Talk about skeletons in the closet, so to speak. A closet is about the only place that a
skeleton isn’t located in this list, although the author was strongly tempted
to Google it. We often wonder how things
happen, and sometimes we wonder how something ended up in an odd location. Sometimes we even get answers. When bones are discovered, it’s up to a
detective or an investigator to figure out what happened. This is complicated by the fact that when
only bones are left it’s sometimes impossible to tell how the individual died. It’s further convoluted by the fact that when
the bones are discovered in a weird place, we’re left muttering, “What?”
Who knew that those big blue bags from IKEA are good for all
kinds of objects? There’s not a whole
lot of mystery behind the discovery, but definite weirdness was involved. Kicki Karlén, a woman in Sweden, discovered
bags and bags of bones under a tarp in a Scandinavian church in 2014. Apparently the Kläckeburga Church was refurbishing and repairing parts of its building years earlier and planned
to re-inter the remains as soon as was possible.
They were estimated to be the remains of people buried at the church
five hundred years earlier and the bones had been exhumed in order to renovate
an area of the church. Complications
arose when the remains were not allowed to be removed from the immediate
vicinity of the church by the church’s board.
However what happened was that they got moved into bags and forgotten. Consequently, they were discovered much later
by Karlén in the iconic IKEA bags. There
was no comment from IKEA about the peculiar treatment of their storage bags.
 |
| Photo : Paul Nicklen/National Geographic |
9. Ancient Skeleton in
an Underwater Cave
The scientists examining her remains named her “Naia” which
is Greek for water nymph. Nevertheless,
there wasn’t any water there when the teenager went exploring in a cave in
Mexico about 12,000 years ago. The poor
girl was looking for something unknown when she fell or was pushed into a
chamber called “Hoyo Negro” or black hole.
She wasn’t the only one because the divers who explored the cave also
found the skeletal remains of sloths, cave bears, and saber tooth tigers, as
well. One hopes they weren’t all in the
cave at the same time. The really
interesting part about Naia is that scientists were able to take a look at her
DNA and evaluate how she was related to other early Americans
Certainly being trapped in a hole was a bummer for Naia, but a boon to
scientists in that they could compare her mitochondrial DNA (from her mother’s
side) to the five other skeletal remains that are older than 12,000 years that
exist today. The indication is that
early Americans did tromp over a land bridge from Asia into the Americans, but
we still need to consider that evidence is scarce at this point. We’re not sure if Naia would have been glad
to help or not.
8. Skeletons in a Lake
Going to the lake takes a whole new meaning for some
people. 2013 was the year for discovering
skeletons in lakes. The highway patrol
of Oklahoma decided to try out some new sonar equipment that year. They discovered some cars at the bottom of
Foss Lake, Oklahoma. This isn’t
apparently unusual for cars to be found at the bottom of a lake, but when the
two vehicles were pulled out, it was unusual to find the skeletal remains
inside. Six sets of remains
were in a 1950s Chevy and a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro (which seems like a waste of
a classic muscle car to the author). It
turns out that three people went missing in 1970. Jimmy Williams, 16, Leah Johnson, 18, and
Michael Rios, 18, took off in a car, and vanished. The disappearance of the three was well
publicized and it was even theorized that the three ran away to start a new
life. However, it’s only a guess that
they went to the lake instead and accidentally crashed into it. The other vehicle is connected to the
disappearance of three people from nearby Canute, Oklahoma. Their disappearance was far less publicized. In 2014, DNA was used to identify one of the
skeletons from the second Chevy as Clayburn Hammock. The other two were tentatively identified as
Nora Duncan and Alvie Porter. The three went
missing in 1969, just months before the three teenagers. It certainly is ironic that both cars ended up just yards apart at the
bottom of Foss Lake. The six deaths were
ruled accidental, possibly after the cars took a curve too quickly and ended up
in the water.
7. Another Lake
Finally Gives up the Ghost, er, Skeleton
A couple named Russell and Blanch Warren vanished in 1929
near Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park in Washington State. They left behind two children who died before
the mystery was resolved. Divers
discovered the remains of their 1927 Chevrolet in about 170 feet of water.
The couple were never seen again after Russell Warren picked up his
wife, Blanch, from the nearby Port Angeles Hospital, and then picked up a new
washing machine. It was speculated that
the driver of the vehicle missed a turn and went into the lake. Searches were performed but found
little. Skip forward to 2002, when a
Park Service Dive Team found the wreckage of the Chevy deep in the lake. Two years later, a recreational diver named
John Rawlings discovered some bones farther down a slope from the Warren’s car.
The bones were identified as
Russell Warren’s remains by DNA analysis.
Alas, Blanch’s remains were not located.
However, the Warren’s wreck site is a popular dive site for experienced
divers and one never knows when a skeleton might tumble out of a proverbial
closet, or lake as the case may be.
6. A Movie Spills the
Bones, er, Beans
Poltergeist came
out in 1982 and certainly was the kind of movie to make a person sleep with the
lights on and the television off, if not out of the room. The movie made a mint and soon enough a
sequel was made. Poltergeist II didn’t make the same kind of dough as the first one
but it tried its best. Rumors swirled
about the first movie but it wasn’t until 2009 that one of the stars of both
movies, Jo Beth Williams, revealed that the skeletons the props department used
were real. It turned out that
it was cheaper to use real skeletons instead of fake ones. The stars of the movie were so creeped out
that Will Sampson, one of the actors in the movie, as well, did a blessing on
the spot. Apparently the Native American
actor performed a sort of “exorcism” and there were no further problems.
5. It’s Good to be the
King, Until They Forget Where You’re Buried
One would think a former king of England would be hard to
lose, but Richard III, who ruled from 1483 to 1485, went missing over the
passage of time. He might not have ruled
for very long, but Shakespeare cemented the monarch’s shady reputation with the
play of the same name. One of
his most major transgressions was that he stole the crown from one of his two
royal nephews and then had the two boys murdered. Of course, there’s a lot of debate about how
bad Richard III really was or wasn’t. In
the meantime, he died in battle, the last English king to do so, and was
buried. Rumors abounded about whether he
was really buried at Leicester at the church of the Gray Friars. He might have been dug up and his bones
thrown in a river or some other unsavory location. Eventually a local university got curious and
started digging. After much research,
the University of Leicester’s archeologists decided on a parking lot as a possible
site. When they found medieval windows
and then bones, they’d struck archeological gold. One of the skeletons had evidence of war
wounds and scoliosis of the spine, which Richard III reputedly possessed. Through a bunch more work with DNA analysis,
it was confirmed that it was Richard III’s bones. However, the extensive analysis of the DNA has revealed possible
adultery in the descending lines. The
lines through the mitochondrial descendants is consistent. (That’s the girl side.) Matching up the boy side is a little trickier,
but that’s a case for scientists to solve.
In the meantime, one never knows what we’ll find when we dig up a
parking lot.
4. Sometimes the
Skeleton Can be in a Chimney
Not all the bones in this list were found in a lake, or even
under a parking lot, or even human, for that matter. In 2014, a man named David Martin in
Bletchingly, Surrey, Great Britain was renovating his fireplace when he started
finding bones. The bones he
discovered weren’t human, but that of a carrier pigeon. Even more interesting was that he found a leg
with a tiny red capsule attached to it.
Inside the red capsule was an encrypted message dating from WWII. Thus far the code has not been decrypted, but
the message came from a Sergeant Stott and was written 71 years ago. It’s theorized that the bird got tired and
landed on Martin’s chimney, only to die before completing its mission. We don’t know what the message was, but odds
are that it was something important.
3. It Wasn’t Really
Santa, Was it?
Another renovation in Abbeville, Louisiana revealed something
out of the ordinary. In 2011,
contractors were working on the second floor of the Abbeville National Bank
when one removed a metal shield and discovered some bones lodged just above the
flue of the chimney. Police
work and DNA revealed that the skeletal remains were that of a man named Joseph
Schexnider, who vanished in 1984.
Schexnider had been a member of the National Guard and a part time
worker in the circus when he disappeared. His bones were apparently stuck in
the fireplace. No trauma of the bones
was identified, so the police there don’t really know why Schexnider ended up
in the chimney. Even Schexnider’s own
mother didn’t know why he was there.
When her son disappeared in the eighties she assumed he had gone off as
he had before. Luckily for the police
Schexnider happened to have a wallet, a lighter, a pair of gloves, and a watch
with him giving them a heads up on identification.
 |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skeleton_diag.png |
2. Skeleton in a Barn
Earlier this year, a LeFlore County, Oklahoma family found a
skeleton in a rotting coffin in their barn.
Interestingly enough the skeleton is over a hundred years old, and may
be linked to an “odd” organization, The Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The order is a fraternal one that
concentrates on charitable works and still has membership to this date. The previous owner of the property, Pete
Butler, said that there were originally two sets. The skeletons once belonged to the order and
were used in initiation ceremonies. He
gained possession of them in the sixties and put them in the barn. One got loaned out for a Halloween prank and
never was returned. The other remained
in the barn until rediscovered by the Priddy family who had purchased the
property. The LeFlore County Sheriff’s
Office is hunting down the second skeleton for burial. Apparently, it’s not illegal to own a real
skeleton, although it certainly can be considered “odd.”
 |
| http://www.scuba.com/diving-photos/2887/gotta-kiss-the-skeleton-cedar-hill-wiarton-Ontario |
1. Skeleton in a Scuba
Suit
In 2007, a recreational diver was out for a deep diving
jaunt in Commencement Bay, Washington when he came across another diver. The problem was that the other diver was only
a skull and bones inside a scuba suit. The suit with skeleton inside
was 200 feet down and complete with tank and weights for diving. The diver reported the find to the police and
an underwater robot was sent to retrieve the remains. Despite having records of missing divers in
the area, the local police have been thus far, unable to identify the poor
individual. Anyone missing a scuba
diver?
And...
 |
| Photograph by La Paz County Sheriff's Department |
Honorable mention
A snorkeler first reported the two skeletons in lawn chairs
in the Colorado River near Cienaga Springs, Arizona in May of 2015. The La Paz County Sheriff’s
Department and the Buckskin Fire Department sent a diver down with a video
camera to see what he could see. What he
could see was that it was two plastic skeletons with sunglasses, sitting in
lawn chairs, having an underwater picnic.
No murder scene and strange serial killer disposal site there. Although somewhat disconcerting, the
underwater picnic isn’t really illegal and the skeletons got to stay
there. No word has been forthcoming on
the creator of the tableau.
And that's about all the bones a fat woman could dig up, folks.
