Before a mysterious casket-like object appeared by the light rail tracks in Cockeysville in the spring, it spent time in the home of a Timonium woman.

When Chrissy Diffenderffer’s co-workers spotted a Baltimore Banner story about the strange object, they recognized it at once.

“They said, ‘Chrissy, you had a haunted casket in your house!’” Differderffer recalled with a laugh.

Banner reader Amanda Nelson found the object in late May while walking her dogs along a narrow road that runs parallel to the light rail tracks near the end of Church Lane.

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“I have watched more than enough horror movies to know not to, under any circumstances, lift the lid and peek inside,” Nelson wrote in an email to the newsroom, proposing the creation of a column titled “WTF is this???”

Diffenderffer said she doesn’t know much about the origins of the rectangular wooden box, which is emblazoned with raised symbols — a sun, a pair of keys and crests with five diamonds — and has two large metal rings affixed to each side, like a casket.

Older photos of the details on the wooden object, which Chrissy Diffenderffer picked up from a neighbor before painting it.
Older photos of the details on the wooden object, which Chrissy Diffenderffer picked up from a neighbor before painting it. (Courtesy of Chrissy Diffenderffer)

Nor does she know how the object came to rest along the tracks near Church Lane, not far from the burial sites of the Cockey family and dozens of people they enslaved.

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But Diffenderffer knows this: For 15 months, the unusual item sat in the sunporch of her home near Timonium Elementary.

Diffenderffer picked up the heavy wooden object in June 2023 from a neighbor who was giving it away. At that time, most of the wood was unpainted and dingy with age. Bits of paint clung to the symbols.

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Diffenderffer sanded the object, painted it white and began painting the symbols. But she soon got busy with other endeavors and the chest sat on her sunporch until last September.

That’s when Diffenderffer posted the object on the same neighborhood Facebook group from which she had gotten it. She put it in her front yard, and within three hours it had disappeared.

Diffenderffer doesn’t know who picked it up. Nor does she recall who was giving it away in the first place; the original post has been deleted, she said.

She also doesn’t think the mysterious object is spooky.

Despite the four metal rings, the object never resembled a casket to her. “It was listed as a toy chest,” she said.