Human mail is the transportation of a person through the postal system, usually as a stowaway. While rare, there have been some reported cases of people attempting to travel through the mail. More common, at least in popular fiction, is the mailing of a part of a person, often a kidnap victim.
Reg Spiers mailed himself from Heathrow Airport London, to Perth Airport Western Australia in 1964. His 63-hour journey was spent in a box made by fellow British javelin thrower, John McSorley. Spiers spent some time outside his container in the cargo hold of the plane, and suffered from dehydration when he was offloaded onto the tarmac of Bombay Airport. He arrived in Perth undetected and returned home to Adelaide.
Charles McKinley shipped himself from New York City to Dallas, Texas in a box in 2003. He was attempting to visit his parents and wanted to save on the air fare by charging the shipping fees to his former employer. However, he was discovered during the final leg of his journey having successfully travelled by plane.
An inmate serving a seven-year drug conviction sentence in Germany escaped from a prison by climbing into a box in the mail room which was picked up by a courier in 2008.
In August 2012, a man in Chongqing, a city in southern China, decided to ship himself to his girlfriend as a prank. Unfortunately, his prank almost turned deadly when the courier took three hours to deliver the package. Seng had minimal air in the box which was too thick to puncture a hole so that he could breathe. When he arrived at the destination address, his girlfriend found him unconscious and he had to be revived by paramedics.
Mailing children
The mailing of people weighing less than, i.e., children, by Parcel Post in the United States was legal during 1913 and 1914.
In the TV series Malcolm in The Middle, Reese attempts to ship himself to China, but is instead sent on a bogus journey by his brother, Dewey, without leaving the garage.
In the TV series Firefly, in the episode "The Message", a former compatriot of Mal and Zoe mails himself to them so they would protect him from people to whom he owed money.
In the TV series Garfield and Friends, Garfield often attempts to mail his nuisance Nermal to Abu Dhabi, as in the segment "First Class Feline" of Episode 36.
In the Trailer Park Boys episode "Working Man", Cory and Trevor are mailed, along with a large quantity of marijuana to a Snoop Dogg show.
In the movie Hudson Hawk, Bruce Willis' character is rendered unconscious, and wakes up in a packing material-filled shipping cratein another country.
In the American Dad! episode "Of Ice and Men", Steve and his friends accidentally receive Svetlana, a mail order Russian bride, instead of the binoculars they ordered.
In the TV series WonderWorks, the episode Konrad features a factory-made boy shipped in a package, then delivered to his new parents.
In the 1970 Disney animated movieThe Aristocats, the villain attempts to mail his employer's cats to Timbuktu. Edgar ends up being shipped instead.
In The Simpsons episode "Bart on the Road", Bart Simpson's friends return to Springfield stowed away inside a crate, with Bart as the courier.
In The Simpsons episode "In the Name of the Grandfather", Moe ships himself to Ireland to meet Homer and Abe.
In the comic series Knights of the Dinner Table, Brian mails Bob to the warehouse at Hard 8 in the incorrect belief that doing so will gain him covert access to the warehouse without breaking any law.
