BELTON, Texas — Finding a message in a bottle is like finding a needle in a haystack, but one man has discovered over a hundred bottles, tracking down 40 of its senders around the globe. He is now on the hunt for a message in a bottle in Central Texas.
Priscilla Caldwell first shared the story on Facebook. Her aunt originally found the bottle back in 2018 at Lake Belton.
12-year-old Dora Taylor sent the bottle and lived in Temple at the time. Because of the bottle's style and manufacture, it was sent between 1994 and 2005. The message reads:
"Hello! How are you? I'm Dora Taylor and I'm 12 years old. Every time I come to the lake I love to write letters and send them through the lake. I live in Temple, Texas. I used to pretend I was a princess but I decided to be for real. Well, I'm a black female. I have short hair. I like reading and I hate science. Well, my science teacher is a dodo. Wherever this letter goes I would like to say: God bless you and let him be with you at all times. I hope you get to read the poem footprints. I love sweets also. Maybe you can send letters through the water too. Maybe I'll find one or two of your letters."
There's more on the back:
"Here's a blue bonnet for good luck. Bye."
The search was then passed onto Clint Buffington, who runs the website Message in a Bottle Hunter.
"Someone knows Dora Taylor from Temple, and it's just a matter of getting this story in front of the right person," Buffington said.
He has been successful discovering multiple messages in bottles across the world.
"The thing about messages and bottles is it they seem impossible to solve until until you solve them, and then it just happens," Buffington said.
He is ready to reunite the bottle back with Dora because he knew the bottle was special compared to other ones.
"A lot of times it'll just be like name, date, phone number, whatever," Buffington said. "This one is like so imaginative and funny and sweet and kind of sassy. I love it and I just I would love to find this person and just give them back that that 12-year old-version of themselves."
Buffington found his first bottle in 2007.
"I saw this bright blue bottle, and my brother wasn't with me, but blue is his favorite color," Buffington said. "I walk up on it and it was just like boom, like lightning striking. I can just see clear as day this orange rolled up scroll of paper inside of it and two $1 bills wrapped around it."
Ever since then, he couldn't stop searching for them in hopes of connecting them back with the sender.
"Number one, messages and bottles are real, and I can find them," Buffington said. "Number two, I can actually find the people on the other end and that was it, like after that I was just hooked."
Sometimes messages in a bottle are hard to solve because of the lack of information or fading as the years go on. However, he never stops searching because the feeling is so fulfilling.
"I always say it's as close to magic as you can get," Buffington said.