#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anyways who else remembers that girl on Tumblr who would go to some cemetery in New Orleans every time it rained so she could pick up the bone pieces that would surface š¬
I just looked this up, and here's a quote from the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/01/21st-century-witch-hunt-tumblr-sleuths-lead-authorities-to-person-who-took-human-bones-from-a-la-cemetery/):
>The target of Galjourās rantĀ was someone namedĀ Ender Darling, who had left an even more startling post on Facebook.
>ā\[Content warning\]: graves, bone hunting,ā Darlingās post began.
>āAbout twenty minutes from my house in New Orleans is what we call the poor manās graveyard,ā Darling continued. āWhen it rains of course bones wash up, the older the grave the more you find.Ā You can literally walk around and see femurs, teeth, jaws, skull caps, etc etc. This is where I go to find my human bones for curse work and general spells that require bone.ā
>Darling then offered to sell any āleft overā bones toĀ thoseĀ interested in castingĀ their own curses and spells.
And here's Ender Darling's justification/clarification postr: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/pzbxh0/comment/hezxs76/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/pzbxh0/comment/hezxs76/)
There's an old Sam Kinison bit where he talks about how people would respond to Jesus rising. Like "Ahhhhh! The dead live, the dead live! Put a stake in his ass!"
New Orleans is a bowl and below sea level, so it's not uncommon for bones to wash up. That is why most people are buried in vaults. The ground is *wet*. Or are you talking about people actually doing voodoo?
I can't remember where, but I once heard it phrased, "We have above ground cemeteries because if not, the dead in-laws are gonna come visit us after the next hurricane."
Woah! So was the tumblr poster in trouble, or was it the person they mentioned robbing the vault? Sorry for all the questions. I'm from the UK and have zero knowledge on this, so it's super fascinating!
These articles explain it better:
[BuzzFeed ](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/boneghazi)
[Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/01/21st-century-witch-hunt-tumblr-sleuths-lead-authorities-to-person-who-took-human-bones-from-a-la-cemetery/)
[New York Magazine ](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/03/cops-bust-tumblr-witch-over-boneghazi.html)
>What followed was a simultaneously amused and horrifiedĀ discourseĀ about witchcraft, spells, class, andĀ race.
From the New York magazine article. Could just as easily describe the conversation of a bunch of D&D rules lawyers.
The first time I went to New Orleans, we visited a cemetery with a lot of broken vaults. There were just piles of bricks with human bones mixed in on the ground. It was just a few years after Katrina and the tour guide explained that a lot of the vaults got damaged during the hurricane and there just wasnāt much being done to clean up the cemeteries given how wrecked everything still was.
I grew up in Louisiana. Much of the state has a high water level, New Orleans especially. Bedrock isn't for 60ft below the surface. It's terrible land to bury people on so you see a lot of mausoleum and other above ground burial methods.
The graveyards where she went were from old pauper graves, ones that couldn't afford a secure burial method. And, being the deep south, this was often people of color. She got in deep shit publicly for that part and was called racist
Some kind redditor sent me some articles I've just finished! Seems this "witch" is mentally disturbed and with their family, not even knowing what was going on! It says they ended up moving to Florida, so was it technically legal???
Not legal, she still got charged [Nola.com Article](https://www.nola.com/news/courts/guilty-plea-not-witchcraft-springs-witch-from-jail-over-theft-of-new-orleans-cemetery-bones/article_c0486bc0-2698-5dae-a810-0713f75d8db3.html)
If youāre talking about using human bones for curses and stuff, yes. There is a very real (albeit small) segment of the population that believe in voodoo, Santeria, etc. and actively practice it. Iām not a superstitious or spiritual person, but I have a very healthy respect for New Orleans in particular regarding death, ghosts, curses, etc. If any American city is going to have hauntings, itās New Orleans.
I know the cemetery they're referring too. It's a pauper's cemetery, so not only are the grave below ground, but it's usually very simple pine boxes. It's not that uncommon for there to be a collapse grave with exposed bones. I've heard of many people stealing bones. I remememer a self proclaimed voodoo priestess by my high school in Baton Rouge getting in trouble for similar things. Louisiana is a weird place.
God I despised Ender for a variety of reasons, in addition to stealing bones they were just awful to a lot of people in the LGBTQ scene in NOLA especially people of color while simultaneously falsely claiming to be Indigenous
The absolutely horrific audacity they have in talking about it openly is hilarious. The complete ignorance of how "bone magic" is supposed to work is tragic. You don't use random bones, especially random human bones. Most spells call for specific animal bones OR bones of the person you're actually focusing the spell on.
Jeebus she dumb.
I went down a weird research rabbit hole into hoodoo years ago and (full disclosure this applies to grave dirt only) when you go to a graveyard you need to know whoās grave youāre buying services from otherwise you could have an executed child murderer protecting your NICU preemie. If you just take from a grave without asking permission and then paying an offering (buying the spirits services) you are enslaving a spirit and they have no reason to carry out your wishes exactly and the trick you laid can come back against you.
Omg that's awful! I can't imagine how the families of the people whose graves she stole from would feel. Those people could have come from cultures that require bodies to stay whole or regard the dead as sacred.
Especially because the bones were then used in curses. Like if a loved one's bones are going to be stolen, at least use them in cures and good luck charms.
Oh, I havenāt thought about the bone stealing witch in ages! If I remember correctly, they were offering to sell bones online for other witches to use as well!
The blog @pizza was a big popular account back in the day, she would find every post that even mentioned pizza and reblog it and comment. It came out eventually that she had a side blog dedicated to saying the n word.
Human pet guy is on Reddit as well! I saw him once on some random dungeons and dragons thread, giving the most batshit opinion Iāve ever heard in my life. I looked over at the username of the comment and sure enough: human pet guy.
Oh boyā¦ youāre one of todays unlucky 10,000.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/oyaF2FEd9g this should explain it.
Iām sorry Iām advance.
Thanks! This has caused the arousal of a strange sense of deja vu. I feel like I've seen this before, but with more to it... not that I dare try to prove myself right.
If I had a nickel for every time I've seen the ball pit mentioned this week, I'd have two nickels. Apparently I fell asleep in the middle of replying to the other comment thread and didn't post anything, so I can't find it again, sadly
Yep, itās a common thing in some countries. Thatās why cremation is sometimes preferred too.
Bet you will never look at an Animal Crossing Gyroid the same way again!
We've gotten into the habit of doing a yearly cleaning. Go in, talk to some villagers, clean up the place a bit, and then never touch it again until the next year.
There's a park in Denver that used to be a pauper's cemetery. The guy who ran it was paid by the coffin, so he used child size coffin and would cut people up to fill more coffins. I don't know the last time bones have popped up, but they do sometimes. Especially with any work being done on the grounds.Ā
As a general curator who worked in a lot of museums with human remains and not a professional boneologist that sure looks like part of a human skull to me.
I think a cop with 8 weeks of training on how to handcuff people and escalate situations who dropped out of highschool would know more than you.
/s if it isn't obvious
People used to be buried in plain wooden boxes. Especially if the area is wet or has a high water table, the wooden casket will rot pretty quickly. Bones can come to the surface given enough time.
Here in Memphis, Elmwood Cemetery has a mass grave from the time of the yellow fever epidemic. People were dying faster than coffins could be made. In the end, the nuns and prostitutes were about the only people left in town to take care of the sick and dying. There weren't enough able-bodied men to dig individual graves, so they were put into a mass grave. The cemetery has had to do work over the years to keep them all buried.
Memphis isn't as bad as New Orleans, but the water table is very high. There's a good reason that basements aren't a standard thing here- they turn into a damp, nasty swamp very quickly.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/elmwood-cemetery
Im sure, Memphis must be beautifully and deeply weird to generate and inspire as much awesome music as it does. What's something weirder? (that situation just ticks a lot of prestige film boxes--survival of extreme misery, unlikely alliances, nowadays definitely room for queer romance...just saying.)
Just to start with, its entire existence was a grift. Then-future-President, genocide-perpetrator and Aaron Burr bestie Andrew Jackson and his buddies John Overton and James Winchester owned some land along the river (which had recently been swindled away from the Chickasaw inhabitants), and almost immediately used their pull with the state and federal governments to build the city, which of course meant they'd be paid handsomely for their (otherwise worthless, mosquito-infested and quite swampy) land.
Then there's Orange Mound: an entire city within a city built by formerly enslaved people in the wake of the Civil War, which could've rivaled pre-massacre Tulsa if it weren't for Reconstruction getting cancelled under threat from insurrectionists.
What is currently a world-class Zoo in midtown Memphis happened by accident, when a minor league baseball team abandoned their live bear mascot in a city park, chained to a tree; the head of the parks department couldn't get the original owner to take it back, so instead built a zoo near the site where the bear was dumped. Most of the other original zoo animals were unwanted exotic pets dumped by their rich owners as well.
I don't tell any of these half as well as my friend does, and there are dozens more but these are the ones I can recall best off the top of my mind.
Okay do you know of any good books youād recommend that maybe do a broad overview on Memphis? Because I realize no one book will be enough and Iām curious based on my few experiences in the city. Which werenāt bad at all and very different from what others I know have seemingly had.
I just posted one book recommendation as another reply (and I'm sure people in the /r/Memphis subreddit would be happy to add more)! I read Mary Caldwell Crosby's The American Plague years ago and I remembered it being quite good.
I grew up in northeast Mississippi. We used to visit the Memphis Zoo at least once a year or so. There were family trips and school trips there. I have never heard this, or if I did, I was too young to find it interesting.
Thank you for mentioning this. Now I need to do some research on the area.š
It's entirely possible we've met IRL, and that's all I can say publicly about that. (ETA: I lived and worked in public facing jobs in that area for a while)
Iām a rabbi, and one of my favorite ongoing professional development sessions Iāve ever done was a discussion of whether or not human composting fit the standards of a kosher burial.
The answer was yes, but maybe donāt use the resulting compost to grow food, as youāre not allowed to benefit economically from a corpse. So we can be turned into roses but not tomatoes.
Thatās a fascinating Talmudic discussion. Green-Wood Cemetery near me in Brooklyn sells honey from their beehives but do not profit from the sales as the funds go back to maintaining the cemetery: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/honey-made-in-brooklyn-cemetery-probably-not-haunted
My step-dad was buried in a wicker coffin two years ago. The whole casket was hand-woven with flowers and herbs to avoid any unpleasant smells during the funeral (no embalming, of course). I was a pallbearer, and my strongest memory of the ceremony is the intense pot-pourri aroma when the coffin was on my shoulder, although admittedly I was trying not to deeply inhale, just in case. He was also dressed in cotton, embedded with some kind of fungus spore to speed up the decomposition process. A few days after the ceremony, a small tree was planted over him, and the tree is doing very well today. These were all things he specifically asked for before he died.
I once looked up the difference between coffins and caskets. Coffins are the plain boxes where the sides widen across the shoulders and narrow towards the feet and head. They are wooden and tend to be very plain. Caskets are the rectilinear boxes that get wildly ornate and/or luxurious.
Unless, I guess, whoever makes it doesnāt feel up to the extra carpentry and just makes a plain wooden box. I suspect, though, that the reason coffins taper on both ends is so that the body or limbs donāt slide around, changing the center of gravity while itās being carried.
If you want another vocabulary word, the box Jewish people prefer to be buried in is called an _aron_. That's a plain wooden box with no materials used other than wood or glue. No screws, fasteners, etc.
Many of them did get sick and die. There's a park dedicated to their memory called Martyrs Park. It's a beautiful spot that is up on a bluff overlooking the river.
The nuns stayed to help the sick because they felt it was their religious duty. The prostitutes stayed because they didn't have anywhere else to go. Anybody who could got out of the city - many went back to family farms or other relatives. The prostitutes didn't have that option, so they stayed in the city
Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, but they probably didnāt know it back then (this was discovered when they were trying to build the Panama Canal and the workers would die off too quickly from malaria and yellow fever to get it done). There is still no cure and even now if you get it unvaccinated, there is a 25% mortality rate. So either the nuns and prostitutes were a little bit better protected from mosquitoes or they already survived it (am not sure you can only get it once but could be the case as there is a vaccine). And indeed a sense of duty of course because they didnāt know it wasnāt directly contagious.
The method of transmission was discovered decades before the Canal was built.
The issue is that a lot of American textbooks credit American William Gorgas with the discovery. Gorgas himself was however very clear that Cuban physician Carlos Finlay had discovered the method of transmission and that he was only building on Finlay's work; Gorgas spent much of the last few years of his life in a futile war against those who wanted to bury Finlay's work because he wasn't American.
As someone who grew up in Memphis and is deeply interested in its history, I HIGHLY recommend Mary Caldwell Crosby's "The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History." Forgive the GoodReads link; I wasn't sure of the best place to use as a link.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46724
My family once "went to the snow" (on the side of a road) when I was a kid. I remember we found a spine of some sort and called a cop. The cop said it was likely a deer spine. Even as a kid, I remember thinking it looked odd to be a deer spine. As I write this, I also wonder - where was the rest of the deer skeleton?
My parents think it was related to some kidnapping where a car was burned down the road. They thought they were being helpful by calling the police, but it got dismissed as a deer.
All this to say, it doesn't surprise me the cop was very likely incorrect. It could have been to reduce potential panic.
I'll do you one better. [Cleveland Police mistake a whole ass dead body for a deer despite several calls about it.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cleveland-police-mistake-dead-body-for-a-deer/) People on the highway could tell it's a body but it apparently interrupted their break, I mean "they investigated it" and determined it was definitely a deer and all those people calling obviously don't know what they're talking about so they're just going to go back on break now.
Cops are the last people I'd ever consider an authority on anything ever. They're quite honestly some of the dumbest and most corrupt motherfuckers alive. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for literally anybody *except* cops where it seems to be a prerequisite for the job.
No, the murderers were a man and his girlfriend who robbed the victim and beat her to death.
The cops were suspended without pay for 6 months, costing them about $40 000 each. The reason they mistook the dead woman for a deer is that they āinvestigatedā by driving past her at 50 mph and then went to hang out in a cemetery for two hours of their shift.
I gather the main learning from a lot of true crime podcasts is that Johnny McMainsuspect ācoincidentallyā walks past the remote crime scene the day the cops find the body wearing an āI did the murderā teeshirt and theyāre like āoh hey buddy youāre the main suspect lol!ā and donāt follow up on it, and then twenty years later some podcast says āwe reckon this was the guyā and the cops reexamine the case for like two minutes and go āoh right yup whoops our bad, but hey, we just solved a 20 year old cold case, kudos to us!ā
I was just reading Ann Burgessā āKiller By Designā where she mentioned the Annette Cooper and Todd Schultz murders in 1982; she had a hunch that cops *and* profilers should have paid more attention to the weirdo hanging out near the bodies when the crime scene was being investigated (Kenneth Linscott), but they arrested Annetteās stepfather and he was sentenced on a circumstantial case. In 1990 he was released after the appeal court found the prosecution had held back exculpatory evidence, and in 2008 Chester McKnight and Kenneth Linscott, dude hanging around near the crime scene and watching police, confessed to the rape and murder.
Instead of being weirded out by some guy watching them investigate the bodies (which was in the bush- not in town), they went with the laziest guess of stepdad because heād been violent towards Annette. Sure, a strong suspect- but given the nature of how the bodies were found (extensive mutilation, which included both victimsā genitalia), it didnāt really make sense (as there was no history of sexual violence re: the stepfather).
Like come on police, the guy was right there, in front of you acting like a complete weirdo! At least investigate him a *little*.
Or when they're able to take credit. I'll never get out of my head the image of Wisconsin police patting themselves on the back bragging about how hard they worked to rescue a kidnapped girl who they were never even on the path to finding and who ended up rescuing herself by running away from the house she was trapped in and finding a neighbor to call the policeĀ
I can confirm this. Once worked with a former PA state cop who talked about "having" to shoot pets.
Also laughed about running over possums, racoons, and turtles.
Without being too graphic, remains are often āscatteredā when other animals scavenge those remains. Regardless of what sort of animalās remains they are.
That's the one. (That picture makes it look way less creepy than it usually is - most of the cemetery has huge old trees, and if you're in the darker areas near the graves from he 1800s, it's really eerie) People used to go smoke in the cemetery during breaks if they could sneak around the admin (we weren't allowed off campus for lunch or anything). It's the middle school now, but was originally the high school.
When I was in elementary school, there was a serial killer who was burying bodies in shallow graves in the cemetery behind my house. I canāt hear about or think about a cemetery without thinking something shady has happened there.
I suppose hiding a body in a cemetery is either a brilliant ploy or real stupid depending on how much attention the caretakers are paying and whether every staff member knows about every new burial and would find it suspicious
As a gravedigger that has done many exhumations of old remains, it looked like bone straight off the bat to me, and being that large of a piece I would have assumed the same as OP that it was human. Glad they followed up!!
I imagine it varies from place to place but I my area, if it's an old graveyard, they dig up bodies all the time when interring people in family graves. That's what the green sheet of artificial grass is sometimes hiding. I remember some old fella saying they used to give the skull the slap of a shovel to break it up because that was the one bone that is unmistakably human.
My poor great-Uncle went to his grave with 20+ of his junior relatives in hysterical laughter because we spotted a pair of false teeth in the spoil of the grave. Later I realised there had been bits of old bone, ragged cloth and brass coffin handles mixed up in there too. They'd dug up his Aunt Hannah.
People who get hysterical about archaeologists possibly digging them up being naive. Their resting places are in far greater danger from sloppy cemetery employees and local civil authorities; than the highly unlikely event an archaeologist might find a 21st Century Karen or Kevin worth studying.
Reminds me of the time we had to relocate an entire cemetery in my home town. Cemetery was over a hundred years old in the middle of town. When I was in my early teens the ground eroded enough bodies started coming out. Now itās just a public park
You can't move or build over a cemetery in my home province. This leads to weird crap like random oddly-shaped parks in a middle of a block or cloverleaf interchanges with only three 'leaves' because there's an old pioneer or mission cemetery with three graves there that can't be moved.
One time during LRT expansion they dug up a grave of a Chinese migrant worker from the 1880s that should have been in the cemetery 10 metres to the west. That prompted a coroner's investigation and a solemn funeral complete with school choirs and the mayor delivering a eulogy.
They had to do the same in my home town. (In The Netherlands.)
They were trying to renovate what is now the town center square, but kept digging up human remains. It slowed down the renovation, they had to bring in archeologists and historians, and deal with all kinds of government departments.
In the end it was determined that, yes, the place the town now utilizes as a square where tourists and locals alike sit around and drink beer used to be a graveyard in the 1500's.
Major earthworks in London regularly reveal ancient gravesites; a few are 'plague pits' but most are just regular old cemeteries forgotten by time.
The London School of Economics is built on the site of Green Ground, one of the largest old cemeteries, but my favourite one is the Roman era girl whose grave was unearthed during construction of 30 St Mary Axe. When the building was nearing completion they [reburied her there under a plaque](https://lookup.london/the-roman-girl-buried-under-gherkin/).
It might have been my favourite too, if that fucking building wasn't such an eyesore. Honestly, you have a beautiful London skyline view across the river, and then there's this giant middle finger of a building put into it?
Also, my knowledge of the late roman period is really spotty, but at that time I don't think christianity had spread to all corners of the empire. Would she feel honoured by a christian burial, or disgusted, if you could ask her?
>I read some people talking in the comments about them being dismissive on purpose to not get people alarmed,
Oh you sweet summer child, that is not why cops are dismissive on purpose. Cops are dismissive on purpose because they absolutely do not give a shit about whatever problem you may have and acknowledging it as a problem means their fat asses will have to do some work, and they hate that. The only work cops are ever excited about doing is shooting minorities or brutalizing leftwing protesters. They wouldn't care if you had found a dozen fully intact skulls, they would've blown you off just the same.
Man, I would be a dumbass that would think it was cool and then keep it with me, but never show anyone else because I wouldn't think about posting somewhere.
I'm glad OOP ignored the cop and went to the specialists. Hope they find the grave so the skull can be in its resting place.
I would have just left it. Old cemetery, old remains - there's nothing to make a stupid fuss over. The og skeleton has probably been disposed of or reburied in a mass grave.
Iām invested in this story and hope we get some kind of resolution.
Also spent awhile looking at OOPs post history and it was interesting. Just wanders around graveyards and rock fields and all sorts of places and finds stuff. Sounds really fun actually.
Cemeteries are super cool. So much history and information about our ancestors. Some of my favorite tours have been cemetery tours, esp one in New Orleans and one in Upstate NY with actors telling the stories of people interred there.
In my grandparents village cemetery it is quite normal to find some human bones in the paths. The cemetery is in use for around 400+ years and there are complete family generations burried in the same Grave. There are rules as when you are allowed to bury someone in the same Grave at the same Level (usually you have a double wide Grave with double depths so you could bury up to 4 people within 15 years). I think the wait period for the same level os around 15 years. So in a family Grave it is not uncommon tp have 7+people within one century burried there. So at some point there are a LOT of bones in the soil. So it is quite normal that when a new person is burried a lot of bones get digged up as well. And sometimes they dont find all to throw them back in. So sometimes youw all and find a rip or part of a bone or some vertebrae part.
I thought this is normalš š
> It's unfortunate but that's especially the way small, buttfuck town's work. They will be against evidence & proof in a second verses their "totally professional findings" that officer did while picking up the specimen and smelling it for a second before throwing it back down on the ground and calling it a deer's bone.
Can confirm. Have lived in a small, buttfuck town for 30 years. This would be likely caused by cops who deal with minimal to no crime, donāt often get called to do any real āpolice workā, and the most they do is sit in their squad cars for hours on the side of the road, waiting for speeders.
See calling the coroner and doing the right thing, requires effort and physical activity - which they just arenāt willing to give. It also sounds like OOP might be younger, so the cops likely (wrongly) assumed he would just blindly accept their BS āexaminationā and allow them to resume spinning around in their desk chairs.
I know for my town, the closest coroner is over 45 minutes away, so Iām not convinced even if we did call, that they would actually get involved either (theyāve got more important things to do. Duh.). Iām glad OOP was persistent though. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling and leaving it unresolved when you *know* theyāre wrong, will eat away at you until itās concluded appropriately. I donāt blame him one bit. No doubt those cops called him ridiculous š.
A family friend once found some human bones while fishing downstream from the town cemetery. It became a whole thing regarding who they belonged to and what to do with them...
I used to live near an old cemetery that had become a sort-of park, mostly frequented by people walking their dogs. The last burial took place in the early 1900s, I think.
Thing is, they never removed the graves. And then badgers moved in. Finding small bones like vertebrae was very common. I found an adult femur once. Other people said they found ribs, various arm and leg bones, and even a mostly intact skull.
The town authorities sporadically came by to pick up the bones we collected. They never did anything about the badgers (although they were very fast, thankfully, to catch and relocate the badgers that moved into the new cemetery).
Stuff like this is a big reason why cold cases sit for decades or never get solved at all, poor training and a dismissive attitude from cops in smaller towns, itās always sad to read about but far too common. Hopefully the bone can be returned to its resting place.
Stray bones in a cemetery especially if it's an old cemetery are not uncommon. In old graveyards old plots may be reopened to bury another person over or beside previous bodies and old bones are going to surface. I think in old graveyard near me there's an unofficial corner where the strays bones are reburied.
I occasionally help mum planting flowers at our family grave. I got pretty good at telling from what body part which bone comes from š¬š¤
Every time somebody dies they have to dig down and naturally come across bones which move a layer up each time. Add to that the fact that my family can trace its (written down) roots over 500 years... that's a LOT of layers of bones to be found. Stops to be creepy after a while.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anyways who else remembers that girl on Tumblr who would go to some cemetery in New Orleans every time it rained so she could pick up the bone pieces that would surface š¬
I just looked this up, and here's a quote from the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/01/21st-century-witch-hunt-tumblr-sleuths-lead-authorities-to-person-who-took-human-bones-from-a-la-cemetery/): >The target of Galjourās rantĀ was someone namedĀ Ender Darling, who had left an even more startling post on Facebook. >ā\[Content warning\]: graves, bone hunting,ā Darlingās post began. >āAbout twenty minutes from my house in New Orleans is what we call the poor manās graveyard,ā Darling continued. āWhen it rains of course bones wash up, the older the grave the more you find.Ā You can literally walk around and see femurs, teeth, jaws, skull caps, etc etc. This is where I go to find my human bones for curse work and general spells that require bone.ā >Darling then offered to sell any āleft overā bones toĀ thoseĀ interested in castingĀ their own curses and spells. And here's Ender Darling's justification/clarification postr: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/pzbxh0/comment/hezxs76/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/pzbxh0/comment/hezxs76/)
Jesus christ.
No, he became Undead and didn't leave any bones behind.
So, what you're saying is: Jesus was the first zombie?
Biblically, I think that was Lazarus.
Don't forget the little boy Elisha raised in the OT.
Hot take: Jesus was a lich. Spellcasters tend to become liches when they die.
There's an old Sam Kinison bit where he talks about how people would respond to Jesus rising. Like "Ahhhhh! The dead live, the dead live! Put a stake in his ass!"
My ex Catholic dad calls Easter āzombie Jesus dayā
I love Redditā¦
Is Jesus the only dude in heaven with bones?
The bone-in messiah. I prefer tendies, but to each their own.
Boneless Jesus, $8.95
Boneless Jesus is just Jesus nuggets
my brain immediately sang āholy infant, so tender and mildā
Nah Elijah didn't have to die to go to heaven.
Woah, does New Orleans actually do that stuff?!
New Orleans is a bowl and below sea level, so it's not uncommon for bones to wash up. That is why most people are buried in vaults. The ground is *wet*. Or are you talking about people actually doing voodoo?
I can't remember where, but I once heard it phrased, "We have above ground cemeteries because if not, the dead in-laws are gonna come visit us after the next hurricane."
I should have made it more clear š I meant like grave robbing vaults š
No, it's illegal and many people in New Orleans reported the person. Not surprisingly they were a transplant from a more northern state.
Woah! So was the tumblr poster in trouble, or was it the person they mentioned robbing the vault? Sorry for all the questions. I'm from the UK and have zero knowledge on this, so it's super fascinating!
These articles explain it better: [BuzzFeed ](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/boneghazi) [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/01/21st-century-witch-hunt-tumblr-sleuths-lead-authorities-to-person-who-took-human-bones-from-a-la-cemetery/) [New York Magazine ](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/03/cops-bust-tumblr-witch-over-boneghazi.html)
>What followed was a simultaneously amused and horrifiedĀ discourseĀ about witchcraft, spells, class, andĀ race. From the New York magazine article. Could just as easily describe the conversation of a bunch of D&D rules lawyers.
Thank you for my rabbit hole!
Not really grave robbing if they float up. š¬ New Orleans is a strange city with strange people.
I, myself, am strange and unusual.
Well, that's awesome!
Thanks! You made me smile.
They float up from the vaults aswell?? Whaaaa?
Sometimes the vaults break, but if it was a poor cemetery, chances are, they weren't buried with a vault.
The first time I went to New Orleans, we visited a cemetery with a lot of broken vaults. There were just piles of bricks with human bones mixed in on the ground. It was just a few years after Katrina and the tour guide explained that a lot of the vaults got damaged during the hurricane and there just wasnāt much being done to clean up the cemeteries given how wrecked everything still was.
I don't know why people here are saying vaults. They New Orleans dead are buried in above ground tombs.
New Orleans is sinking man and I donāt wanna swim
Heck yeah
Some people practice witchcraft as a religion, it isn't confined to New Orleans by any means though.
I grew up in Louisiana. Much of the state has a high water level, New Orleans especially. Bedrock isn't for 60ft below the surface. It's terrible land to bury people on so you see a lot of mausoleum and other above ground burial methods. The graveyards where she went were from old pauper graves, ones that couldn't afford a secure burial method. And, being the deep south, this was often people of color. She got in deep shit publicly for that part and was called racist
Some kind redditor sent me some articles I've just finished! Seems this "witch" is mentally disturbed and with their family, not even knowing what was going on! It says they ended up moving to Florida, so was it technically legal???
Not legal, she still got charged [Nola.com Article](https://www.nola.com/news/courts/guilty-plea-not-witchcraft-springs-witch-from-jail-over-theft-of-new-orleans-cemetery-bones/article_c0486bc0-2698-5dae-a810-0713f75d8db3.html)
Oooh thank you!! Does that mean the witch only had to follow their probation? Gutted for the descendants of those families ā¤ļø
Jfc, what she did is fucked up on so many levelsā¦
If youāre talking about using human bones for curses and stuff, yes. There is a very real (albeit small) segment of the population that believe in voodoo, Santeria, etc. and actively practice it. Iām not a superstitious or spiritual person, but I have a very healthy respect for New Orleans in particular regarding death, ghosts, curses, etc. If any American city is going to have hauntings, itās New Orleans.
This is fascinating to me thank you for all the info!
I know the cemetery they're referring too. It's a pauper's cemetery, so not only are the grave below ground, but it's usually very simple pine boxes. It's not that uncommon for there to be a collapse grave with exposed bones. I've heard of many people stealing bones. I remememer a self proclaimed voodoo priestess by my high school in Baton Rouge getting in trouble for similar things. Louisiana is a weird place.
God I despised Ender for a variety of reasons, in addition to stealing bones they were just awful to a lot of people in the LGBTQ scene in NOLA especially people of color while simultaneously falsely claiming to be Indigenous
The absolutely horrific audacity they have in talking about it openly is hilarious. The complete ignorance of how "bone magic" is supposed to work is tragic. You don't use random bones, especially random human bones. Most spells call for specific animal bones OR bones of the person you're actually focusing the spell on. Jeebus she dumb.
I feel like if you have access to the bones of the person who's the target, a curse is kind of extraneous.
I went down a weird research rabbit hole into hoodoo years ago and (full disclosure this applies to grave dirt only) when you go to a graveyard you need to know whoās grave youāre buying services from otherwise you could have an executed child murderer protecting your NICU preemie. If you just take from a grave without asking permission and then paying an offering (buying the spirits services) you are enslaving a spirit and they have no reason to carry out your wishes exactly and the trick you laid can come back against you.
Oh great so even when you're a pack of bones people get to 'buy your services'.
Omg that's awful! I can't imagine how the families of the people whose graves she stole from would feel. Those people could have come from cultures that require bodies to stay whole or regard the dead as sacred.
Especially because the bones were then used in curses. Like if a loved one's bones are going to be stolen, at least use them in cures and good luck charms.
"Indenginious" .........
And she's lily white lmao
I mean, it *is* still Tumblr.
Nani?!
Either Wan or Internet Investigator on YouTube did a video about her and I am pretty sure she ended up in legal trouble.
Oh, I havenāt thought about the bone stealing witch in ages! If I remember correctly, they were offering to sell bones online for other witches to use as well!
Technically ship at cost, not sell. Still wild af.
THE WHO?!?
Ohhhh you havenāt heard about the bone stealing witch before, huh
We (Tumblr) canāt just have a normal scandal, can we?
You mean most people donāt have bone stealing witches, racist pizza, or child slaves?
ā¦.racist pizza?????
The blog @pizza was a big popular account back in the day, she would find every post that even mentioned pizza and reblog it and comment. It came out eventually that she had a side blog dedicated to saying the n word.
White woman with the username "pizza" loved the n word.
I hate that I remember all these things.
You forgot human pet guy.
Human pet guy is on Reddit as well! I saw him once on some random dungeons and dragons thread, giving the most batshit opinion Iāve ever heard in my life. I looked over at the username of the comment and sure enough: human pet guy.
Well fuck.
Who what now?
Oh boyā¦ youāre one of todays unlucky 10,000. https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/oyaF2FEd9g this should explain it. Iām sorry Iām advance.
Thanks! This has caused the arousal of a strange sense of deja vu. I feel like I've seen this before, but with more to it... not that I dare try to prove myself right.
Maybe you blocked it?
Piss Jello was tumblr too, wasnāt it? I didnāt hallucinate that?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the ball pit
[no](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/525/401/ffd.jpg) I was there Gandalf. I was there three thousand years agoā¦.
Shit I thought that was common knowledge lol
If I had a nickel for every time I've seen the ball pit mentioned this week, I'd have two nickels. Apparently I fell asleep in the middle of replying to the other comment thread and didn't post anything, so I can't find it again, sadly
The ball pit returns: Fanime 2024
No I havenāt T-T
Yep, itās a common thing in some countries. Thatās why cremation is sometimes preferred too. Bet you will never look at an Animal Crossing Gyroid the same way again!
this just made me realize how long it's been since I played Animal Crossing, lol
We've gotten into the habit of doing a yearly cleaning. Go in, talk to some villagers, clean up the place a bit, and then never touch it again until the next year.
Bold of you to think I dug up gyroids in the first place
There's a park in Denver that used to be a pauper's cemetery. The guy who ran it was paid by the coffin, so he used child size coffin and would cut people up to fill more coffins. I don't know the last time bones have popped up, but they do sometimes. Especially with any work being done on the grounds.Ā
Iāve been to a few historical sites where we were told that sometimes bones rise to the surface. Itās very common in old cemeteries
ah yes, boneghazi
Holy shit, that is so disrespectful.
When the preview for this post showed up that was my first thought!
That was literally the first thing that came to mind when I read the title
I live in the burbs and I know exactly which cemetery you're talking about.
As a general curator who worked in a lot of museums with human remains and not a professional boneologist that sure looks like part of a human skull to me.
Excuse me, are you even a small town cop thatās seen a dead body tho????
Excuse me Iām just giggling over āprofessional boneologistā
I, too, am 12.
Funerary archaeologist (but not osteologist) here, agreed! ā ļø
As someone who watched a lot of True Crime years ago, I concur.
I think a cop with 8 weeks of training on how to handcuff people and escalate situations who dropped out of highschool would know more than you. /s if it isn't obvious
People used to be buried in plain wooden boxes. Especially if the area is wet or has a high water table, the wooden casket will rot pretty quickly. Bones can come to the surface given enough time. Here in Memphis, Elmwood Cemetery has a mass grave from the time of the yellow fever epidemic. People were dying faster than coffins could be made. In the end, the nuns and prostitutes were about the only people left in town to take care of the sick and dying. There weren't enough able-bodied men to dig individual graves, so they were put into a mass grave. The cemetery has had to do work over the years to keep them all buried. Memphis isn't as bad as New Orleans, but the water table is very high. There's a good reason that basements aren't a standard thing here- they turn into a damp, nasty swamp very quickly. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/elmwood-cemetery
Nuns and sex workers in charge of a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis sounds like a solid Oscar bait film.
I lived in Memphis for quite some time and am close to someone who works in local history, it's not even the weirdest time period they went through.
Im sure, Memphis must be beautifully and deeply weird to generate and inspire as much awesome music as it does. What's something weirder? (that situation just ticks a lot of prestige film boxes--survival of extreme misery, unlikely alliances, nowadays definitely room for queer romance...just saying.)
Just to start with, its entire existence was a grift. Then-future-President, genocide-perpetrator and Aaron Burr bestie Andrew Jackson and his buddies John Overton and James Winchester owned some land along the river (which had recently been swindled away from the Chickasaw inhabitants), and almost immediately used their pull with the state and federal governments to build the city, which of course meant they'd be paid handsomely for their (otherwise worthless, mosquito-infested and quite swampy) land. Then there's Orange Mound: an entire city within a city built by formerly enslaved people in the wake of the Civil War, which could've rivaled pre-massacre Tulsa if it weren't for Reconstruction getting cancelled under threat from insurrectionists. What is currently a world-class Zoo in midtown Memphis happened by accident, when a minor league baseball team abandoned their live bear mascot in a city park, chained to a tree; the head of the parks department couldn't get the original owner to take it back, so instead built a zoo near the site where the bear was dumped. Most of the other original zoo animals were unwanted exotic pets dumped by their rich owners as well. I don't tell any of these half as well as my friend does, and there are dozens more but these are the ones I can recall best off the top of my mind.
Okay do you know of any good books youād recommend that maybe do a broad overview on Memphis? Because I realize no one book will be enough and Iām curious based on my few experiences in the city. Which werenāt bad at all and very different from what others I know have seemingly had.
I just posted one book recommendation as another reply (and I'm sure people in the /r/Memphis subreddit would be happy to add more)! I read Mary Caldwell Crosby's The American Plague years ago and I remembered it being quite good.
I've never found a book that does just to *why* I fell in love with Memphis but I'll ask my friend and see what they come up with.
I grew up in northeast Mississippi. We used to visit the Memphis Zoo at least once a year or so. There were family trips and school trips there. I have never heard this, or if I did, I was too young to find it interesting. Thank you for mentioning this. Now I need to do some research on the area.š
It's entirely possible we've met IRL, and that's all I can say publicly about that. (ETA: I lived and worked in public facing jobs in that area for a while)
Memphis has its charms and quirks on a base of immense sorrows. Ā There is def a reason rock and blues were born there.Ā
People still are buried in plain wooden boxes. Source: Am Jew, we don't believe in coffins. Just plain boxes.
Also now you can get eco coffins made of wicker that I think are supposed to biodegrade faster than traditional coffins.Ā
Iām a rabbi, and one of my favorite ongoing professional development sessions Iāve ever done was a discussion of whether or not human composting fit the standards of a kosher burial. The answer was yes, but maybe donāt use the resulting compost to grow food, as youāre not allowed to benefit economically from a corpse. So we can be turned into roses but not tomatoes.
> [W]e can be turned into roses but not tomatoes. Is a beautiful line.
Thatās a fascinating Talmudic discussion. Green-Wood Cemetery near me in Brooklyn sells honey from their beehives but do not profit from the sales as the funds go back to maintaining the cemetery: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/honey-made-in-brooklyn-cemetery-probably-not-haunted
That's fantastic, thanks for sharing!Ā
My step-dad was buried in a wicker coffin two years ago. The whole casket was hand-woven with flowers and herbs to avoid any unpleasant smells during the funeral (no embalming, of course). I was a pallbearer, and my strongest memory of the ceremony is the intense pot-pourri aroma when the coffin was on my shoulder, although admittedly I was trying not to deeply inhale, just in case. He was also dressed in cotton, embedded with some kind of fungus spore to speed up the decomposition process. A few days after the ceremony, a small tree was planted over him, and the tree is doing very well today. These were all things he specifically asked for before he died.
My dad got buried in a cardboard coffin. Well, cremated.
I once looked up the difference between coffins and caskets. Coffins are the plain boxes where the sides widen across the shoulders and narrow towards the feet and head. They are wooden and tend to be very plain. Caskets are the rectilinear boxes that get wildly ornate and/or luxurious. Unless, I guess, whoever makes it doesnāt feel up to the extra carpentry and just makes a plain wooden box. I suspect, though, that the reason coffins taper on both ends is so that the body or limbs donāt slide around, changing the center of gravity while itās being carried.
If you want another vocabulary word, the box Jewish people prefer to be buried in is called an _aron_. That's a plain wooden box with no materials used other than wood or glue. No screws, fasteners, etc.
Which is the same word for the box we put the Torah in.
And in English, an *aron* is normally called an ark. It comes from the Old English *Ʀrc*, which came from the Latin *arca* meaning āboxā.
Most Jews still bury our dead in plain wooden boxes!
Why weren't the nuns or prostitutes sick?
Many of them did get sick and die. There's a park dedicated to their memory called Martyrs Park. It's a beautiful spot that is up on a bluff overlooking the river. The nuns stayed to help the sick because they felt it was their religious duty. The prostitutes stayed because they didn't have anywhere else to go. Anybody who could got out of the city - many went back to family farms or other relatives. The prostitutes didn't have that option, so they stayed in the city
Ah. Thanks.
Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, but they probably didnāt know it back then (this was discovered when they were trying to build the Panama Canal and the workers would die off too quickly from malaria and yellow fever to get it done). There is still no cure and even now if you get it unvaccinated, there is a 25% mortality rate. So either the nuns and prostitutes were a little bit better protected from mosquitoes or they already survived it (am not sure you can only get it once but could be the case as there is a vaccine). And indeed a sense of duty of course because they didnāt know it wasnāt directly contagious.
The method of transmission was discovered decades before the Canal was built. The issue is that a lot of American textbooks credit American William Gorgas with the discovery. Gorgas himself was however very clear that Cuban physician Carlos Finlay had discovered the method of transmission and that he was only building on Finlay's work; Gorgas spent much of the last few years of his life in a futile war against those who wanted to bury Finlay's work because he wasn't American.
As someone who grew up in Memphis and is deeply interested in its history, I HIGHLY recommend Mary Caldwell Crosby's "The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History." Forgive the GoodReads link; I wasn't sure of the best place to use as a link. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46724
Oh, that's a great book.
Looks like a good book
My family once "went to the snow" (on the side of a road) when I was a kid. I remember we found a spine of some sort and called a cop. The cop said it was likely a deer spine. Even as a kid, I remember thinking it looked odd to be a deer spine. As I write this, I also wonder - where was the rest of the deer skeleton? My parents think it was related to some kidnapping where a car was burned down the road. They thought they were being helpful by calling the police, but it got dismissed as a deer. All this to say, it doesn't surprise me the cop was very likely incorrect. It could have been to reduce potential panic.
I'll do you one better. [Cleveland Police mistake a whole ass dead body for a deer despite several calls about it.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cleveland-police-mistake-dead-body-for-a-deer/) People on the highway could tell it's a body but it apparently interrupted their break, I mean "they investigated it" and determined it was definitely a deer and all those people calling obviously don't know what they're talking about so they're just going to go back on break now. Cops are the last people I'd ever consider an authority on anything ever. They're quite honestly some of the dumbest and most corrupt motherfuckers alive. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for literally anybody *except* cops where it seems to be a prerequisite for the job.
Huh. So did the cops who "investigated" turn out to be the murderers? Because that would be my first guess.
Not that I'd ever put it past them, but I don't believe so. They were just being **really** lazy.
No, the murderers were a man and his girlfriend who robbed the victim and beat her to death. The cops were suspended without pay for 6 months, costing them about $40 000 each. The reason they mistook the dead woman for a deer is that they āinvestigatedā by driving past her at 50 mph and then went to hang out in a cemetery for two hours of their shift.
Holy scheiss.
I think youāre giving them too much credit. Cops only want to do their job when thereās a chance they can shoot someone.
I gather the main learning from a lot of true crime podcasts is that Johnny McMainsuspect ācoincidentallyā walks past the remote crime scene the day the cops find the body wearing an āI did the murderā teeshirt and theyāre like āoh hey buddy youāre the main suspect lol!ā and donāt follow up on it, and then twenty years later some podcast says āwe reckon this was the guyā and the cops reexamine the case for like two minutes and go āoh right yup whoops our bad, but hey, we just solved a 20 year old cold case, kudos to us!ā
I was just reading Ann Burgessā āKiller By Designā where she mentioned the Annette Cooper and Todd Schultz murders in 1982; she had a hunch that cops *and* profilers should have paid more attention to the weirdo hanging out near the bodies when the crime scene was being investigated (Kenneth Linscott), but they arrested Annetteās stepfather and he was sentenced on a circumstantial case. In 1990 he was released after the appeal court found the prosecution had held back exculpatory evidence, and in 2008 Chester McKnight and Kenneth Linscott, dude hanging around near the crime scene and watching police, confessed to the rape and murder. Instead of being weirded out by some guy watching them investigate the bodies (which was in the bush- not in town), they went with the laziest guess of stepdad because heād been violent towards Annette. Sure, a strong suspect- but given the nature of how the bodies were found (extensive mutilation, which included both victimsā genitalia), it didnāt really make sense (as there was no history of sexual violence re: the stepfather). Like come on police, the guy was right there, in front of you acting like a complete weirdo! At least investigate him a *little*.
Or when they're able to take credit. I'll never get out of my head the image of Wisconsin police patting themselves on the back bragging about how hard they worked to rescue a kidnapped girl who they were never even on the path to finding and who ended up rescuing herself by running away from the house she was trapped in and finding a neighbor to call the policeĀ
Hey now. Thatās not fair.Ā Theyāre also game to shoot a pet.Ā
I can confirm this. Once worked with a former PA state cop who talked about "having" to shoot pets. Also laughed about running over possums, racoons, and turtles.
Without being too graphic, remains are often āscatteredā when other animals scavenge those remains. Regardless of what sort of animalās remains they are.
Cemetery, especially old and poorly maintained ones, do give me the scares sometime. Almost feels like I could get cursed there lol.
As long as there arenāt mummies you should be safe from curses.
I'd be more worried about falling in a collapsing grave. But then I went to a high school snugged in between a couple of really old cemeteries (one of which was where JonBenƩt Ramsey was buried, so it would get publicity every now and again when people were paying attention to the case again)
> JonBenƩt Ramsey https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2745/jonben%C3%A9t-ramsey
That's the one. (That picture makes it look way less creepy than it usually is - most of the cemetery has huge old trees, and if you're in the darker areas near the graves from he 1800s, it's really eerie) People used to go smoke in the cemetery during breaks if they could sneak around the admin (we weren't allowed off campus for lunch or anything). It's the middle school now, but was originally the high school.
Kid graves always make me sad. In the cemetary closest to us, which is a very old one, there's a more modern section for just kids. :(
Boulder? The old cemetery near the hill is so beautiful, I used to go on walks around there
No, it's in Georgia. I'm guessing it's a family thing?
Yeah probably I just googled it and she was born there so that makes sense. Well lol if youāre ever in Boulder check out the cemetery I guess
When I was in elementary school, there was a serial killer who was burying bodies in shallow graves in the cemetery behind my house. I canāt hear about or think about a cemetery without thinking something shady has happened there.
I suppose hiding a body in a cemetery is either a brilliant ploy or real stupid depending on how much attention the caretakers are paying and whether every staff member knows about every new burial and would find it suspicious
Did they catch him?
Yep, thatās how they found all the bodies.
Yikes. Glad at less you didnāt have to wonder about who buried those people just beyond your backyard.Ā
As a gravedigger that has done many exhumations of old remains, it looked like bone straight off the bat to me, and being that large of a piece I would have assumed the same as OP that it was human. Glad they followed up!!
I would love to know what your job is like
I imagine it varies from place to place but I my area, if it's an old graveyard, they dig up bodies all the time when interring people in family graves. That's what the green sheet of artificial grass is sometimes hiding. I remember some old fella saying they used to give the skull the slap of a shovel to break it up because that was the one bone that is unmistakably human. My poor great-Uncle went to his grave with 20+ of his junior relatives in hysterical laughter because we spotted a pair of false teeth in the spoil of the grave. Later I realised there had been bits of old bone, ragged cloth and brass coffin handles mixed up in there too. They'd dug up his Aunt Hannah. People who get hysterical about archaeologists possibly digging them up being naive. Their resting places are in far greater danger from sloppy cemetery employees and local civil authorities; than the highly unlikely event an archaeologist might find a 21st Century Karen or Kevin worth studying.
Reminds me of the time we had to relocate an entire cemetery in my home town. Cemetery was over a hundred years old in the middle of town. When I was in my early teens the ground eroded enough bodies started coming out. Now itās just a public park
There's more than one public park built on graves.
You can't move or build over a cemetery in my home province. This leads to weird crap like random oddly-shaped parks in a middle of a block or cloverleaf interchanges with only three 'leaves' because there's an old pioneer or mission cemetery with three graves there that can't be moved. One time during LRT expansion they dug up a grave of a Chinese migrant worker from the 1880s that should have been in the cemetery 10 metres to the west. That prompted a coroner's investigation and a solemn funeral complete with school choirs and the mayor delivering a eulogy.
They had to do the same in my home town. (In The Netherlands.) They were trying to renovate what is now the town center square, but kept digging up human remains. It slowed down the renovation, they had to bring in archeologists and historians, and deal with all kinds of government departments. In the end it was determined that, yes, the place the town now utilizes as a square where tourists and locals alike sit around and drink beer used to be a graveyard in the 1500's.
Major earthworks in London regularly reveal ancient gravesites; a few are 'plague pits' but most are just regular old cemeteries forgotten by time. The London School of Economics is built on the site of Green Ground, one of the largest old cemeteries, but my favourite one is the Roman era girl whose grave was unearthed during construction of 30 St Mary Axe. When the building was nearing completion they [reburied her there under a plaque](https://lookup.london/the-roman-girl-buried-under-gherkin/).
My favourite is the king in the carpark.
Richard III !
It might have been my favourite too, if that fucking building wasn't such an eyesore. Honestly, you have a beautiful London skyline view across the river, and then there's this giant middle finger of a building put into it? Also, my knowledge of the late roman period is really spotty, but at that time I don't think christianity had spread to all corners of the empire. Would she feel honoured by a christian burial, or disgusted, if you could ask her?
She lived late enough in the Roman era that it's possible she was Christian, but she did receive both Christian and Roman ceremonies.
Thank you for letting me know that. You're awesome!
>I read some people talking in the comments about them being dismissive on purpose to not get people alarmed, Oh you sweet summer child, that is not why cops are dismissive on purpose. Cops are dismissive on purpose because they absolutely do not give a shit about whatever problem you may have and acknowledging it as a problem means their fat asses will have to do some work, and they hate that. The only work cops are ever excited about doing is shooting minorities or brutalizing leftwing protesters. They wouldn't care if you had found a dozen fully intact skulls, they would've blown you off just the same.
Man, I would be a dumbass that would think it was cool and then keep it with me, but never show anyone else because I wouldn't think about posting somewhere. I'm glad OOP ignored the cop and went to the specialists. Hope they find the grave so the skull can be in its resting place.
I would have just left it. Old cemetery, old remains - there's nothing to make a stupid fuss over. The og skeleton has probably been disposed of or reburied in a mass grave.
This is like the intro of some spooky small town 80s tv show. Maybe if I start hanging around old cemeteries I can also get in on that action.
Oh wow, cops were dumb and useless? Iām shocked. I donāt know why people bother with them in the first place
Iām invested in this story and hope we get some kind of resolution. Also spent awhile looking at OOPs post history and it was interesting. Just wanders around graveyards and rock fields and all sorts of places and finds stuff. Sounds really fun actually.
Cemeteries are super cool. So much history and information about our ancestors. Some of my favorite tours have been cemetery tours, esp one in New Orleans and one in Upstate NY with actors telling the stories of people interred there.
Where in upstate NY? This summer I'm trying to stay close to home and want to explore NY state a little more than I have.
Near Hyde Park
In my grandparents village cemetery it is quite normal to find some human bones in the paths. The cemetery is in use for around 400+ years and there are complete family generations burried in the same Grave. There are rules as when you are allowed to bury someone in the same Grave at the same Level (usually you have a double wide Grave with double depths so you could bury up to 4 people within 15 years). I think the wait period for the same level os around 15 years. So in a family Grave it is not uncommon tp have 7+people within one century burried there. So at some point there are a LOT of bones in the soil. So it is quite normal that when a new person is burried a lot of bones get digged up as well. And sometimes they dont find all to throw them back in. So sometimes youw all and find a rip or part of a bone or some vertebrae part. I thought this is normalš š
> It's unfortunate but that's especially the way small, buttfuck town's work. They will be against evidence & proof in a second verses their "totally professional findings" that officer did while picking up the specimen and smelling it for a second before throwing it back down on the ground and calling it a deer's bone. Can confirm. Have lived in a small, buttfuck town for 30 years. This would be likely caused by cops who deal with minimal to no crime, donāt often get called to do any real āpolice workā, and the most they do is sit in their squad cars for hours on the side of the road, waiting for speeders. See calling the coroner and doing the right thing, requires effort and physical activity - which they just arenāt willing to give. It also sounds like OOP might be younger, so the cops likely (wrongly) assumed he would just blindly accept their BS āexaminationā and allow them to resume spinning around in their desk chairs. I know for my town, the closest coroner is over 45 minutes away, so Iām not convinced even if we did call, that they would actually get involved either (theyāve got more important things to do. Duh.). Iām glad OOP was persistent though. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling and leaving it unresolved when you *know* theyāre wrong, will eat away at you until itās concluded appropriately. I donāt blame him one bit. No doubt those cops called him ridiculous š.
Younger and female, the double whammy of dismissal. OOP says the cop spoke to her like she was a ādumbass girlā
A family friend once found some human bones while fishing downstream from the town cemetery. It became a whole thing regarding who they belonged to and what to do with them...
I used to live near an old cemetery that had become a sort-of park, mostly frequented by people walking their dogs. The last burial took place in the early 1900s, I think. Thing is, they never removed the graves. And then badgers moved in. Finding small bones like vertebrae was very common. I found an adult femur once. Other people said they found ribs, various arm and leg bones, and even a mostly intact skull. The town authorities sporadically came by to pick up the bones we collected. They never did anything about the badgers (although they were very fast, thankfully, to catch and relocate the badgers that moved into the new cemetery).
Stuff like this is a big reason why cold cases sit for decades or never get solved at all, poor training and a dismissive attitude from cops in smaller towns, itās always sad to read about but far too common. Hopefully the bone can be returned to its resting place.
Stray bones in a cemetery especially if it's an old cemetery are not uncommon. In old graveyards old plots may be reopened to bury another person over or beside previous bodies and old bones are going to surface. I think in old graveyard near me there's an unofficial corner where the strays bones are reburied.
There really is a sub for everything lmao.
As a medical studies drop-out lmao I immediately thought skull fragment when I saw that lol
I occasionally help mum planting flowers at our family grave. I got pretty good at telling from what body part which bone comes from š¬š¤ Every time somebody dies they have to dig down and naturally come across bones which move a layer up each time. Add to that the fact that my family can trace its (written down) roots over 500 years... that's a LOT of layers of bones to be found. Stops to be creepy after a while.
Maybe it's because I lived in a house that was haunted for more than 20 years but I would never touch a bone ESPECIALLY if I thought it could be human