With a human skull in the garden?

[Slippersandacuppa]

Because I've never been in this situation before.

We've been tidying up the garden and have piles of rubble all over the place. One of our rickety old fences borders a graveyard (very old belonging to ancient church) and I'm assuming the skull sort of drifted under our fence and has been near the top of the soil for a while. I hope.

I've googled but can't seem to find much info. I'll be contacting the parish council on Monday but wondered if it warrants a call to 101 (or whatever it is) to register it just in case it's not a graveyard wanderer

Anyone had a similar experience?!

After we moved into my old house we had a knock on the door asking if we had forwarding details for the last residents. We didn't, they had been tennats and the house then sold, done up and sold onto us.
Talking to the lady nextdoor, who had lived there for 60 years, we found out that the wife had vanished overnight with the husband doing the same a couple of days later. Before the husband vanished he bricked up the coal shed.

I often think I really should have unbricked the shed.........

Hold on! I've just re-remembered the leg bone. Am just off to retrieve that from the feature...

What are you implying Jane? Hmm?

Are you joking?!

GO AND UNBRICK IT

I don't live there anymore.

pipbin Can't you pretend you left something there and go and have a look? We need to know what's in there. It's like that safe thread.

Oh this thread has cheered me up - certify it dead, haha!

I'm a wee bit sad at the thought that poor Yorick may have been deliberately buried outside the graveyard though, like someone suggested some people were deemed not worthy of a proper Christian burial if they had committed suicide or were of a different faith.

There are some really sad stories about lovers who were not allowed to be buried together so were buried with a wall between them, their graves connected by stone hands touching across the divide. This this one www.visualnews.com/2013/07/26/grave-connects-two-lovers-and-their-differing-beliefs/

So maybe poor Yorick was an outcast.

The guy we sold it too is a cock of the highest order sadly.
I could give the police an anonymous tip off though. That would piss him off and we'd find out.

Hmm, has anybody other than OP ever found a body?

My grandmother once found a body under a car in central London. Apparently it didn't look as if it had been hit by the car but was tidily lined up between the wheels so must have been shoved in there after the car had been parked. AFAIK, the police never identified who had put it there.

He is an outcast no more.

That reminds me, last week DH found a huge tooth, complete with roots in our garden.

I think it's a dog's molar. We buried our dog in the garden a couple of years ago, but in a separate bit. I hope to god he's not resurfacing.

But we've been doing a lot of work in the bit where DH found the tooth. My best guess is that either we've dug up someone else's old dog from years back, or it came with the topsoil that we've had delivered.

Goodness this thread moved on quickly! I'm glad he was named Yorick!! So exciting, I wonder who it is.

He is an outcast no more

Good, maybe poor YS will have the dignity in death that he wasn't afforded in life. unless you sling him in the dishwasher

Pipbin I actually think your neighbour had a duty to report that - a woman goes missing, days later her husband bricks up the coalshed before going missing himself? I seriously would be tempted to mention that to the police, they may still have a missing persons file open for the couple. Mind you, I doubt breaking down someone's coalshed is top of their priorities, but perhaps there are still relatives alive who wonder where they went...?

Hmm, has anybody other than OP ever found a body?

Unfortunately, yes, I found a body on my way to work once. It was the middle of winter, bitterly cold and the poor man had been sleeping rough in a wooded area on my walk to work. It was the days before mobiles so I ran to work to phone the police. It was really quite sad , especially as I don't think the police ever found any next of kin.

Catz, that's awful. Sorry I asked now. I don't suppose there are really any happy stories of people finding bodies are there!

I am really happy to say I have never found a body. Except for peoples beloved cats.

Forgot to say that he seemed quite happy overnight. Didn't move an inch (thank crumbs the dogs didn't get him).

Wakeup Credit must go to you for the first part of his name! I was too distracted by Benedict Scrummyback in Hamlet to pay attention to any skulls

Marypoppins Here are photos of the two bits of bone from the boys' creation for your friend while I await confirmation that I'm not going to get arrested for posting pics of YS's head. I'm thinking hoping sheep?

Here

Catz

Finding a "recent" body is definitely not pleasant, especially in a house with heating on. It certainly gives you an insight into what really happens to bodies after death. For this reason I am going to be cremated.

I do think the Jewish custom of burying their dead within 24 hours if possible (and in a plain wooden box) is sensible.

Do I get some sort of prize if I deftly turn this into a parking thread?

Got home to find a car blocking our drive. Doesn't bother me too much but it gets on DH's nut. So he goes into the church to ask the little old disabled lady to stop blocking our drive.

Maybe they're the ones who lobbed YS over the fence at us.

I grew up in a big, very old historical type house, my sister and I were digging in the garden and found some human bones (definitely very old). We also found a very old brooch which made its way into a local museum. No skull though.
We covered them up again and never played in that part of the garden again!

Fascinating! If you're next to a graveyard, I suppose it could have been a person who committed suicide or something, I think they were often buried in unhallowed ground, just outside graveyards in olden times? Rather than a migratory skull from the graveyard, I mean.

I have a skull, but mine is a plaster one, painted to look like the real thing. I bought it in an antique/junkshop years ago, and it's called Horace (a nod to Horatio from Hamlet - didn't want to go with Yorrick because too obvious, so tangented off a bit). I use him to keep my headphones on. (Better than those perspex see-through jobs!)

I've both found a recently deceased body on the beach - drowning victim - and worked on a project where old bones were found. But we were excavating in a graveyard, where it was known that there were unmarked graves, so it wasn't much of a shock. The lads still didn't want to work on it though, all the big 'ard contractors staff refused to back after the first lot had been found as it freaked them out.

The poor drowning victim freaked me out though, saw him be washed up

I've found bits of skeletons walking by the coast, where erosion has pushed graveyards to the edge of the cliff. Dunwich. If you find any bits you can take them to the church and they will be reburied in consecrated ground.