FLEMINGSBURG, KY — A ring of fourteen unlabeled keys discovered Tuesday inside a cardboard box labeled “IMPORTANT — CHURCH” in the deacon supply closet of Calvary Community Fellowship has been confirmed by all living members to unlock nothing anyone can identify, according to a statement released by the property committee Wednesday morning.

The keys, which range in style from a large skeleton key estimated to predate the building’s 1972 construction to a pair of modern brass deadbolt keys with no corresponding deadbolt currently installed on any door on the premises, were discovered during a routine closet reorganization that has itself been on the property committee’s agenda since 2021.

Property committee chair Dennis Harwell, 61, said the ring was turned over to him by the previous deacon chair, who received it from the deacon chair before him, with the understanding that the keys were “important and should not be thrown away.”

“I’ve been on this committee eleven years and nobody has ever asked for these keys, but everybody who’s handed them off has been very clear that we should keep them,” Harwell said. “That tells me something important is locked. I just have no idea what.”

The church has launched a sub-committee to attempt to match each key to a corresponding lock. Founding member Ruth Ann Calloway, 84, was consulted and identified one key as possibly belonging to “the old shed,” though she acknowledged the shed was demolished in 1997.

The remaining thirteen keys are currently listed as under active investigation, with a report expected at the May business meeting, pending quorum.

At press time, a fifteenth key had been found loose at the bottom of the box, smaller than the others, and shaped like it might belong to something that mattered very much to someone, a long time ago.