New Steel Furnace Party letters anonymously delivered to Fairmount homes this week

When hundreds of Philadelphians held a party in a vacant lot in Fairmount last year that was inspired by an anonymous letter delivered to their doors extolling the virtues of melting oneself with metal in a giant steel furnace, it seemed Philly couldn’t get any weirder.

And yet, here we are.

The coronavirus has prohibited us from partying together. Period. The streets of our beloved city are empty on I Am Legend-esque levels. And plywood boards cover storefronts and windows like this pandemic is a tsunami, the fallout of which nobody can predict.

But yet, Philly — we persist.

On Wednesday, someone pushed a new, anonymous coronavirus-themed steel furnace letter through the mail slots and under the doors of several residents in the city’s Fairmount section. Like the first letter, this one was also inexplicably titled “ABBA" and ended with the words “Do attend.”

“What is needed is a steel furnace where metal can be melted and the bodies of people and bats mixed with the metal to become steel unable to be hurt,” the letter read, in part. “Of couRse, you’ll be sedated first.”

Given that the letter arrived on April Fools’ Day, and it calls for the next gathering at the lot to be held on August 27, 2019, it is most likely the work of a prankster copycat in need of a proofreader. But even if the missive is an April Fools’ prank, it still serves as a reminder of “simpler times” in Philadelphia, as one Reddit commenter said.

The original Steel Furnace Letter — which detailed how all of the food people have eaten since first grade is still alive in their bodies and that the only way to be saved is to become a “solid steel statue” or to “seal yourself in cement" — arrived at doorsteps in Brewerytown and Fairmount in February 2019.

When several of those who received the letter posted it to Reddit, it quickly went viral, spawning countless memes and its own Reddit channel, which currently has more than 6,000 subscribers.

The letter asked for people to attend a meeting at 27th Street and Girard Avenue at noon on April 27.

And they did.

They came with their beer and their tin foil hats; their hazmat suits and their gas masks; fathers brought their sons and DJs brought their ABBA tunes. For a moment, strangers from across the city came together to celebrate a strange letter, which seemed overly apocalyptic at the time, but almost seems prescient in retrospect today.

A 64-year-old man, Milton Jackson, who claimed he was the author of the letter, even came to the party, along with a friend who said she was the one who distributed the letter on Jackson’s behalf.

A photo of the letter distributed this week was sent to The Inquirer by a 39-year-old Fairmount resident who asked to remain anonymous. She said she didn’t receive the missive herself, but at least three of her neighbors did.

Two other people who said they also received the letter posted photos of it in the Philadelphia and Furnace Party Reddit channels Wednesday.

“Do the oddly placed capitalized letters spell anything? THEY DO — CORONAVIRUS!” one commenter wrote.

“my old roommate got this in their mail today and freaked out texting me genuinely scared. apparently they missed the memo last year,” wrote another.

Someone even suggested holding a furnace party video chat on Zoom this year, since April has been effectively canceled.

One thing is for sure, when the coronavirus self-quarantines are lifted, Philadelphians will, once again, find any reason to party that they can.

And we hope you “Do attend.”