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A cardboard box set out from upstate New York on September 26 with one destination printed on the label: Ireland. Within days, its tracking page read like the passport of a very lost traveler. Kevin Bacon, 68, had packed it with boots, jeans and hats he has kept for roughly three decades, planning to wear them while shooting a horror film overseas. Instead of unpacking, he spent weeks watching a dot move across a map in all the wrong directions.
Bacon is in Ireland this fall to film Summoner, a horror movie directed by Jeremy Slater, and he skipped the heavy luggage. His solution was mailing a box of favorite pieces to his temporary home and letting a delivery company handle the logistics. By his own admission, he rarely buys clothes, and many of these items date to the 1990s. Nothing about the plan seemed risky, and the first scan looked completely normal.
The box traveled first to Memphis, Tennessee, home to FedEx’s main global hub, where many overseas parcels get sorted. France came next, followed by Germany on September 28, according to Bacon’s own recap. Nothing looked alarming so far, since Europe is a believable region for a parcel bound for Ireland to pass through. Then the scan for September 29 loaded, and the country listed on it sat far outside that region.
The Tracking Page Lists Israel Three Separate Times, More Than 2,000 Miles From Ireland
On September 29, the shipment was routed to Israel, more than 2,000 miles from the Irish address on the label. Bacon stressed the detail in his video, repeating the country’s name to make sure viewers caught the mix-up. Wrong turns do happen in international shipping, and a package can usually recover from one. A single stray scan can be corrected, so Bacon waited to see whether the system would correct this one.
The correction never came. On October 3, the box moved from Israel to France. By October 4 it was back in Israel, and on October 5 it reached Germany. October 6 sent it to Israel once more, giving the parcel three separate visits to a country nobody had asked it to see. Bacon read each date aloud like a man narrating a bad travel documentary, and after October 6 his log goes quiet for four days.
The next entry, dated October 10, placed the box in France again. On October 11 it landed in England, and Bacon joked that the parcel was now “pretty close.” Only the Irish Sea separated the box from the actor who had been waiting since late September. After more than two weeks of detours, the final stretch looked short, and Bacon had little reason to expect another problem.
Box Sits Idle in Ireland for Five Days While Bacon Is Told It Cannot Be Delivered
The box did reach Ireland. Then it stopped. By the time Bacon recorded his video on Friday, October 16, it had been idle there for five days, and the shipping service was telling him it could not be delivered. No clear reason came with that message. After passing through at least six countries in under three weeks, the parcel was in the right one at last, and nobody could say what was keeping it from his door.
Bacon tried the obvious route first and called the company. He said he could not reach a live person and had spoken with nobody about the problem. With few options left, he filmed a clip for Instagram, captioned it with a question about where his clothes had gone, and asked viewers to weigh in. He added that the weather in Ireland was turning colder. He chose not to say the company’s name out loud, but he left a hint.
The hint was a rhyme: the company, Bacon said, sounds like “Bread Ex.” Viewers needed no further help. Comments filled in quickly, and actor Justin Long teased that the box should have been sent to Israel deliberately, since Bacon would be dressed in full 1990s grunge by now, according to The Independent. The clip gathered enough attention that the shipping giant could no longer stay silent.
FedEx Admits Delivery “Should Have Happened Sooner,” and Bacon Finally Opens the Box
FedEx responded with an apology. In a statement reported by the Tribune, the company said it was in direct contact with Bacon’s team and that the delivery “should have happened sooner.” FedEx added that it was reviewing what went wrong. The statement set no date for arrival, and the actor’s followers kept checking his page for a sign that the apology had turned into something real.
On Monday, October 19, the news Bacon had been waiting for came through: the box had been delivered. He posted a follow-up video, calling the arrival miraculous and thanking fans, along with strangers in Ireland who had asked him about it on the street, on the train and in a sauna. Then he opened the lid and began pulling items out one by one.
Out came sweaters, hats, belts, boots, jeans, a Philadelphia Eagles cap and a swimsuit, according to Hello!, with some pieces dating to the 1990s. The box had crossed six countries and three continents in just over three weeks. The detour cost the shipper a public apology and gave an actor with a long career one more story that people will happily repeat back to him.