An Ohio resident stumbled across an incredible discovery last week in a neighbor’s garage when he picked up a box containing decomposed human remains. The box was sitting in a detached garage in a Cincinnati suburb when the neighbor discovered them and called police.
The man who discovered the bones reportedly heard children near a neighbor’s garage and went to check out what was going on. “The concerned resident responded to the area the voices were heard to conduct a precautionary safety check,” the Mt. Healthy Police Department said in a statement. “After entering the garage, the resident observed a box which appeared to contain decomposed human remains.”
“It’s one of the more bizarre cases in my 40-plus year history that we’ve ever stumbled across,” Mt. Healthy Police Chief Vincent Demasi told WLWT.
Police believe the bones could be over a century old after they discovered that the human remains once belonged to a fraternal group called the “Independent Order of Odd Fellows” who considered the remains “relics.” The group was founded in 1819 and reportedly had “a large following” according to police.
The Odd Fellows once met in the garage where the remains were found. Police reported that when the current owner of the garage moved in, he didn’t clean everything out but “stored material contained therein, including the box with human remains, in the garage he purchased here in Mt. Healthy.”
What’s even more bizarre is that investigators revealed that over 100 years ago, Ohio prisons would sell the unclaimed dead bodies of prisoners to the public. “My understanding is back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that it was not unusual for unclaimed cadavers to be able to be purchased for various uses,” Demasi explained. Police believe this is how the “Odd Fellows” ended up with the remains, which they would use for rituals.
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows no longer holds meetings in Mt. Healthy, but the group still exists. According to its website, the Odd Fellows has been around since at least the 1700s in England, but the North American group was founded in 1819 by Thomas Wildey and four others when they started Washington Lodge No. 1.
On its website, the group claims to be “one of the oldest and largest fraternities in the world.” “We are non-political and non-sectarian,” the website states. “Membership is open to all regardless of sex, race, religion, political affiliation and social status -all bound by the desire to improve ourselves and the calling to live and promote the principles of Friendship, Love, and Truth which transcends labels” (emphasis original).
While the Odd Fellows lists a number of activities and projects it partakes in, it does not mention any rituals involving dead bodies.
The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office is examining the human bones to see if it can identify them but nothing further has been discovered about who they belong to or exactly how old they are.