In 2006, an orphanage in London was set for demolition. Upon inspection, a sealed basement was uncovered containing thousands of wooden crates. Inside the crates, items that can only be described as “completely bizarre” were found, such as mysterious diaries and rare specimens.

Today, 10 years later, these items are now known as the Merrylin Cryptid Collection. They are named after the original collector, Thomas Theodore Merrylin, a British aristocrat and naturalist from the 1800s.

Merrylin was said to disappear suddenly, only to re-appear in 1948 – or so they say. A man who claimed to be Thomas Theodore Merrylin donated a sizeable London house to an orphanage under two conditions. One, that the basement was never to be opened and two, that the house may never be sold. That promise was kept until the building was scheduled for demolition.

One of the weird things about this story is that, at the time of the donation, Thomas would have been 160 years old. The donator however, was in his 40s. Some say that the man may have been a relative with the same name but others argue that this could be Thomas himself.

Alex CF, the curator of the items found, certainly seems to think the latter. He says that Thomas’s diary contains advanced information such as quantum physics and theories of multiple universes – ideas that weren’t even invented at that time.

What’s even more interesting is how Merrylin’s diaries seem to establish a scientific basis for some of the mythological specimens in his collections.They say that magic is just science we haven’t understood yet, so could Merrylin have been on to something?

Other items found at the orphanage were skeletons of baby dragons, a Jackalope (mixture of a jack rabbit and an antelope) and tiny remains of mermen.