People Who Have Discovered Human Remains Share Their Experiences

I love true crime but I feel I'll regret this thread.

“Where is she?”

"I was 11 years playing in the woods with my friends. Autumn day, bright, cool… There was four of us, three boys and a girl. We were walking a pretty well known path between two neighborhoods when the girl said, 'Someone left their doll out here…' We walked over to the 'doll' which was dressed in jean coveralls, sneakers and a kids jacket. She was on her side, kinda curled up but her face was towards the ground so we could only just see one eye, one cheek, one ear."

"She had brown shoulder length hair that was a bit curly like a lot of little kids hair is. About 3 or 4 years old. The girl in our group kneeled down once and shook her shoulder and said, 'Hey kid…' Nothing. After that we all kinda looked around at one another and one of us, don’t remember who, said we should call 911. There was a payphone on the street at the end of the path in the direction we had been heading so we all just walked away from the kid."

"We kept looking back until she was out of sight. I made the call when we got to the phone. I had to explain it to the person on the line three or four times before they kinda believed me. Told me they were sending out an officer. He pulled up about 5 minutes later, took one look at all our faces then said, 'Where is she?' We pointed down the path and one of the guys said 'you can’t miss her.' The cop told us to stay where we were and he walked on down the path."

"Ten minutes later another squad car came screaming down the road with lights and sirens; after that the place was an absolute circus. All four of us kids just kinda walked away. Saw it on the news that night that it was a little girl who’d gone missing the day before from a couple of miles away. It was said she died of exposure. I think about it every now and then and get sad, like now…"

WarExciting

The Cousin

"Back in the pre-cell phone days, I found a body on my way to work. My starting time was 5:00AM and I would occasionally bike to work, weather permitting. It was to be a warm day, so off I go on my bike. No traffic meant I could cruise along pretty good. I was just starting to enter an underpass when I spotted a person laying on the road. I’m thinking a drunk fell off the sidewalk and passed out. As I slowed down I saw a long trail of blood."

"So off the bike I go to see if they were okay. Half opened eyes and brain matter said otherwise. No phone and no traffic, what to do? First car to come along was a taxi. Great, he has a radio and will call the cops. Wrong. He sees me jumping up and down, waving my arms near a downed person. Hits the brakes, pulls a fast U-turn and got the f**k out of there. A couple a minutes later a van comes from the other way. He does the same thing."

"Then a car pulls up, an older dude asks what’s up. I tell that’s a dead person and someone needs to call the cops. He says he’s got to get to work and will probably phone from there and left. About 10 minutes later, I was able to flag down a police car about a block away. An ambulance shows up at the same time. I asked them, the cops and EMTs, if anyone called them. Nope. So I get interviewed, tell my story and am sent on my way."

"Later in the week, an officer calls me to let me know what was happening. Apparently it was a suicide. She, 23 years old, was having a rough spell and was living on the streets. Jumped off the overpass onto the pavement below. Pretty sad situation all around. And as it turned out, I worked with her cousin about a year later. I’ve never talked about this before and I’m glad I did, even if it was on Reddit."

BBrainPheart57

The Paper Guy

"My buddy and I were out for a trail run in the local state park when we came across a guy who hung himself. Called the cops, we were interviewed, and sent on our way. The guy's car was nearby, filled with newspapers. He was a paper delivery guy!"

MudSouthern1143

El Salvador

"My parents would send me to El Salvador for three months every two years till I was 16. I saw a total of eight dead bodies. Some hanging from freeways, some just dead in the streets because of gangs."

TokyoMule

"Damn dude that place is rough. My parents lived through their civil war and tell me all sorts of f**ked up crap they lived through."

FindingMyPrivates

In the concrete...

"I was a project manager on an irrigation project to line earthen ditches with concrete in NV. It was around 2016 that we were in a sort of remote area of the state. Anyways, the construction crew I hired to excavate a portion of the ditch came across an entire skeleton. The skeletal remains were on one of the side banks of the ditch."

"I mean the entire skull and ribs were visible to everyone. I had to halt all activities and notify local PD and the forensics crew from Reno came and retrieved the remains and performed a sweep of the area. For about a week before we could resume our project."

"To be honest it was a little creepy and unnerving to see that in person. To my knowledge it was a cold case from the 1960s. Reno mobsters from the casinos used to take people out to Indian reservations and 'get rid of people' because lack of law enforcement on reservations in those years."

g6paulson

This why I never look down and ignore my surroundings.

The Mess

"Didn’t stumble on the scene or anything but I had to go into my sister's bedroom the day after her husband shot and killed her. It… was a mess. The sheets/pillows were stained from about the headboard to halfway down the bed. There was blood on the wall. It was a really surreal experience."

"I remember there were clothes in the dryer. The dishwasher needed to be ran. There were leftovers covered with tin foil in the fridge. The house was so incredibly quiet. When people say there’s a heaviness to a scene like that, it’s true. The grief is palpable."

DogsAndKidsHateMe

911

"Found a dead guy on my way to work. NH, middle of a cold winter, maybe early/mid January in Manchester. There’s a lot of old mill buildings that are used as offices, stores, pubs etc. I was walking to work, having parked a bit far from the entrance, and I saw what I thought from a distance was two trash bags. As I got closer I realized it was a person, didn’t think much about it, moved on."

"About half way to work I realized there was no steam from breathing, I got concerned, walked back, and started loudly speaking at the person, who was non-responsive. I want into work and called 911 because I didn’t know what else to do (I didn’t own a cell phone at the time, this was early 2ks ). Dispatcher said some people were on the way, I went down to the closest spot and waved in a cop then an ambulance."

"Said I was the person who called, lead them to the guy, asked if I could go, they determined he was dead and I went to work. I’m guessing he froze to death, not sure how he got there. He might have been homeless. I didn’t get a great look at him outside of telling you adult male with dark hair. Told the cop where I worked if they needed me and went to work."

RCrumbDeviant

In a pit...

"My dad found a human skull in a gravel pit. Called the cops, they came and got it, never heard anything else. I was a dumb kid at the time. So when he told me about it, I assumed we were going to solve a mystery. Turns out reality is way more boring."

AtelierNictus

Gunk

"When I was 12 I was cycling next to the river in my little village when a fisherman found a suitcase, being a nosey kid I went to have a look as he opened it. It’s hard to describe the 'gunk' I saw inside, you certainly wouldn’t have known it was a person - but bones were visible."

"The police came and did an investigation, later found out it was the body of a 70 year old man from a neighbouring county who had disappeared a month before. He had been murdered by his Son, chopped up and placed into several suitcases, only the one was found and it was nearly 50 miles away from where they had been dumped. Can’t say it affected me at all, probably would now."

wh1terat

1996

"Was in Trinidad in 1996 or so because my dad was doing some work there. I was 13 or 14. One of his friends was giving us a ride to the airport and we stopped to say goodbye to one of his coworkers. They honked and she didn’t walk out. They noticed the door was ajar and walked in. I was in the car and I just heard this intense scream."

"They found her dead to a head wound on the floor. My mom stood in the way so I couldn't see. We called the police but the friend who was driving us told us to just get on the plane and go because he didn’t trust the police to try and scapegoat the foreigners. My mom followed the case from the US. They never solved the case."

chargeorge

Well that should keep us all up at night.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/