Why Were There 160 Bowling Balls Buried Under This Norton Shores Man’s House?

This is an older story, but still strange nonetheless. If you're a bowler, and you live around the Muskegon area, you might want to check your foundation for a treasure trove of possible new bowling balls. One man in Norton Shores wasn't necessarily LOOKING for the balls, but just wanted to renovate his home.

But while digging around his foundation in 2021, he found a curious discovery - well over 100 bowling balls buried under his home.

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David Olsen was working on a new staircase on the outside of his home in July of 2021. He first had it inspected to figure out why water kept leaking into his home. He was told that it must be the cement pad of the stairs, just off of his sliding glass door, and he should probably break it up, and rebuild it.

So, Olsen got to work demolishing the stairs, and what he found certainly explains why water was getting into his home, but only brought up more questions.

Underneath the slab of concrete, below his stairs, was a bunch of large, round objects buried in the sand and dirt filled into the structure.

"It was full of bowling balls. The Deeper I went down, the more I pulled out."

Olsen had found at least 158 bowling balls buried under his home's foundation, all different colors, weights, sizes, and designs. But there was one clue as to where the balls may have come from. Every ball had deep cuts on them, rendering them useless, AND the name "Brunswick" engraved on them.

In fact, Muskegon used to have a Brunswick Bowling office and manufacturing facility. It opened in 1906 and mostly made billiard balls and tables, bowling pins, lanes, and bowling balls. To this day, there is still a museum in Muskegon that demonstrates the evolution of bowling through the eyes of the Brunswick facility.

"They told me back in the 1950s, they used to make damaged bowling balls available for people to take for free and use as landfill. There's no way to know for certain if that's what the previous homeowner did, but given where the bowling balls were found, it seems logical."

Olson donated a handful of the bowling balls to a local church, and to the Heritage Museum in downtown Muskegon. The rest were either discarded, or used for decorative elements around his home and landscaping.

But it is interesting, if Olson found all of these balls under his home, I wonder how many other homes in the Muskegon area have the same foundation underneath them?