A box of human remains suspected to be used in rituals 100 years ago was found Thursday night in Mount Healthy, a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio, the Mount Healthy Police Department reported.
A Mount Healthy resident was conducting a safety check on juveniles after hearing their voices coming from a nearby garage. Upon entering, the citizen observed a box full of decomposed human bones, police said.
The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office was called to the scene and the the box of remains was recovered for examination and identification, the police said in the statement. (RELATED: Human Bones Found Behind Massachusetts Home)
“We have no reason to believe the remains found were from a recent homicide,” police wrote.
Bones found in a Mt. healthy garage are being traced back to an Ohio prison, the sale of unclaimed bodies, rituals involving skeletons, an old Odd Fellows building and a ghost named Frieda. This story at 5&6 @wlwt is as bizarre as it sounds. Tune in! pic.twitter.com/NZkVdg7ftk
— Karin Johnson WLWT (@karinjohnson) March 25, 2022
“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,” Mt. Healthy police chief Vince Demasi said in a WLWT NBC report.
“The human remains found were relics used by a group known as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) as part of their organization’s rituals,” according to police statement.
“The organization was founded in 1819 and had a large following, including a lodge here in Mt. Healthy. The garage owner purchased a building in Mt. Healthy where the group met. The group has long since moved from our area and when the new building owner cleaned the building, he stored material contained therein, including the box with human remains, in the garage he purchased here in Mt. Healthy,” the statement concluded.
The organization is now based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Some Notable Odd Fellows were Charlie Chaplin, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Sir Winston Churchill to name a few, according to IOOF’s website.