Police in Boston and Cambridge responded Saturday to reports of at least three objects found with notes attached that read “Open Me,” according to officials from both departments.
In Boston, items were found at the Charlestown Navy Yard and the downtown intersection of Beacon and Tremont streets, Officer Kim Tavares, a police spokeswoman, said in a brief phone interview.
In Cambridge, a small tin can with a note reading “Open Me” was found at the intersection of John F. Kennedy Street and Memorial Drive, said Jeremy Warnick, a Cambridge police spokesman. No other objects had been reported in Cambridge by late afternoon.
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Warnick said the can contained $50 and “a message of positivity and good fortune.”
Cambridge police believe it could have been a simple act of anonymous kindness or a marketing campaign, but Warnick cautioned that anyone finding a suspicious object should contact police.
“We don’t believe it’s something serious, but we want to make sure people are taking the proper precautions and notifying us in the event that they see these elsewhere,” he said.
In Boston, police are investigating whether the objects downtown and in Charlestown “were placed with malicious intent,” the department said. Boston police encouraged anyone who finds similar objects or has information about the already-discovered items to call 911.
The mysterious packages sparked a discussion on social media.
“Today fortune strikes. You’ve found yourself lucky enough to come across this box. You can keep the box and the treasure it holds,” according to a Reddit post written by the boyfriend of a Boston resident who stumbled upon one of the tin cans in Cambridge.
Amy Brown said she found one of the small tin cans on a bench Friday, while walking her dog, Bronson, in John F. Kennedy Memorial Park in Cambridge.
The container said “Open Me,” so Brown did.
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Brown, 32, said she was “shocked” and thought it might be “some sort of hoax or Candid Camera-type thing.”
Nothing happened, though, so Brown kept the money and the can, which she said looked similar to a graphing calculator and had a logo of a globe on one side. If it’s part a marketing strategy, it’s not a very good one, Brown said, because she doesn’t know who’s behind it.
“But I guess I’m on board ‘cause I got $50,” she said.
Other people responded to her boyfriend’s Reddit post, Brown said, claiming they’d recently found similar cans in Germany and New Zealand.
“Currently we’re going on the assumption that there is a deranged millionaire lurking [in] Allston, but I’m open to alternative theories,” Brown’s boyfriend wrote in the Reddit post.
Though police investigated the objects found Saturday, Brown said she wasn’t worried the box was placed with ill intent or was some sort of explosive.
“I didn’t think someone was trying to blow up me, 28 geese, my dog, and two people next to me,” she said.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox. Kellen Browning can be reached at kellen.browning@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Kellen_Browning.