Lucky man discovers 160 free bowling balls buried beneath his home

Most secrets uncovered by poking around the home are bizarre, vaguely horrifying things like entire hidden rooms and strange basements. While these discoveries may be frightening enough to dissuade people from searching deep within their living spaces for potential mysteries, one man in Michigan has shown just how well things can turn out by uncovering, to date, 160 bowling balls buried beneath his back steps.

USA Today, recognizing a firecracker of a story when it sees one, has reported on 33-year-old David Olson’s discovery of a real treasure trove during his home renovations. Olson was recently ripping up the steps outside his house when he happened upon “a black sphere buried in the sand behind some cinder blocks.” While not quite as cool as excavating an unearthly item filled with strange alien knowledge, this black sphere turned out to be the first of many, many bowling balls planted beneath his home.

“The deeper I got into it,” Olson says, “the more I realized it was just basically an entire gridwork of [balls] making up the weight in there.” After days spent recreating the magician’s endless handkerchief trick with dirt-covered bowling balls, Olson ended up with 160 of them. He thinks he’s “pretty much cleared out” the section he was digging in, but he believes there are “definitely more” where the first 160 came from.

Apparently these filthy old balls originated from a nearby Brunswick bowling ball plant where, Olson was told by former workers, employees would take defective items “to use as a cheaper alternative to gravel or sand” in building projects.

The ones he dug out are all marked to indicate they’re no good for actually playing with, though inquiring with their manufacturer let him know that they’re not toxic. Because of this Olson plans to use them “as edging for his landscaping or to make sculptures.” He has also given a bunch of them to his stepdad to use “as custom furniture legs” and he donated 8 to “a nearby church to use in a bowling ball cannon at a pig roast” (which we’ve never heard of and now very much want to see in person).

Olson hasn’t said what he might do if he starts work on another side of the house and finds a couple hundred more bowling balls, but we suggest he spread them around his front yard as a security system capable of making any potential giant thieves slip around wildly and fall over.

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