Baltimore (USA) - Dan Bell (48) is a filmmaker and director with a social media following of around 250,000 people. The US-American celebrated his biggest "film success" to date at the end of last year.

With a clip that ends after one minute and three seconds with the opening of a freezer.

Bell's mother put something back there that has been guarded like the Holy Grail since November 11, 1987, sometimes more, sometimes less.

As the 48-year-old recalled in an interview with People, he was still a schoolchild at the time. A storm swept over his home near Baltimore in the US state of Maryland. "It was still fall and we had some kind of crazy storm that left us all stuck in elementary school," Bell said.

It was also snowing heavily - unusual at that time in that place. So the then ten-year-old decided to keep a souvenir. Bell formed a snowball with his own hands, put it in a cup, covered it with aluminum foil and placed it in his parents' freezer. The snowball "lives" there to this day!

Over the years, Bell had not always thought about the memento from the fall of 1987, but one day the ball popped into his head again.

His mother had not been able to give a concrete answer to the question of whether the snowball still existed. So Bell - 37 years after he had formed the ball - looked in the freezer himself and discovered it somewhat hidden at the bottom of the freezer.

"I thought, 'Oh my God!' It was like meeting an old friend again," said the 48-year-old. Bell shared the joy of his find on Instagram and TikTok . There, the snowball clip became a viral hit and was viewed millions of times.

Looking back, it is hard for the American to believe that the ball has survived to this day, but the local shopping center, which opened in the same year, has long since closed again.