#Man finds girl’s diaries from 1983 in crawl space, manages to find her 37 years later

Dear Diary — you’re not going to believe this.

A man in Toronto has somehow managed to find the owner of a few decades-old diaries he recently discovered in the crawl space of his parents’ home.

Nick Gunz, a naval historian and part-time faculty member at the University of Toronto, first became aware of the diaries earlier this month, after they were found by contractors working on the home, CTV News reported. He later determined they had been written by a girl named Alison Jenkins — an earlier resident of the home — when she was around 9 or 10 years old in 1983.

Gunz, however, knew he wasn’t privy to the contents of the diaries. A message scribbled across the front revealed only that the book was “Alison’s” and warned that its contents were private: “Do not read!”

“Honestly, the intent of the author could not be clearer. This was a 9- to 10-year-old child who wants people to stay out of her writing,” he told CTV News.

Taking to Twitter, Gunz then posted a photo of the diaries with a message for their previous owner.

“Alison Jenkins, we have your top-secret notebook from when you were ten in 1983,” he wrote, adding that he heeded the “dire warning” on the front and only combed the journals for her name and age.

Only days later, Gunz confirmed on Facebook that Alison Jenkins had been located — all the way across Canada, in Vancouver.

“What’s more, she seems every bit as cool and interesting a person as one might hope,” Gunz wrote of Jenkins, who is now a singer/songwriter and music teacher. “We’ll be sending her a package very soon! Thank you, everyone, for your help. You are all wonderful people.”

Gunz has since mailed Jenkins’ old diaries back, though they likely won’t reach her for a few days. When they do, she told CTV News she already has plans for them.

“I sometimes read bits of [my other old diaries] to my boyfriend because they are so over the top and melodramatic,” she said.