The Valentine Phantom, often referred to as the Valentine Bandit in media reports, refers to an unidentified individual or group who each Valentine's Day secretly decorate the downtown area of a city in the United States with a series of red hearts printed on sheets of letter-sized paper. The reports began in Portland, Maine in 1985, and the perpetrators remain unknown. Speculation about the individual or group which decorates before dawn each February 14 is popular in conversation, and local media, and over the past ten years has emerged as an example of vernacular culture.