Message in a bottle dated 1987 is actually a prank: report

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A mysterious message in a bottle that appeared to be from 1987 was actually a prank, according to a recent report. 

Christopher Nolan discovered the bottle in his mother’s canal in Marathon, Florida, earlier this week, local station WBTW reported Wednesday. 

When he looked inside the bottle, Nolan reportedly found this message: "Dear person who finds this I want you to try to return it to me my name is Zack Williams and if I’m dead by the time you try to return the [note] just keep it I put it in the ocean at Myrtle Beach SC."

According to WBTW, the note was dated May 16, 1987. 

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Nolan told the station that he wanted to track down Zack Williams and within just a few hours, he found out the truth.

In a follow-up article, WBTW reported that the note wasn’t actually written by Williams in 1987. Instead, it was written by Williams’ son Noah just last week. 

Similarly, the note wasn’t thrown into the ocean at Myrtle Beach. During the Williams’ family vacation, Noah left the bottle in the same canal where Nolan picked it up a week later.

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According to WBTW, Noah backdated the note so it would seem older and whoever found the bottle would want to track down the owner after all these years. Noah also used his dad’s name since he wasn’t alive in 1987. 

However, Noah’s prank wasn’t discovered immediately. In fact, Noah fooled even his own dad. 

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Williams told WBTW that when he was growing up, he and his family would go to Myrtle Beach and he even remembered writing a message, putting it in a bottle and throwing it out to sea. 

A note that appeared to be from 1987 and sent from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was actually written last week as a prank. (iStock)

"The only thing that was odd to me was that we had just been in the Florida Keys last week, and I was thinking to myself, wouldn’t it have been amazing if I had found the bottle I put in the ocean all those years ago," Williams told WBTW.

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Once he realized the message had been found near where he and his family were staying on vacation, Williams said that’s when he approached Noah, who admitted to writing the note.

"We laughed, because we could not believe what he had done had basically gone viral on the internet and that people were actually looking for us," Williams said. "It’s kind of amazing that a complete stranger that we don’t even know puts a post on Facebook and this things circles all the way back around to us somehow."