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I wasn't as scared as I should have been but my feared gene is broken and I have been drinking.

So we have a lake less than an hour from home and my daughter's friend had never been camping so we decided to do a quick overnight there.

We mom and daughter 18 then camp a lot and like the solitude so we often try to find the most remote places.

No campsite or anything, just drive up and find a space.

So we found this nice little peninsula big enough for about 3 campsites and it being Sunday we were hoping the other two groups would leave.

They did eventually and we had the place very much to ourselves.

As the night goes on we have a nice fire, sing, laugh, I'm drinking wine, we're making s'mores.

Everything is perfect until we go to sleep.

About an hour in the girls are bugging me to wake up because it's raining and we need to put the cover on the tent.

It was a huge tent so all hands were needed.

By now the wind is blowing and we're struggling but we finally get it covered and it's back to sleep.

We go until a motorcycle, more specifically a dirt bike, at about 2:00 AM just riding circles around the peninsula.

Mind you, this is literally a small enough area that only three large tents plus three cars would fit, and there's nothing else nearby but bushes and the lake.

There would be no reason to be there as it was obvious we were alone.

Up, down, around and stop, never cutting the engine.

I just want to sleep.

So I go to the front of the tent and unzip it.

I look outside and see him just staring, so I climb out of the tent and stare back.

It's dark and I can't tell if this Creek can even see me, so I go back in the tent, frustrated.

The girls asked what he's doing and when I tell them they get really frightened.

I tell them I'm going to go give him a piece of my mind.

They are terrified, demand that I don't leave the tent.

So I settle back in and wait.

Up around, circle, engine, Rev idle, over and over.

This guy goes on for at least another hour.

I've had it down, up around with all that annoying bladding motocross sound blasting by our tent back and forth and stop.

I look out, he's staring again.

I'm about to go stomping over to go tell him off when I get the tingles all down my spine.

He was facing directly towards our tent, saying nothing, just still and staring.

I realize I have no weapons, no way to protect the girls, and he's between US and the car.

I wait.

I'm outside the tent, but I haven't made a move forward because now instinct and logic have the better of me and I realized that an aggressive approach is probably the wrong move.

I stay stock still, just like the rider, for what felt like an eternity, both of us staring.

Must have been 20 minutes.

I stood there and then just like that he took off, drove off the peninsula and out of ear shots and never came back.

To this day, I'll never know what that was about or if I did the right thing.

I can only say I'm glad I never confronted him.

My gut just told me no.

As for my daughter and I, I think I need to buy a weapon if we're going to camp alone like this again.

An acquaintance of mine who happened to have been a cop once told me this little tale he experienced several years ago.

Back then he was a deputy and still new to the patrol scene.

Since he was new to it, he got called often to more simple tasks, tasks that made the more experienced deputies jobs easier.

One night the deputy got a request over his radio to sit on a suicide scene.

The victim was still inside the home and they needed the deputy to sit and guard the main entry to the home until the coroner got there to take the body.

They didn't want any relatives or anyone else to enter the scene and mess up evidence.

Basically, that was a standard procedure.

So the deputy got to the home of the suicide victim and confirmed with the cops already on the scene that he was there to wait for the coroner.

It was the middle of the night, so the deputy grabbed his flip phone out of the patrol car and settled on the front porch to play some snake.

All was totally quiet around him after everyone else left.

All the deputy could hear were the occasional sounds of distant barking dogs and the faint sounds of the sparse Hwy.

traffic.

The silence did indeed make him a little nervous, especially considering what lie only a few feet away and invisible to him only because of a wall.

So it was only natural that his instincts had his ears on high alert.

So he was startled when he suddenly thought he heard a rustling sound seemingly coming from inside the house behind him.

All he could do was sit there and wait and listen intently.

A few minutes went by though, and he didn't hear anything else, so he just figured he probably heard the house settling or something.

Over half an hour went by and the deputy was starting to get a little drowsy, staring at Snake on his small flip phone, so he flipped it shut and sat back for a few minutes to relax.

But then suddenly there was that sound again, which seemed louder this time.

A strange rustling sound, like maybe rustling papers, He thought to himself, puzzled as he sat there and listened hard.

He heard it again and that time he was sure it was coming from inside the house behind him where the victim was.

At that point, the deputy admits he was pretty scared.

He didn't want to call for backup until he was sure there was someone inside the house.

But he also didn't want to go inside the dark creepy death scene by himself to investigate either.

So we stood up and waited once again for any noise while resting his hand on the weapon in his belt.

Then the deputy drew his weapon as a loud sound from behind him caused him to spin around and face a large window by the front door, covered by vertical hanging blinds.

As he turned around to face the window, an explosion of movement disturbed the Vertical Blinds.

The deputy did admit to me in telling of this story that he did in fact definitely jump and scream as most anyone would.

The deputy's vision quickly cleared and he stared at the face on the other side of the window, definitely not expecting to see that particular face staring back at him.

The deputy screamed and went wide eyed.

The face staring back at him made a startled sound and went wide eyed as well.

Then for a quiet moment man and feline eyed each other before both turning away, feeling stupid I guess.

The victim had a pet cat which ended up most likely going to a relative of the victims.

The deputy admitted to me after telling me this story that he felt it was one of the scariest instances he had ever had in his entire career.

Near Central California, there's an old mining community that you've probably heard of called the Mother Lode.

It's an area of California that was a large part of the Gold rush.

That is where this story takes place.

On the way out of town down a long road almost like a stretch of Hwy.

you suddenly veer off to the right and go down a rough older road.

Less than 1/4 mile down the road dead ends into a circle parking area with a gate at the end which is kept locked by the city.

If you were to go past the gate you would end up at a popular lake.

In my area.

When you park at the end, you are basically surrounded on one side by steep hills dotted with poison oak and tall pine and oak trees.

The other side is a steep downhill slope to the lake.

So basically you are in a bowl.

We were told that if we were to go up to the left up the steep hill that there would be an old mine long abandoned by the miners that the county didn't close.

About 250 feet up the steep hill we found the old mine almost hidden in a slight divot in the hillside that you wouldn't see unless you walked right up on it.

To get into the mine you had to climb down a slight slope into the ground and go over some medium sized rocks on the ground, leftovers from when they blasted into the mountain.

The mine itself was about 7 feet tall and six feet wide, which formed a tunnel that was about 250 feet into the mountain.

The mine had rough rock walls with a colorful vein running along the left wall.

This vein is said to indicate the presence of gold by its ribbons of colors.

The tunnel followed along that vein, taking at least two turns with a couple of short dead ended offshoots.

As you got deeper into the mine, you had to step carefully to avoid mud, which is what the old or cart tracks were handy for, or car tolled blasted rocks out of the mine on like mini railroad tracks.

Once you were inside the mine, it was completely and utterly dark and silent except for the sounds of the wind howling and dripping water.

We took our time walking into the dark tunnel until we eventually reached the tunnel's end, a wall of solid rock.

Disappointed, we started on the way back to the entrance.

My buddy decided to stop near the entrance to chip some sample rock from the vein in the wall.

He promised to be quick, so I just stood and waited for him.

I maybe stood there for a couple of minutes before I heard the first strange sound.

It sounded like a small pile of rocks toppling over, echoing up the shaft towards us.

I tried to tell my buddy what I just heard but he didn't hear me so I just let it go.

Not even 2 minutes later I heard it again, this time closer.

This time I got his attention to tell him what I just heard, but he just thought I was being paranoid.

He said you're just hearing an echo from me.

I tried to take his word for it, but again, not even 2 minutes later, there it was again.

That time, the sound came with a feeling of panic and fear.

That was when I literally just said you only have to be faster than your slowest friend.

Then I just took off running over the rocks and out of the mine.

When he came out a few minutes later he said he walked back to the end and didn't see any fallen rocks.

I didn't go back there until a few years later with another buddy of mine.

Same as before, up the steep hill we went.

The mine looked exactly as it did before, front to back with no signs of a cave in, just as my other buddy had done before.

My other buddy had just.

My buddy just had to stop on the way out to chip away at that vein winding along the left wall.

As I was standing there waiting, I heard another strange scary sound, but that time it sounded like a rattle and we both heard it.

The only way we could describe it was it sounded just like a baby rattle.

We both froze and looked at each other, puzzled and anxious, illuminated in each other's headlamps.

Not even a couple minutes later we both heard it again, the sound of a baby rattle.

We both grew up here so we knew it wasn't a rattlesnake or anything, which are common here.

When we heard it the third time, the creepy feeling came right back to me and I just ran out of there as fast as I could, practically tripping on the rocks on the way out.

I haven't gone back since.

I can't describe it.

Something about that old mine just came with a bad scary feeling and both people that went there with me felt it as well.

OK, so a little bit of back story for this.

My great grandmother's second husband was apparently a total sadist who systematically abused her grandchildren for many, many years in pretty much every way you can imagine.

These grandchildren happen to be my dad and his sisters, and it had a horrendous effect on them as you can probably imagine.

It was also totally unknown to anyone but them until quite a while after he died, which coincidentally was around the same time I was born.

So as I said, the abuse had a really harsh effect on my family's collective psyche and it made them vigilance to the point of paranoia when it came to protecting me from a similar fate.

As a result, I was basically never allowed to play outside without strict supervision, and I most certainly, and I most certainly, was never allowed to go to sleepovers at my friends houses when I was a kid.

Anyway, this story takes place back in the early 90s when I was about 7 or 8 years old.

My family was living down in Florida just when the holidays were about to roll around.

We were a very close family for reasons I already stated, so my Nana lived with us right up until the day she passed.

She helped out around the house and with a lot of child care stuff, so whenever I was home due to school holidays or whatever, she would always look after me whenever my mom and dad had to work.

I adored her with all my heart.

She was just about the best Nana that anyone could ever wish for.

And she was tough as an old boot too.

So this particular year I was lucky enough to have gotten the one thing I really, really wanted Santa to bring me a brand new pair of roller skates.

I was obsessed with them, and from the moment I got them, I was itching to practice so I could get good enough to start going really fast or nail some tricks on them.

One afternoon I'm zooming up and down the sidewalk outside our house, getting better and better with each passing hour, while Nana is sitting on the porch and keeping a close eye on me in between bouts of reading a magazine or a book or something.

Then at one point the phone rings and Nana basically has no choice but to duck inside to answer it, since it might have been my mom or dad saying they needed to stay late at work or something.

I don't know.

Something important?

Anyway, I'm guessing she did their Dawn, calling me inside knowing I would kick up a fuss if I had to stop skating even for a minute.

So she must have figured that she could probably duck inside and answer the phone without it being too much of A risk.

But as she did, she kept the main door open so she could still see me through the screen door.

It took a minute or two for her to get back from the call, but nothing went down during that time.

So I figured that gave her a little Peace of Mind that she didn't have to worry about me all the time.

When she gets back, she goes back to reading her thing while I was hard at work learning to spin on the spot or whatever trick I had my heart set on learning.

Then, after maybe another 45 minutes or so, she calls to me that it was time for a lemonade break and that we had to go inside.

I remember begging her with everything I had to just please please please let me skate for just a little while longer.

I managed to bargain with her somehow, telling her I'd skate just a few more minutes, but also swearing that I would come inside as soon as she made the lemonade, no ifs or buts.

She kind of scowls at me for a second, probably silently cursing the fact that she couldn't quite say no to me whenever I begged her like that, but she eventually agreed before going inside to get the lemonade ready.

But when she did, she tells me to sing as loud as I can so she can hear me from the kitchen and know that I was still there.

So I did as I was told and warbled all the boys to Men lyrics I knew while I continued to skate up and down.

Then maybe only a few minutes goes by and I look up to see this big old van turn onto our street.

It starts cruising along, all slow, almost looking like they were lost or looking for something.

But I mean, I didn't pay it any mind.

I was a kid, naive, and besides, I was too busy being happy with my skates to really consider any danger it might pose.

And on top of that, I was with my tough old Nana and nothing could ever hurt me so long as she was around.

Or at least that's what I thought.

So as it rolls up alongside me and slows to a stop, I just carry on trying my very best to twirl on the spot with my skates.

In fact, knowing me, I probably tried to show off a little given I had an impromptu audience.

The next thing I know, the passenger side of the van opens.

And a very, very tall man steps out.

I know everyone is tall when you have yet to hit 10 years old, but this guy probably towered over all the other grown-ups he was around too.

He was skinny to boot.

He looked like a scarecrow and a skeleton's love child or something.

Just all gangly limbs with a shock of salt and pepper, hair messily strewn across his scalp.

He approaches me and asked me which way the highway is and I just pointed back down the street.

I'm not even sure that was the right direction, but I sure as heck wanted to be helpful to a stranger.

I remember he smiled and thanked me and it was only then that I started to get nervous.

It was his teeth.

They were all discolored and crooked.

I think most kids associate monsters with their teeth.

Maybe most adults do too.

I know I certainly do, and seeing that guy's teeth put the fear of God into me.

But I tried to stay polite when he asked me how my Christmas went, showing him my new skates, when he asked me what Santa had brought me that year.

It was then that he told me that Santa had been extra generous to him and his family that year and had brought his daughter so many presents that she didn't even want all of them.

Now, my family has always been close knit, loving and generous with their money.

They just never had a lot of it.

So holidays for us were always pretty sparse affairs.

Which is why when the scarecrow man told me his daughter got so much that she didn't even want some of her presents, I couldn't quite believe my ears.

And when he actually offered me a Barbie themed dollhouse 1 I actually really did want, I almost forgot about how nervous I was of him.

It wasn't enough to completely shake the fear out of me though, so when he told me he had it in the back of the van, asking me if I'd like to come take a look, I just started skating away from him, shaking my head silently.

But instead of just shrugging it off and getting back into his van, he starts to follow me back towards my parents place, asking if it was where I lived, if my parents were home, that kind of stuff.

We hadn't had any stranger danger lessons in school so it was only out of pure instinct that I unlatched the gate to my parents place and began to wail for my Nana.

No sooner had I let out the second cry than my Nana appears with this big old cast iron pan in her hand and comes tearing up the path towards me and what I know now to be my potential abductor.

And she's screaming bloody murder as she does so.

I didn't see this at the time, but from what my mom told me years later at my nana's funeral, this guy takes one look at Nana, fills his britches, and just bugs the heck out of there as she chases his van up the street.

I do remember seeing her swinging that pan around and telling him to come back so she could beat him black and blue.

And as much as her display of furiousness freaked me out, I was just grateful she could be twice as scary as Scarecrow Man had been.

The way my mom tells it, Nana had tried to get the vans tag number only to find it didn't have one.

The guy was a predator through and through and had obviously been prepping and gearing up to kidnap someone for whatever reason that may be.

Next thing I know the cops are at our house.

My dad has come home early from work and I'm having to tell people over and over again what the guy looked like while they write things down and ask me a zillion questions about the color of the van, the guy's clothes, like every little detail you could possibly think of.

Needless to say, I didn't get to go out on my skates again for the rest of the holidays.

So like I mentioned this whole story came up at my Nana's funeral when we were telling tales about her.

And the one really freaky thing about the whole incident, and something I didn't know until years and years after, was that when me and Nana described the scarecrow man to the cops, they both shot each other a look like holy crap.

Before telling Nana and my dad that we had pretty much just described another one of their perps to them to AT.

We had described a guy that had made several other attempts at kidnapping kids in broad daylight over the holiday period.

A guy they were desperate to get their hands on because they knew it was just a matter of time before his luck turned and he managed to trick a kid into getting into the van.

Knowing I could well have been dead before my 10th birthday, having endured unimaginable torment before I was finally put out of my misery.

It's something that makes my skin crawl.

Even to this day, on the morning after Thanksgiving of 2003, the snow covered winter Wonderland that was the Horn Creek Conference Center in Westcliffe, Colorado made for a peaceful and serene setting.

But that peace was to be shattered when the naked corpse of a young woman was found lying frozen in the snow just outside one of the guest cabins.

The young woman's name was Natalie Drissel.

Natalie was 20 years old when she was found dead, having grown in her native Missouri, then moving to the state of Florida to attend college.

During the summer of 2003, Natalie had taken a job working at the Horn Creek Conference Center during a Christian summer camp event that was being held there.

It was here that she met her boyfriend, who had a full time job there, and it was during the Thanksgiving break of 2003 that she decided to make the journey back up to Colorado to visit him, with the couple opting to stay in separate guest cabins for the duration of their trip.

Given the pious nature of their location, the couple spent Thanksgiving together, taking romantic walks around the snow covered campgrounds hand in hand.

Afterwards, Natalie's boyfriend dropped her off back at the cabin shortly after midnight of Friday, November 28th, so that she could get some rest.

But the next morning, the boyfriend went back to the very same cabin to check up on her, yet found she wasn't there.

He looked around a little and was disturbed to find footprints in the snow leading away from the cabin, ones that had obviously been made by someone's bare feet.

Given the shape and size, this must have sent him into a panic, wondering what could have frightened his girlfriend so much that she fled into the freezing night in nothing but her bare feet.

He followed the tracks for a short while into a wooded area around 200 yards from the camp's conference building before finding her body lying in the

snow at around 8:50 AM.

But Natalie wasn't just barefoot, she was completely naked.

Her exposed arms and legs were all scratched up and bruised, and by the time her boyfriend found her body, rigor mortis had set in.

She was completely stiff, like a wax model, and it must have been extremely traumatizing for him to see someone he loved so dearly in such a terrible state.

Custer County Sheriff Fred Job said there was only a single set of prints that had LED them to Natalie's body, meaning she had not been pursued by anyone in the moments before her death.

He also said that the pattern of her footprints appeared to be erratic, as she had been wandering through the area in a daze before she had collapsed.

It was also judged that given the state of rigor mortis she was in, that she had actually died very soon after being dropped off back at the cabin, maybe only 15 to 20 minutes after the boyfriend had departed.

An autopsy was performed over at the El Paso County Coroner's Office on November 30th, with the conclusion being that Natalie appeared to have been in a completely healthy state before she had died.

Given that there were pine needles in her hair, with dirt and abrasions on her face and shoulder, and coupled with a chaotic patterning among her footprints, it appeared that Natalie had actually run into one or two trees as she fled her cabin.

Evidence of such injuries included, among other things, linear scratches on her forehead, cheeks, chest, abdomen and legs.

Small.

Contusions just.

Above the trachea on her right cheek and to the right of her chin, and purple contusions on her left forearm, hand and wrist other than.

Evidence.

Of injuries which the coroner believed were consistent with running through trees and brush, she had no visible external injuries.

It is also.

Interesting to.

Note that the autopsy showed that there were no internal injuries to her brain, so we can safely rule out there being some kind of hemorrhage or tumor being to blame for Natalie's strange behavior while the autopsy.

Did not.

Determine the cause of death, Sheriff Job said they've ruled out.

Anything.

Criminal.

It's just really.

Really.

Weird, but we're still hoping to find out something more conclusive.

Lee Roybal, officer in charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, also commented on the unusual nature of Natalie's death, saying it's the strangest.

Thing.

You've ever seen although there?

Could be no definitive.

Answers as to why or how Natalie had died, the coroner was.

Forced to.

Conclude that she had ultimately died from a phenomenon known as excited delirium.

She had absolutely no traces of narcotics or alcohol in her system when she died, and despite not being able to give a concrete conclusion that she had died of excited delirium, listed 6 main factors that had caused him to reach such a decision.

The 1st and.

Main point.

Being that she had been found completely naked, having not been obviously pursued by anyone, there were also no internal injuries at all, so no obvious way of telling how she had died.

There was also the.

Complete.

Lack of narcotics in her system.

So there was no way a drug could be to blame for the erratic state she was in that evening.

There was also the possibility that given she was a recent arrival to a relatively high altitude from sea level Florida, that a lack of oxygen in her brain could be to blame for the delirium.

On top of all this, there was an elevated.

Amount.

Of glucose in her urine.

As has been stated, there could be no concrete conclusions as to how Natalie had died, but there was much.

Rumor.

And speculation in the days that followed.

For example, there was a great deal of attention paid to her boyfriend, given that he was a natural suspect, having been the past person to see Natalie alive as well as the person.

Who?

Found her corpse first, yet Natalie's family did not and still do not believe that her boyfriend had anything to do with her untimely death.

There was also.

A great amount of.

Conjecture regarding a supposed eating disorder that Natalie had been dealing with and that the cardiac arrest she suffered was a direct result of malnutrition.

Given the mysterious circumstances and a plethora of different theories put forward to explain Natalie's death, it is almost impossible.

To.

Decide on a definitive explanation as to how or why she passed away.

What's clear is that she had absolutely no history of mental illness, had no history of drug use, and was in perfect health right up until that Thanksgiving weekend.

Yet suddenly she appears to have had some kind of psychotic break for no obvious reason at all.

One moment her boyfriend was dropping her back at the guest cabin and she was perfectly normal the next.

She.

Was stripped naked and she was sprinting through the snow covered woods in the dark at such a speed that she collided with tree trunks as she ran.

With the whole episode ending and her dropping dead just a few 100 yards away from where she was staying, we have to admit the situation is truly and terrifyingly bizarre.

With the information at hand raising many more questions than answers, although the.

Coroner gave the.

Explanation of excited delirium.

It has proved to be a controversial diagnosis, the condition known.

As.

Excited delirium is not recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, or the American Medical Association and therefore not listed a medical condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The UK Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody suggests that the syndrome should be termed sudden death.

In.

Restraint syndrome in order to enhance clarity.

Examples of.

Deaths.

Due to the condition are found primarily in restraint or attempted restraint situations, while medical preconditions and symptoms attributed to the syndrome are far more varied.

In which case, can we even place any credence in such an explanation?

And if we dismiss it entirely, we are left with a gaping hole in Natalie's story and trying to explain just how she lost her life, but still.

Is it possible that Natalie.

Encountered someone or something in or around that cabin that gave her such a fright that it could have triggered a highly panicked state that could have been confused with so-called excited delirium.

And if so, just what was it that she encountered?

Could it have been some kind of Twilight creeper who posed such a terrifying threat that Natalie abandoned all reason and logic, deciding it was better to run naked into the snow in order to escape such a threat?

Or perhaps.

It was something.

Far worse, a large, wild, aggressive animal perhaps, that wasn't about to display the same kind of subtlety and was about to smash its way into the cabin to devour her.

It's unclear what caused such a state of fear that night, but one thing is clear in abundance that we will never know exactly what happened to Natalie Drissel, and that we'll have to accept that here we are, walking the earth, knowing that at any moment we too could simply fall down dead from some mysterious ailment that leaves our loved ones as baffled as they are heartbroken.

On December 14th.

2014 A teenage boy is exploring the woods around the back roads of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, around 30 feet from the nearest path.

It is a quiet, rarely traveled area where the nearest Tarmac Rd.

is just under a mile away, One that cuts through a residential area that hosts only around a dozen or so homes with minimal traffic, little more than a locally known shortcut to and from Route 989.

The young lad is in a world of his own, enjoying the peace and tranquility of nature, completely unaware of what he is about to stumble across.

He only spots what he is about to discover because it looks extremely out of place even among the.

Death and.

Decay of the Pennsylvania winter The thing has a distinct air of morbidity about it When he recognizes what it is, he turns on his.

Heels.

And run screaming from the woods, tears in his.

Eyes.

His heart racing.

In his.

Chest because what he had discovered that Gray December day was a severed.

Head.

Only.

This wasn't the.

Disembodied head of a newly murdered person this particular.

Head.

Had been embalmed preserved when the police.

Finally.

Arrived hours later, they discovered that the eyes of the severed head were shut, but the mouth was.

Wide.

Open they intensively.

Searched.

The surrounding area for any signs of the body it had once been attached to but found.

Nothing.

The head was so.

Well.

Preserved that its face was still definitively recognizable, but a subsequent.

Facial.

Reconstruction yielded no clues to the owner's identity.

Forensic Examiner.

'S.

Estimated that it had been there for a between one week and a month, just lying there among the fallen leaves, waiting to be.

Discovered.

If the Gray.

Hairs that covered.

Her scalp were anything to go by, it was thought that the owner.

Of the.

Severed head was anything from 50 to 80 years of age an anatomy.

Professor.

Turned forensic artist by the name of Michelle Vitale examined the head in excruciating detail by request of the local Police Department.

After hours upon hours of study, she came to a shocking conclusion that whoever had severed the head had done so with the skill of an expert pathologist.

That they must.

Have had some.

Kind of anatomical training to have completed the task with such precision.

A conclusion shockingly reminiscent of the world famous 19th century serial killer Jack the Ripper when we.

Lifted the skin.

Flap at the nape of the neck.

We could see that the whole purpose of that was to access the key joint that would preserve both the head and the vertebral column, she told local news reporters during a horrifying interview.

This is.

Not anybody.

Going with a kitchen knife or anything remotely like that, it was well.

Done.

And it was placed perfectly.

She was dismembered professionally.

Another piece.

Of evidence that.

Supported the theory that whoever had severed the head had done so with professional skill.

Was the use of what are?

Known.

As eye caps a common.

Morticians.

Tool These are devices that reassemble contact lenses and are worn in a chillingly similar way.

They slip between the eyeball and the eyelid of the deceased person and are complete with small ridges or spikes that main the natural curvature of the eye whilst holding the eyelids shut.

The pathologist who?

Examined the embalmed head, removed these eye caps and found that the person's eyeballs had been removed, but also made a disturbing discovery.

The eyeballs had been replaced with small red rubber bouncy balls, the kind A.

Child.

Might play with whoever had done such a thing.

Obviously had a sick sense of humor and was undoubtedly a very dangerously disturbed individual.

After.

The initial forensic.

Analysis The embalmed head was sent over to Salt Lake City based ISO Forensics who undertook isotope testing on it for those.

Unfamiliar.

With the technique, isotopes are.

Particles.

That can be found in the human body that come from drinking water that can be traced back to a particular geographical location.

When the results of the isotope testing came back, investigators were able to conclude that the woman had spent the previous several months being something of a nomad, having lived or at least stayed in areas including West Virginia, western Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, and even as far as eastern Ohio and New York State.

Yet despite there.

Being.

Evidence to the owner of the severed head having lived in so many places, there was little to.

Show that.

She had ever lived in Beaver County during time leading up to her death or discovered.

However, the use of embalming fluid meant that determining the exact time of death was almost impossible.

It also made.

DNA.

Matching next to impossible as the fluid destroyed nucleotide bonds that enabled such analysis to be undertaken, the small amount that.

Was.

Obtained was so damaged that it could not be matched to any other samples in the national database, but much to the.

Relief of those.

Involved with the analysis, it was discovered that.

There was.

No criminal elements to her death that the cardiac arrest was the most likely explanation for her demise this was due to.

Toxicology.

Tests that had shown that there were trace amounts of lidocaine and atropine in her system, which are both varieties of medication that are used to treat irregular heart issues.

Most likely a cardiac arrest, but not completely confirmed.

One homicide detective was said to have been extremely skeptical that the owner of the embalmed head had died of natural causes, having seen far too many cases in which the possessiveness of the killer was displayed in their willingness to tamper and toy with the body of their quarry.

When interviewed by journalists, Beaver County Coroner Terry Tatolovich Rossi said.

Could it have been someone with a great deal of anatomical knowledge?

Yes.

Could it have been someone who is just?

Peculiar or bizarre?

The answer to that question is also yes.

We just don't.

Know at this.

Point, Michael.

O'Brien the.

Borough police chief claimed the embalmed head was found so far off the road that it was entirely possible that it could have been simply thrown from a passing car.

It was also determined that the scent and flavor of the embalming fluid would have made the flesh very unappealing to scavenger animals, so there was little chance it had been dropped by some hungry fox.

The placement was deliberate.

Someone had wanted it to be found sooner or later.

A number of.

Funeral homes.

That associated with the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association were contacted with Pleas for information and details of the bizarre case were even shared at a National Funeral Directors Association conference, but unsurprisingly, no one could shed any light of the gruesome situation.

Every theory, with the exception of grave robbery, had been dismissed, with many agreeing that the most likely explanation is that the owner of the embalmed head had been a victim of the black market trade that deals in the illegal acquisition of human remains, either for professional or recreational purposes.

There's a black.

Market on body.

Parts and that market is pretty extensive.

Beaver County.

District.

Attorney Anthony was reported to have said detectives have.

Repeatedly.

Stated that they believed the head may have been removed from the corpse of a natural cause death by what's known as a body broker.

An individual or firm who purchases and sells cadavers or remains one solid.

Reason that this.

Line of investigation is thought to be the most plausible is because the black market cadaver industry had been linked to similar abuses in the past.

Due to the plethora of.

Firms where you can purchase human remains.

Any attempt to discover where the severed head came from is, according to Professor Michelle Vitale, extremely hard to track.

If the owner of the severed head is to ever be identified, it would almost certainly require the assistance of a dentist.

The forensic.

Investigation.

Discovered that the owner of the severed head had work done on every single tooth, one of them as many as seven times on one of.

The three teeth.

That had been pulled.

Forensic dentist discovered a filling compound that wasn't available to dentists before 2004, indicating that the woman must have died after that particular year so far.

Analysis.

Of the woman's dental work had produced no leads but with a forensic.

Facial.

Reconstruction investigators still hope that someone someday will be able to identify the woman and give her name back.

Almost.

Six years later.

We are still no closer to discovering the identity of whoever owned the embalmed head, or that of the sick individual who had severed or stolen it by replacing the eyeballs with red rubber balls.

It might well remain a total mystery who exactly placed the head in the woods out in Pennsylvania.

But perhaps.

The real question.

Is do we really?

Want to know?

The whole story behind it or are we most?

Likely.

Able to sleep easier, remaining in blissful ignorance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.