Police Save Blind Woman’s Invisible Writing

Police Save Blind Woman’s Invisible Writing


Trish Vickers is a woman who went blind seven years ago because of diabetes. Instead of complaining, she’s been writing a book. Recently, however, she lost 26 pages of her novel because she didn’t realise the pen she was using had run out of ink.

When Vickers’s son came over to read the pages she had written, he noticed that there was nothing on the paper but some indentation of words. Vickers had been writing with a pen that had no ink for 26 pages! Not knowing what to do, they came up with a clever idea to contact the police department’s fingerprint division. The police department was more than happy to help, spending as much spare time over the next five months to try and crack the code of the invisible words. Amazingly, they managed to figure it out, giving back Vickers her 26 pages with the words she originally wrote. Vickers said:

“I think they used a combination of various lights at different angles to see if they could get the impression made by my pen. I am so happy, pleased and grateful. It was really nice of them and I want to thank them for helping me out.”

Vickers’ writing system is pretty smart, she uses a series of horizontal elastic bands to line up a piece of paper to keep her lines straight. Her son comes over once a week to read them and a volunteer helps her type them into a computer. Hopefully, she keeps on writing. [BridportNews via Arbroath]


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