connection. No, sir. This is all polystyrene. Corningware? Is that different? That's not yours. That's not you. Different company. We're in the wrong place. Okay. Rejected. So rejected.

All right. Let's get, let's get back on the road. All right. We got a pile of dishes to find. The Corning dishware theory on hold for now. One more thing we should mention quickly. The only town close to this spot where we were headed to is called Covington Township. Now, I looked it up, just doing some light reading on it, and I was reading through the Wikipedia page for it, to get the basics. At the bottom of the entry for this little town is a section of the wiki page headlined controversy. The entry is short, but it says the town has been embroiled in a bunch of accusations against

the town's board of supervisors, especially the chairman Thomas Yerke. It says, among the allegations of misconduct against Supervisor Yerk are accusations of knowingly allowing the illegal discharge of raw sewage, illegally dumping hazardous waste on his property and other environmental law violations. After hours of driving, we were getting close, and signs of human civilization

were getting further away. Oh, shit! Oh, God. We're onto the dirt road. Under the gravel. We're onto the gravel. Even the gravel road was getting pretty gnarly and steep, going up into a kind of low, ancient, ground-down mountain. But then, the closer we got, the more the forest started to close in around us. The more of the road became just a smaller and smaller track through the woods.

We're one minute away. Dude, this is not even a thing. Like, we might have to walk from here. We started going down into a hollow, into deep woods. Nothing was out there. We're now officially driving through a creek bed. We're driving through a creek bed. No, I really don't like this.

I'm getting sweaty. Oh, we are at a real impasse now because there's a metal fence up and we cannot drive I don't want to get stuck in here. Okay, this is how a horror movie starts. I think we should walk up to the fence. Are we cool we doing that? Across this totally not road, in the middle of a mosquito convention,

was a cattle gate, with some old posts covered with those menacing signs that say posted, aka private property, aka keep out. I mean, we are so close. I could walk down there right now and just see what I can see and see what the scenario is and then walk back. Why don't we do that?

All right, I'm going to pause the recording. Okay. So Amory and our producer Josh are waiting back behind the posted sign. And I am wandering through a seemingly endless parcel of land that is so deep in the woods that the roads we thought bordered the property are not roads. As I walk through the tall grass into a kind of maze of grassy pathways and meadows cut through the forest, I am going back

and forth between being positive we are about to find the plates and being positive we are making a huge mistake. This is super creepy because there's just a trailer that's out here just sitting out here

in the middle of the woods. Okay. I think I might be getting close. to it. Your destination is on the right. Except it wasn't. I hightailed it back. Freaking finally.

I did not see Apollo plates, but I didn't fully explore. I decided I should come back. Really, I just came back to convince you guys to go deeper into the woods with me, and I needed to tell you more, Emery, of what I had been keeping to myself about Clifford Cross.

Cross Jr., who's listed as owning this property, runs a trucking company. There are a lot of competing theories about the reason behind the pile of plates, but everyone seems to agree that they must have been dumped somewhere using a big truck. And the guy whose property we are currently exploring runs a trucking company, single license. And we were trying to get in touch with him. Hello, my name is Ben Johnson. I'm calling looking for Mr. Cross. So we kept wading through the tall grass.

There was an old earth mover parked on the crest of a hill that looked like it hadn't moved any earth in a decade. There was a man-made pond surrounded by dirt, the creepy, empty, overgrown trailer. A duck blind for hunting, you know, with guns? Good times. I mean, I have like a rule that I live by, and it's, does this feel stupid?

And if it does, you don't do it. And the reason you don't do it, the reason you don't go into the woods to an unfamiliar location where no one actually knows you've gone, private property where there have been allegations of illegal activity and evidence of hunting, is that you might end up like someone on the Sopranos, whose storyline has just ended.

It's going to be okay, Emma. I hate this. I hate being the one who's afraid. No, no, no, no, I'm afraid. Yeah, I am too. Seriously, I'm afraid. I don't know if that makes you feel better. Yeah, I am too, I am too. Your phone is ringing.

Should I answer it? Yeah. Hello? Yeah, this is. Clifford. Oh, Clifford. Thank you so much for calling me back. What do you know about this point situation?

Oh, shocked to me here. He said, he called me up wondering where the plates were, and I said, well, I'm wondering where they are, too, because I have no freaking idea what you're talking about. Cliff says this was a whole big misunderstanding a few months back. He heard from a very persistent investigator. The investigator was from the Department of Environmental Protection, and he was following up on a tip. It had something to do with the internet.

And Cliff says he used to have a pile of lime on the property. Lime like the beige-colored mineral that is used in agriculture for a bunch of different things. So that must have been what the DEP was talking about. The only catch is the pile of lime is not there anymore. And now there's no real sign of plates or lime. He doesn't seem too worried about us being on his property, but he says he wants to meet us down the road and explain things. We say, okay.

This part almost felt like a movie. You know, when you meet the street. the guy at the spot, that remote place. We're standing in front of our car. He pulls up in his car, which is bigger. It's nice to meet you. I'm Ben. Yeah, Ben, yeah. This is Amory. And this is Josh. Nice to meet you. Yeah. And you've been here, uh, how long? My old way. Wow. Cool. Well, yeah, if you want to get in your car, we can drive right over to where the, that'd be amazing. Sure, we'll follow you. Pond first. I'm buying it. I'm buying it. from Clifford Cross. Yeah. Hookland and sinker. I'm sold. Yeah, but you're also, you like people.

You know? I mean, you are. What's not to like? He shows up in a Cadillac escalate. I know. He's got a very funny. He's got a hunter. He's got a, he's all in, what's that called? He's just all tree Real tree, real tree, real tree camo. Yep. To hat to shorts. Okay, I didn't look to see. I didn't see below his shirt, but.

He can peek into thickers. But he's, uh, but his story seems legit to me because like, if he's wealthy. He's, he's not trying to freaking let somebody illegal dump on his land or illegal dump some plates. That's, that's the, unless he's involved. It is hard not to notice that our beautiful but somewhat scary day in the woods has been transformed by a very menacing storm. As we follow Cliff back onto his land, to the exact spot we were just anxiously traversing,

the sky has gone dark. And then it splits open. Is this it? Yeah, this was where them plates are showing. This one was a pile of. And I don't know how they, I'm not a computer job, but somehow, it's a lot. Somebody. Oh, you think it was a doctor photo?

You think someone doctored the photo? I definitely. Whoa. Definitely. Is like dumping an issue around these parts? Do you know if illegal dumping? We don't have a problem here. Because the landfill is only three miles right over the

landfills right there. Why would I dump plates on my property? Sure. The landfill is only three miles right over there. No place, never has been. Well, we came a long way for it. You came a long way. Not to you.

I'm hoping you knew more than I did. But I would say somebody has doctored that photograph. The DEP guy, parked clear out there and treads through a mile and a half of 12-inch deep, dressed in snow. He earned a bad jet day, okay? Wow. But when he got out here in Shawlitz says that the official from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection was pretty aggressive, but that he couldn't find any plates on his property, so the DEP guy backed off.

Do you remember his name? I have his card down to the house. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I have it. Do you think you could give us his name so we could call him? Now we're trying to find where the place is, you know? If it's not here, we've got to figure it out. Where are they?

Yeah, I don't have a clue. And he couldn't figure it out either. Right. Because he wanted to throw my butt in jail. Well, hey, bring it out. He's got nothing to hide. That's amazing. So our adventure continues to Cliff's house.

Yep, come on in. Don't be scary, though. Okay, this is a foyer of death. Does Cliff Cross have a personal taxidermist the way someone might have a personal chef? I mean, maybe. Are these all yours? Oh, yeah.

Whoa. You know that scene from the second Ace Ventura movie, where the poacher takes Ace into his trophy room? Something wrong, Mr. Venture? Of course not. This is a lovely room of death. Take care now. Bye, bye, then.

Everything from a full-size, massive moose. And several bucks to a jackaloupe. Black bear. Black bear. And turkey with a beard. That is very rare. A buzzard. Emery, how did you feel it?

about traipsing around this guy's property, a guy who appears to be a pretty good shot with half of these animals having the arrow that killed them on the same mounting as the head. You know, I was not psyched to be standing in Cliff's foyer, but I was psyched that he welcomed us into

his home, and he showed us all the images the DEP guy showed him, and we showed Cliff the stuff that we had, and a lot of it was the same. And he gave us the DEP guy's name, after we helped him look through an extensive business card collection to get it. it. Here we go. Keith Rule, Department of Environmental Protection. Solid waste specialist.

Yep, that's it. That's him. So, we bid Cliff farewell. He didn't seem to be our guy. We called the DEP guy, Keith, no answer. Also, we continued to desperately message the person who got us into this mess, Matt, the original poster, who had responded to, a few times, but had gone silent on us for weeks. We did have one glimmer of hope. So remember how Matt had said in the post that he found the plates near a campground? Cliff had mentioned another campground that wasn't too far away. Okay, so hear me out on something right now. You ready? Yeah.

I know that this may be a fool's errand, but we are, we did come all the way here, and we haven't found the plates. Nope. So. So my last. ditch pitch was let's go to the campground that's close by. And this was the beginning of us heading to several campgrounds, some on the way home, some not, all of them full of confused but kind campground managers.

We are trying to solve an internet mystery about a huge pile of plates. Near a campground in Pennsylvania. A pile of plates. Do you see that? I know. I know, isn't it crazy? Did you see this? A pile of plates?

Yeah, like dishware. I don't know what you're looking for, but I know we have never found any kind of plates around here that I know anything else. Well, thank you very much, Debbie. Fair enough. Yeah, thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Oh, the call failed. Bye, Debbie.

Bye, Debbie. This Hail Mary effort was really the first stage of our team going through what I like to call the five stages of plate mountain grief. First stage, denial. James is so great. Yeah. But we don't have the plates. Clearly, stage two is anger.

I know, but, dude. We want plates. I agree. I want plates. You want plates. We all want plates. Listen, if I have to eat every fucking pizza and Pudgy's pizza right now to get to the plates, I'll do it.

Pudgies. A regional pizza chain we've seen a lot of down here, where the dress code may require more than just a rain-soaked undershirt. Where are you going? I'm putting my shirt on. Stage three, my specialty, bargaining. We have one more state park we can hit before it gets dark. Josh is like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, that's all I'm saying.

And we move into plate-based depression, which really set in after false hope from our intern, Maggie, who was trying to help us from a desk back in Boston. I found it, you guys. What? I found it. But she had found the same pile of plates that James had, the one that doesn't exist. Oh, no.

Is it titled Huge Pile of Plates? It is. I knew it too as soon as she said it. Some great moment of false hope. False help. And finally, acceptance. after visiting five campgrounds, we were done. I would just like to say that after this incredibly, incredibly long day,

Google gave me a notification that says, how was huge pile of plates, question mark, your opinion matters, help other visitors. Should we leave a review? Yeah. I think we probably should, right? Yeah. Came for plates, was disappointed.

If anyone... Give them more email address. If anyone has recommendations for a real huge pile of plates, please email endless thread at wbUR.org. You happy with that? Yep, that's about right. I guess the silver lining is that there's like a... Almost a literal silver lining.

I was meant to say. Through the clouds. And it's beautiful. Yeah. Out here. The bird song is legit. We're looking out at the mountains. A lot of a sunny, warm, summer-ish night.

No plates. But we have pie in the trunk. Pie in the trunk right now is good. If only we had a plate to put it on. We were headed back home, dejected, total failures. What were we doing anyway? We drove to the middle of Pennsylvania from Boston because of some internet comments.

Were we idiots? We might have been idiots. But then, when all was lost, just as we were finally leaving Pennsylvania, something happened, something that had been months in the making. Hey, is this Matt? Yes, it is. Matt, a.k.a. the guy who found the plates in the first place and posted the picture on Reddit, the guy we have been trying to get a hold of for three freaking months. Yeah, finally I'm able to talk to you guys. Sorry, Matt, apologize to the long, long week there.

Sorry? Matt, apologize to the listeners because this story isn't over. On the next endless thread, an ending. I have some news. I just talked to Matt for a very long time. Is he just the biggest role? Are you sure you're ready for this? What?

It sounds like you're saying this pile of plates, it does exist, and you know where it exists. I can't confirm word or deny. Oh, no. We scour the final plate-based frontier. We talk to the Department of Environmental Protection. We talk to Matt. We talk to the owners of a mysterious business.

And again, for some reason, we talk to more people on the internet to get their theories, and we solve this thing once and for all. That was amazing. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. wherever you get your podcast. That's why I'm wondering, like, Yeah, hi, can I have, sorry, I want to get some chicken McNuggets. Here we are, in a car, on our way home from a sad fail of a Pennsylvania road trip, where we searched high and low for a mysterious, enigmatic, thoroughly unexplained and unfindable mountain of dishware in the woods.

We asked to like everybody we could find and their mother. Yeah, like dishware. I don't know what you're looking for, but I know we have never found any kind of place around here that I know anything of. And we're now pulled over on the side of the road in the rain because the only guy who knows anything about it has finally, after months of giving us the runaround, called us back. He was also driving around with his girlfriend,

who was also with him when he found the plates a year ago. Matt is from Hubbard, Ohio, near Youngstown. He's not an avid Reddit user, and when he posted this plate mountain photo, he was completely overwhelmed with the online response. Tens of thousands of people. But he's ready to tell us his story, now that things have died down a little.

His story goes like this. Last summer, he and his girlfriend went driving through Ohio into Pennsylvania to hit up a campsite to meet a relative, an aunt who was up from Florida. It was just kind of a spur of the moment thing, which is probably why Matt doesn't even remember the name of this camping area.

And this is what has been the biggest. And this is the beginning of what we and the old journalism business like to call a fishing expedition. Was it near train tracks? Yes, I do. How far from the campsite were the plates would you say about?

I'd probably say, yeah, like 45 minutes. School that was... Okay. We would later learn that pretty much every small town in this part of Pennsylvania has this feature. But Matt was giving us some breadcrumbs, at least. He also mentioned a big old building of some sort, run down. It almost looked like, I don't want to say factory, but like a big place like it was abandoned. Matt promised he'd chase down his girlfriend's aunt

and get the name of that damn campground and that was something. I really, I'm going to give you. No, this is great. I personally, I'd like to know if it's still there, you know what I mean? We're going to find it for you, man. We're going to try to find out. We're going to find it.

Yeah, good luck. We're going to need it. Back to the drawing board, baby. When we got back to Boston, one of the first things we did was reenlist a small army of Redditors to help us. We now had some more specific details, the school, the graveyard, the train tracks, also a kind of loading dock that the Plate Mountain sat on top of and was visible in the photo. And a slightly different general area to search. We had been in

North Central PA. We needed to go further west and maybe south too. We needed map nerds, who we found, with the help from some moderators at the maps, mapmaking, and where is this? communities. And remember in our last episode when I said I used something called the GIS or geographic information system? Well, our post asking for help on the GIS subreddit took off. It said, looking to combine railroads, campground locations, and more data to find a mountain of dishware in the great state of Pennsylvania for a very weird map quest. He. Any ideas? Many ideas. 50 comments later, we had some new theories and locations, some new kinds of maps and data sets to search.

The hunt was on. We even roped in one of WBUR's developers, Will Smith. We knew distance from a location where this person started a trip, which gave me a sort of a search radius to work within. I was told it was in a specific state, so I was able to further limit it to that. Meanwhile, we were getting to the bottom

of one of the most popular theories for the Plate Mountain's existence, with the help of the guy from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. That guy's name is Keith Ruhl. Keith, whose info we got at the House of Cliff Cross, that landowner who didn't shoot us and add us to his taxidermy collection, nice guy, really. Cliff had even let us go through his business card collection.

Here we go. Keith Ruhl, Department of Environmental Protection. Solid Waste Specialist. Yep, that's it. That's him. We called Keith because he was one of our only remaining leads in the Great Plate Quest of 2019. And he might have already gotten to the bottom of this whole mystery while we were all just peering at satellite imagery like a bunch of NSA agents. Well, cool Keith Ruhl called back.

Hi there. I'm Keith Ruhl from Pennsylvania DEP and Williamsport, PA. I am a solid waste specialist. And what is a solid waste specialist? Actually, I call myself a garbage man because I deal in garbage. And a lot of my work is actually citizens' complaints. It's just amazing. Every time the phone rings, it's a new world. But it's all in the world of garbage. And when Keith gets a report about illegal dumping in his jurisdiction, he takes it seriously. So about three months ago, a tip made its way to you about a giant pile of

plates somewhere in the middle of the woods in Pennsylvania. How did that make its way to you? I believe it came in through the DEP website as a complaint saying, hey, you know, this looks like illegal dumping. Now, we think that person may have come from Reddit. And just like us, Keith took that internet commenter's tip and ran with it. So you had the coordinates. You knew who owned the land. Right. Did you just call up the landowner next?

Well, that's not quite as easy as it sounds. Because if the landowner has any stake in actually doing the dumping, calling them on the phone may or may not be the best thing to do. So I thought, well, I'll see what I can find. And I started walking back this unplowed road. And it was a beautiful winter day and quite a long walk to the point where I actually found us the area where these plates might have been, and there was nothing. Oh, Keith, we feel your pain, dog.

We do. We so do. I would like to point out that even though I definitely led us on a wild goose chase to Pennsylvania, my thinking matches Keith's here. You can't call a landowner and say, hey, have you been doing some illegal dumping? Right. But unlike us, Keith wasn't very surprised he didn't find the plates. It's not your typical illegal dump site. The typical illegal dump site is generally on a dark country road over a bank where the public can dump whatever they want and get away in the dark of night without being caught. So what you find in a typical illegal dump site is a little bit of everything. Lots of tires, household garbage, appliances, dead animals, you name it. But a massive pile of one type of material just, doesn't really fit the scenario of a typical illegal dump site.

What about Cliff Cross, typical illegal dumper? And was Keith buying Cliff's pile of lime explanation? Oh, yeah. He didn't really say anything suspicious like he was trying to hide something. He said, yeah, that was a pile of lime. So there was nothing else in Tuyahoga County that would lead me to believe there was ever a big pile of plates there. And if I don't have a specific place to live, look or somebody that says, hey, I saw those things there, it's a needle in a haystack, and you're never going to find it.

Needle in a haystack. Never going to find it. Cliff Cross might have had a whole wall in his house of the animals he had killed. Keith, however, was killing our dreams. He couldn't narrow our search. Even with our whole group of hunters, team endless thread, the developers, a host of Reditors, all scouring the state of Pennsylvania for industrial sites, weird white splotches, we still couldn't find the spot. Our only hope was the original poster, Matt, who seemed to have barely any recollection of where he was when he saw the Plate Mountain. But then, again, at the 11th hour, Matt, how's it going, man?

Matt called me late one night. He said that there was a reason he hadn't been in touch for a few days. No biggie. We could get to that. But first, new questions for Matt, thanks to the Reditors who had been helping in our search. Do you still have the original photo? Yes. This was one of the ideas we had. We could pull the metadata from the original photo.

It's called EXIF, or exchangeable image file format data. And it is attached to any photo you take with your phone. But most social media sites delete that information from the photos that get upload it. So we needed the original picture Matt took to get the location. So we tried that. So click on the picture so it's up. Okay. Now try this. I don't know if this will work for you, but try just swiping up on the picture. Okay. Yeah. It says July 5th, 2018, Thursday, 9.50 a.m. And then it has the JPEG number and like the megapixels and stuff like that. And then it says Samsung SMG-9-5 in my phone and then that's it.

Shit. Ugh, foiled yet again. It was almost like everything that could go wrong with our quest continued to go wrong. So I had to ask Matt the troll question. No, I'm not fucking with you. I'm not messing with it to me. That would be a huge, pointless waste of time. And I'm not a guy like that.

Plus, Matt had some proof he wasn't trolling. More info on. on the location of the plates. He had been trying to get the name of the campground he had gone to with the help of a relative, the aunt, who had been visiting from Florida. And she had had some life changes. From the time that we were there last year, she actually got a divorce from her husband.

Oh, wow. So that was, yeah, so that was the whole big issue because she didn't know exactly. Yes, this was huge. I talked to Matt for a little while longer. and he revealed all sorts of juicy information. I had to tell Amory and our producer Josh. And yes, I was definitely going to string him along for a bit.

We just had a very long conversation. What happened? Are you sure you're ready for this? What? Okay. I have a couple pieces of news. The reason... Why are we taking so long?

Just because I'm really enjoying it. I'm savoring knowing more than you right now. It really feels good. All right, spit it out. First of all, the reason that it took so long for us to get this information is that Matt's girlfriend's aunt... Josh is calling me back. Should I conference them in? Yeah, conference them in. Keep waiting, Emery.

I dislike you so much. Okay. This is a piece of information that was actually already given to us, but we, because we are bad detectives, we kind of, we kind of, we kind of, Kind of glossed over it. Okay. This was 4th of July. Oh, my God. He was totally wasted. He just blacked out that entire day.

Absolutely. So... That makes so much sense. Clearly, he was drinking. Well, that's good. That means the place are real, right? Amory, I have a question for you. Okay.

Do you miss home? We are going to Ohio, baby. Really? He didn't even leave Ohio. He never made it to Pennsylvania. No way. Are you kidding? I am not kidding.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. What is the campground? Where is it? The name of the campground is Austin Lake campground in Ohio. I'm literally running to my computer right now. The good news is I think we're in the zone, dudes. Oh, my God. We've got to find you's freaking plates.

I can taste the plates. I can taste them. Okay, let's practice. When I say O-H, you guys know what to say? I-O. Very good. Now you're ready. Okay.

We were close. Closer, at least. We knew the plates were in Ohio. We just didn't know exactly where in Ohio. But we did finally know which campground we should be starting from. Austin Lake, located in Toronto, Ohio. A little confusing, but we started looking all around there on satellite imagery for big white splotches. We also updated our Australian van-dwelling investigator, James, the Redditor who initially thought he'd found the plates in Pennsylvania, except he hadn't.

James was feeling a little guilty about that. So he continued searching on his own with the new information we had. I kind of went looking for train tracks in the area and then just followed the train tracks. And then he found a school next to a graveyard. And then a little further up, he found a piece of land with big piles of stuff on it and a business called Maryland refractories. Once I found this place, I was pretty certain that was the right place. I was less certain from the satellite imagery.

Maryland refractories looks like a junkyard. There's lots of piles of stuff. A lot of them look like rocks. Yes, some of those piles are white, but they're not isolated by themselves in the woods, as Matt the O.P.'s memory would lead us to believe... Of course, Matt's memory... Fair.

Well, what did make me feel like James was on to something was that he called Maryland refractories, and they told him they have handled ceramics there in the past. Right, and they were like, Listen, Jay Dog. You're calling about Matt, aren't you? No. No, that's the thing.

So, James, we are on opposite sides of the world, and I have not heard back from him as to what he told them, how much information he's given them. So we needed to feel it out ourselves. We needed to call Maryland refractories. You starting? I'm starting. You start.

Hi, is this Maryland refractories? Yes, miss. Hi, my name is Amory Sieverts. Pretty quickly, we were on speakerphone with a guy named Roy and a woman named Janet. And you saw it on what website? Reddick. R-E-D-D-I-T. And I can even... Roy and Janet were clearly intrigued. Also, they said they don't get many visitors. They're on 77 acres of woodland and their location, just outside of a town called Irondale in Ohio, has some special properties. We're located in the Bremuera Triangle of the Google Maps.

You don't say. Different zip codes within five feet. No way. Is that true? Yeah. That's amazing. Wow. So maybe we shouldn't feel too badly about how long we've been looking for this spot? Sure. I mean, whatever we want to tell ourselves. We're really trying to arrive at these plates, like actually go to the plates wherever they may exist.

But why? Do you want to buy them? That's a great question. What, yeah. Basically, this person posted this picture on a website called Reddit, and it became this great mystery of what is this giant pile of dishware doing in the middle of the woods. It looks like it's kind of in the middle of the woods. It is.

But you'll definitely get on an adventure if you try to find it. Oh, wow. Sounds like you're saying this pile of plates, it does exist and you know where it exists. I can't confirm word or none. Oh, no. Nobody disappears if they come to see you, right? I can't confirm we're just going to. Oh, Roy, you're killing me. Roy and Janet, the non-confirmers, non-deniers, put us in touch with someone else at the company who could make the call of what to tell the press. His name is Brad Knock. And after a little bit of phone tag, Brad got in touch. And he had some big news to share with us.

We are the owners of the... You are the owners of the big pile of dishware. Oh, my God. My quest is maybe almost over. I guess the next question for us is, would you all be okay with us coming to visit? I would just encourage you to let us know what day to make sure that somebody's here. The date was set, and we promised we wouldn't return without hard evidence. We got on a plane, landed, rented a truck, just in case, and drove from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through West Virginia to Irondale, Ohio.

It's just dirt. Emery? Emery? It's just bricks. It's just bricks. But it's a pile of bricks. That was very exciting, though. Oh, there's more piles of stuff.

We're coming up on the piles. Yeah. Amory, what is that? What is the white stuff? It's not by itself, though. Oh, but it's up on a thing. It's up on a thing. Yes.

Okay. This is it. Amory, this is it. It's here. It's reflecting in the sunlight. And it's up on a loading dock. It's glorious. Oh my God.

It's huge. We got to it, dude. How do you feel? I'm so happy. Are you happy? It was everything we had dreamed of and more. It was even bigger than it had been when Matt took a picture of it a year ago. The mountain had grown.

It was part of a big industrial site. There were piles of bricks and stone everywhere. There was some big machine with a conveyor belt. There was a massive wooden building that looked like it had been built 100 years ago. There was dust everywhere. Forklifts were moving pallets covered in bags of white powder and a little construction office, where we saw a long-haired orange cat that seemed to run the whole joint, rolling in the sun and the dust, and a couple of dogs that were very happy to see us.

Maybe they would have been happy to see anyone. Oh. Hi. Hi. Jake and Bella. You Roy? Ah, it's Roy. We also met one of the owners of the business, Clark Carlson, and our new buddy, Brad Knock.

Oh, hi. Brad. Very nice to meet you. I'm Amory. Ben. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

You're welcome. Did you see the pile? We saw the pile. We did get the way in. Turns out, one of the favorite theories during our whole quest that this plate mountain was some kind of illegal dump site, the truth is kind of the opposite. We think that Maryland refractories is probably one of the oldest industrial recycling companies in the United States. You were recycling before it was cool? Long before it's cool, and it still isn't all that cool now.

We wish it was cooler than it is. What do you mean? Recycling is something that most companies do when it's convenient, when it doesn't cost them anything. Brad and Clark know their business, and it's pretty science-y, like industrial-sci. At a basic level, they're taking bricks and other materials and reducing them to their most elemental form, literally,

using a big machine called Bertha. So that's where the first crushing here happens. Big Bertha has this long conveyor belt and huge wheels in this big crushing chamber with metal teeth. Those teeth have seen some things. Those teeth have chewed some things. She's a hungry beast. After the material they put through the machine gets broken down further, it gets sold off to specific industries. For instance, Brad says, as the steel industry goes, So goes Maryland refractories.

That's because those big smelters that molten steel gets poured into in the steel plant, those smelters are made of steel, but they're coated with the material that Maryland refractories makes from old bricks. It's kind of fascinating. Okay, buddy, but we weren't there for bricks. We were there for plates. So Brad and Clark walked us over to Plate Mountain. It's actually Plate and Toilet Mountain,

because there's a bunch of toilet parts mixed in there, too. the full circle of digestion. Think of this mountain as where all the misfits, the misprints, and defects go. There are hundreds of thousands of plate and toilet pieces here. And Maryland refractories got this stuff from two companies with a plan to eventually send the whole pile through Big Bertha's gnashing teeth. And since it's all going to get busted up anyway, we really want to break a few plates. Brad and Clark, say go for it.

Yes. Yeah, I guess it's helpful, right? It's almost helpful to make them smaller. All right, Ben. I totally. Go ahead, every. You can do it. I underestimated your toss.

Eventually, Brad and Clark join in, and there's this whole period of time where we're all just chucking plates and cups at the huge pile. This is cathartic and beautiful. And it is actually beautiful. They're like shells or pearls. glinting in the hot June sun.

A gorgeous, cacophonous, seemingly endless splotch. Yes, visible from satellite. But you'd never find it unless you knew where to look. It really is in the Bermuda triangle of Google Maps. And we got here, against all odds. And even though Brad and Clark do not want people coming and pilfering their plates, don't do it, they do want people to know about this part of their business. These plates are being smashed to dust, just like the bricks, in hopes of making a new building material for everything from kitchen counters to a kind of cladding for big buildings.

You can imagine it looking something like marble. But this is a new idea. It is not their bread and butter business. The recycling company you probably never heard about is trying to innovate with plates. And it's not easy to innovate in this kind of business. You know, it's been a tough road. And we talk about it internally. It's a hard industry to get into.

It's a hard industry to get into. Inherently, everybody wants to be green. They just don't want to pay for it. So, you know, we're still plugging away, and we hope maybe with this piece more people can find us. I need new countertops. Me too. So we bid farewell to Brad and Clark.

There was only one thing left to do. We were worried that we were going to come here and have to eat humble pie. But this feels almost more like just desserts. There we go. Victory pie. Victory pie. Victory pie. We brought you a...

Coconut cream pie. The only problem is we didn't bring any plates. If you want a piece, I think we're going to find some plates for it. Well, thank you again. You're welcome. It's our pleasure. But we have to stand near Big Bertha, the crushing machine, one more time. and, of course, the plates, and soak everything in before we get out of the Google Maps-Vermuda triangle.

Part of me wishes that there was a more salacious explanation, you know? Why? I don't know. I guess I'm just like... I know that that makes for like a juicier story, but doesn't this make for a better world? I hope so. Wholesome memory delivers again. I'm not wrong, but truly, neither are you. This is something we have talked about while chasing this story, this pattern of waste.

We've talked about illegal dumping, but we're making piles of rejects all the time. These are just unused dishes. These have never had a job because their logo was printed half an inch too far to the right. That sucks. Yeah. But hey, Mary. Maryland refractories trying to figure out a solution. Cleaning it up.

Clean it up, man. Get big Bertha going. And now I have a new set of plates. I have some plates too. Yes, Clark and Brad told us we could take some souvenirs. And please, if you want one, don't go to their pile. Do us a favor and write us a review on Apple Podcasts. Screenshot that review and email it to us at Endless Thread at WBUR. If you've already written a review for us, just use that one.

We will pick one person at random and send them a beautiful plate straight from the pile. We'll even wash it for you. If you want to find out more about Maryland refractories and their plate upcycling business earthfire surfaces, head to mrcg.com or facebook.com slash earth fire surfaces. Also a huge thanks to Matt, the original plate photo poster. Hope your 4th of July this year was great too. Also, thanks to all the Redditors who had good ideas and posted them on WTF, including our brother from Down Under, Agent 641, aka James.

Thanks to WBUR web developer Dave Moore for his late-night Google map scouring. Thanks to Cliff Cross for not shooting us. Pennsylvania DEP specialist Keith Rule for being cool. And special thanks to Redditors Pianee Chalk, Peltzy, Cepra, and ExB-999, who, by the way, was the first Redditor to suggest we look into Maryland Refractories. We saw their comment after hearing from James, but they did technically beat him to it. Amazing. Amazing.

We have photos of the infamous pile of plates on our website. That is wb-Ur.org slash endless thread. We even recreated Matt's original plates photo to prove that, yes, we actually found it. Please go there, check it out. Endless Thread is a production of WBOR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer who thought learning about Big Bertha was... Aw, educational. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and when we challenged her to find an illegal dump site, she said...

Hold my Cosmo. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, and when I told him we found the giant pile of plates, he just asked if... I took a picture. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit who thinks that mysteries in Ohio make for great. Writing prompts. Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our interns are Magdeaella Mata. Maggie's fine.

And Noah Boston. It's like Austin with a beat. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up there. My co-host and producer is Amory Sebertson. I am senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson.

I'll let myself out.