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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Mr. Kaor’s Letters (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We visit a quaint Dutch fishing village and attempt to unravel the mystery that unfolded there… a mystery that involved strange and curious letters and a voyage to the other side of the world. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mr-kaors-portrait

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You'll find Hotel Sponder on the eastern coast of the Netherlands in this historic fishing village called Wollendam.

0:08.7

Volendam is a picturesque place. It is a quintessentially Dutch town. Think windmills and wooden shoes and cheese shops.

0:18.6

The town has become a huge tourist draw for all of this.

0:22.6

But before the bus tours and the cruise ships, Volandam attracted a different kind of community,

0:29.0

a community of artists and writers and painters. And Hotel Sponder was at the center of it all.

0:36.5

The owners covered it with paintings and portraits from the

0:39.7

19th and 20th century. Artists passing through would even exchange a room for an original

0:46.0

painting. For many, many years, this hotel has attracted strange, curious, creative types.

0:56.8

So maybe it's that attraction that explains the mystery at the heart of the hotel.

1:03.9

Maybe that's what explains the letters.

1:07.6

Because for decades now, the hotel sponder has received thousands of handwritten letters,

1:15.1

but every single one of these letters is sent from the same sender.

1:20.5

And every single one of these letters has the exact same message.

1:27.0

This is, how are you and how is the weather?

1:29.7

Thank you very much for sending me the information the other day.

1:34.1

Please give my best regards to all members.

1:36.9

Yours faithfully, Mr. Cower.

1:40.2

Only that message, nothing else.

1:44.5

I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

1:51.9

We're going to talk to a former hotel manager who cracked the mystery behind these strange and curious letters.

2:00.2

And as this story unfolds,

2:01.8

it will take this hotel manager on a journey

...

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