Years of handwritten notes from visitors have found a permanent home in a Wilmington archive.
Sunset Beach, NC –– Thousands of messages have been written, tucked into notebooks and left behind at the Kindred Spirit Mailbox on Bird Island, creating one of Brunswick County’s most recognizable coastal traditions.
Visitors make the walk across the undeveloped shoreline near Sunset Beach for many reasons.
Some leave notes to loved ones. Others share memories, prayers, words of encouragement or private thoughts they simply want to put on paper. What many people do not realize is that those writings are not lost when the notebooks are eventually removed from the mailbox.
Instead, the filled notebooks are preserved as part of the Kindred Spirit Notebooks Collection at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History. The collection gives the public an opportunity to explore years of messages left by visitors from across the country, providing a unique record of personal reflections and shared experiences connected to the remote beach destination.
While the notebooks cannot be checked out, members of the public may view them in the Center’s reading room. Visitors are encouraged to contact the archive before making a trip to ensure requested materials are available.
Those wishing to access the collection should ask for the Kindred Spirit Notebooks, Collection SC-MS-333. The archive includes notebooks dating primarily from 2012 through 2025, along with cards, photographs, loose pages, sealed letters and other items discovered inside the mailbox.
Visitors should be aware that photography and reproduction of materials from the collection are prohibited. Copyright remains with the individuals who created the entries or their descendants.
The Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History is located at 5162 Randall Drive in Wilmington and is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Visitors must present a valid photo ID and complete a registration form before accessing archival materials.
For many people, the Kindred Spirit Mailbox is a place to leave a message. For others, the archive offers a chance to look back through years of hopes, memories, celebrations and reflections left behind by strangers who shared a moment on the same stretch of Brunswick County shoreline.
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