When 14-year-old Mason Carter decided to dig a small fire pit in the backyard, he expected to find nothing more than rocks and roots. His family had moved into the house only a year earlier, and the yard looked untouched for decades.
But just a few inches below the surface, his shovel struck something solid.
Thinking it was junk, Mason unearthed a small, mud-covered object. It wasn’t a rock. It was a phone — an older model, scratched and dented, but still intact. The battery appeared swollen, but the screen was strangely undamaged, as if protected from years underground.