The Strangest Places Bodies Have Been Found
There's something sad and gripping about bodies found in unexpected places. Even though the stories are usually horrific, one tends to be curious about such random discoveries. Some bodies are left out in the open for anyone to come across and find. In fact, some highways and forests have become synonymous with body dumping grounds.
The following list includes some of the strangest places bodies have been found. Some were uncovered in everyday places like church or a Walmart, while others were found in public, like in a shopping cart on the street. Whatever the case may be, the person who made the discovery will not forget about it anytime soon.
His Corpse Was Discovered On The Set Of 'The Six-Million Dollar Man'
Video: YouTube
Elmer McCurdy was an everyday outlaw who didn't become infamous until long after his passing. In 1911, McCurdy lost his life to police after robbing a train of $46 and two jugs of whiskey. At the mortuary home, no one claimed McCurdy, and the undertaker decided to preserve his body with arsenic and charge visitors to see it.
This display went on for a few years until one day, a man arrived at the mortuary home claiming to be McCurdy's brother. The mortician took the stranger at his word and allowed the man to take McCurdy. It turned out that the man was not McCurdy's kin, he was just a carnival worker. The man put McCurdy's corpse on display as the "Oklahoma Outlaw" in his traveling show. Years would go by, and as McCurdy was sold to other carnivals, the story of who he was became lost. Eventually, people assumed he was just a prop and treated him as such. McCurdy's corpse eventually made it's way to The Pike, an amusement park in Long Beach, CA.
In 1976, 65 years after his passing, a production crew for The Six Million Dollar Man was filming an episode of the show at The Pike. One of the film crew moved McCurdy's corpse out of the way thinking it was just a mannequin. The arm broke off, and the film crew was stunned to see bone and tissue where the arm once was. The police were called, and officers were able to identify the man as Elmer McCurdy. They sent him back home to Oklahoma, and on April 22, 1977, a service was held for McCurdy as he was buried in Guthrie, OK.
An Employee Was Found Inside Disneyland Paris's Haunted House
Photo: DocChewbacca / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0The Phantom Manor is Disneyland Paris's version of the popular Haunted Mansion attraction. The fictional narrative told inside the ride tells the story of a previous inhabitant who was visited by a phantom and subsequently passed. She is said to now haunt the house. It's a scary tale for kids visiting Disney's European outpost, but the haunted house got even creepier in April of 2016.
An actual body was discovered in the Phantom Manor by employees. The corpse belonged to a fellow employee who had worked at Disneyland Paris for 14 years. The 45-year-old was fixing a faulty piece of lighting behind the scenes when he was electrocuted.
Ghost Hunters Found A Woman's Body In An Abandoned Hospital
Photo: Forsaken Fotos / Flickr / CC BY 2.0In June of 2015, some ghost hunters paid a visit to the Kuhn Memorial State Hospital in Vicksburg, MS. The abandoned hospital was reportedly haunted, so the ghost hunters wanted to check it out for ghost sightings. What the ghost hunters discovered was much more chilling than a specter. They found the corpse of a woman outside of the hospital with a bloody trail leading to the hospital entrance.
The body belonged to 69-year-old Sharon Wilson, a woman who was reported missing. Two suspects were later arrested for the crime when they were discovered driving Wilson's car.
A Man's Body Was Found In A Homemade Coffin Alongside His Mother's Remains
Photo: Ambient Damage / Flickr / CC BY 2.0In May 2017, neighbors in Laredo, TX, became concerned about Gabriel Martinez after not seeing the septuagenarian out and about for a while. Martinez lived with his mother, who no one had seen in years. The lights remained on at all times, and the grass was getting high around his property. Concerned citizens called the police for a welfare check, and the police made an unsettling discovery.
Martinez's body was found inside the home in a homemade wooden coffin. What's more, there were remains of another body in the coffin that police believed to be Martinez's mother.
A Man's Body Was Found In A Hospital Ceiling
Photo: Presidencia de la República Mexicana / Flickr / CC BY 2.0In October 2017, a 61-year-old man disappeared after receiving abdominal surgery at a hospital in Stellenbosch, South Africa. A nurse said that they left the room to get some bed linens, and when the nurse returned, the man was missing. Almost two weeks later, the man's body was discovered in the ceiling of the hospital.
It is unclear why or how the man got up into the ceiling. The hospital was under construction at the time of his disappearance, which a hospital spokesman said complicated the search for the patient.
A Man's Body Was Discovered In A Fishing Net
Photo: Lynn Willis / Flickr / CC BY 2.0In December of 2016, fishermen in Cape Cod, MA, discovered something shocking in their nets. Among all the fish in their haul was a human body. The fishermen took the body to Provincetown and contacted the local police. Police were able to identify the body as Robert Carnevale of Rhode Island. As it turns out, Carnevale suffered from lymphoma and chose to be buried at sea.
While most prefer cremation for burials at sea, Carnevale opted to be interred in one piece. It is unknown what the family decided to do with Carnevale's body after he was found by the fishermen.
A Woman's Body Was Found In Walmart Bathroom
Photo: Mike Mozart / Flickr / CC BY 2.0In 2017, surveillance cameras recorded 29-year-old Katherine Caraway entering Walmart in Sand Springs, OK, on Friday, June 23, but she was never seen exiting the establishment. It wasn't until the following Monday when store employees discovered Caraway's body in a locked bathroom stall with an out-of-order sign on the door.
An employee remembered going into the bathroom on Friday evening and noticing the door locked. Instead of investigating, they figured something was wrong with the stall and placed the out-of-order sign on the door. Autopsy results found that Caraway's passing was accidental, ruling out any foul play. Medical examiners determined she passed from difluoroethane toxicity caused by "huffing" air duster, which investigators found in her car.
A Missing Woman's Body Was Found In A Church
Photo: Deseronto Archives / flickr / No known copyright restrictionsThirty minutes after family reported her missing, the body of 70-year-old Carolyn New was discovered by a pastor at the church she attended in Somerset, KY. New went to the church on Thursdays to clean and in August 2017, someone took New's life while she was in the church. Surveillance showed a man, Dwight Bell, taking New's car, which was eventually found abandoned in a parking lot in Indiana.
Police issued a warrant for Bell's arrest, and the suspect was captured a month later in Knoxville, TN. During a news conference after apprehending Bell, police disclosed that Bell confessed to ending New's life, although his motive is unclear.
A Woman's Body Was Discovered In A Cardboard Box In A Shopping Cart
In August 2017, two men were walking on a New York street in the Bronx looking for bottles to recycle. The men came across a shopping cart and decided to look in it for recyclables. Instead of bottles, they discovered a decomposing corpse hidden inside a cardboard box. The men went to the police about their findings, and examiners were able to identify the victim as Nivela Hassan.
The 27-year-old Hassan was concealed in a cardboard box and placed inside of the shopping cart. Police were able to obtain surveillance footage, which showed a man, Darryl Orr, wheeling the cart in the street. Orr was apprehended, and he confessed to meeting Hassan and doing drugs together in his apartment, where he later discovered Hassan. He put Hassan's body in the box and then pushed it three blocks away from his apartment in the cart. Orr was charged with concealing a human corpse and drug possession.
