Michigan Man Unearths 150+ Bowling Balls Buried Beneath His House

Nothing quite like uncovering a treasure buried beneath your house. Or in the case of one Michigan man, more than 160 treasures of the same thing.

The big prize? How about 160 bowling balls. At least.

The story began when David Olson, 33, was doing some home improvement and demolishing the back steps of his house earlier this month. During this process, he said he discovered a black sphere buried in the dirt behind a pile of cinder blocks.

"That was one of the bowling balls. I didn't think a whole lot of it," Olson told the Detroit Free Press. "I was kind of assuming maybe there were just a couple in there just to fill in. The deeper I got into it, the more I realized it was just basically an entire gridwork of them making up the weight in there."

At first, he unearthed a whopping 158. But he has since discovered two more, per his Facebook page. Heck, the dude has even started a Facebook group so that we can chart his progress.

So, where did the balls come from? Yeah, no one seems to know. Olson's main concern, it seems, was to find out whether they were posed any sort of threat.

"He contacted Brunswick Bowling Products, the maker of the balls and asked whether they could be toxic," the Free Press wrote. "After about a day, Olson received a response. Olson sent in pictures, and after running the serial numbers on the balls, the company determined they were made in the 1950s and verified that they were safe and could be disposed of."

Olson has yet to find any pins, so there are no hopes of strikes or spares. But he is a man with lots of balls, and he didn't do anything but dig a little to find them.

Written by
Sam Amico spent 15 years covering the NBA for Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports and NBA.com, along with a few other spots, and currently runs his own basketball website on the side, FortyEightMinutes.com.