The May Day Mystery – Mysterious Newspaper Advertisements may be Covert Communications

Recently stumbled upon this and find it very intriguing!

Since 1981, a group calling themselves 'The Orphanage', have been placing cryptic advertisements at least every May Day (May 1st), and at other times as well, in the University of Arizona's student newspaper, "The Arizona Daily Wildcat". Apparently no one knows who this group is or why they are placing these ads.

An individual by the name of Bryan Hance, who worked at the college newspaper, has a website where he posts each of the advertisements as well as pictures of items sent to him by 'The Orphanage'. In addition to this, he invites people to speculate on the hidden meaning of each advertisement. The cryptic advertisements seem to be based around the central ideas of religion and government/communism, at least that’s what I am getting so far.

An article in Explorer News provides a nice summary of the May Day Mystery.

I'm still sifting through all the stuff on Mr. Hance's website (there is a lot of stuff there) and have yet to come up with any theories as to who is submitting these advertisements or why. A few theories that I have come across are; it is a group of people preparing for an uprising, perhaps some kind of revolution, and they are using the advertisements as a covert way of communicating; a group of intellectual friends having some fun; a lawyer who's services have supposedly been obtained by The Orphanage for the sole purpose of submitting these advertisements.

From the stuff that I have read so far, I’m leaning towards the possibility that it could very well be some form of covert communication between several individuals or groups as they prepare for ‘something’. But I suppose that it could just be someone having some fun, but I like the first theory better. After all, this is ATS!

Interesting.

I actually know of a few people who do similiar things at college campuses across the country. In fact, at the college newspaper that I write for, we had a very cryptic ad a few issues ago. However, I checked up on it (Editorial powers are awesome) and I was able to figure out it was just some people having fun, trying to get people talking.

They succeeded. When the issue was at the stands, more people talked about the ad than the stories!

Since its a college newspaper, I would suspect its just people having fun. Or at least, I think thats much more probable than a group of people preparing for "something".

My first thought was that it was an ongoing 'game' or 'joke', perhaps being run by a fraternity or perhaps a group of professors. It would have to be something more in depth than just a casual antic for a few laughs, as this has been going on since 1981, more than twenty years.

But the more I read, the more perplexing - and interesting - this 'mystery' becomes.

In addition to posting the contents of the advertisements on his web site, Bryan Hance also posts the contents and pictures of items he receives in the mail from 'The Orphanage'.

Items he has received range from old photos and cryptic messages to solid gold coins and silver dollars. Very interesting. Still haven't been able to form an opinion about this, though.