14 DAY TRIAL // Here is a piece of news that will surely help you feel way better about yourself the next time you misplace your car keys, your phone or other objects that can easily fit in the darkest of places where nobody would even dream go look for them.
Long story short, folks with nonprofit organization Preservation Worcester are now desperate to find as many as 8 gargoyles that were removed from the tower of a church in Massachusetts, US, back in 2006, and that appear to have disappeared without a trace.
The massive and fairly scary gargoyles, one of which is pictured next to this article, tip the scale at about 1.5 tons each, WHDH informs. Hence, it really is a mystery how it happened that they all vanished as if by magic.
The gargoyles' history
As mentioned, the statues adorned the tower of a church up until 2006. More precisely, they used to be part and parcel of the anatomy of Massachusetts' 119-year-old Liberty Church building, which is a one-fifth replica of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral. Or at least it used to be until it lost its gargoyles.
It is understood that the massive statues were taken down for safety reasons during a renovation project. They were stored in a basement, and Preservation Worcester assumed the responsibility to check up of them annually.
The problem is that, this year, the nonprofit organization failed to find the gargoyles napping in the church's basement. On the contrary, there was no trace of the statues, and nobody appeared to have the slightest idea about their whereabouts.
“When Preservation Worcester did its annual review this year, it asked to see the gargoyles that were supposed to be in the basement,” the nonprofit organization explained in a statement. “But they were nowhere to be found,” Preservation Worcester added.
One possible explanation
In 2006, the massive statues were removed from the tower they used to adorn by a constructions company that is now bankrupt and whose assets were sold at an auction not very long ago. It could be that the gargoyles were among the items sold at this auction. Still, this is yet to be confirmed.
If this is indeed that happened to the gargoyles, this means that the church that was supposed to keep them in its basement is guilty of failing to take care of them, and might be held accountable for its actions in front of a court of law.
Commenting on the importance to find these statues and put them back in their rightful place, Andrew Shveda with the Worcester Historical Commission said, “We should as much as we possibly can to facilitate finding these gargoyles. We would like to see the gargoyles returned on the building, if possible, or at the very least returned to their rightful owner.”