A father and son in Mississippi discovered a dead body inside an abandoned home last Saturday while they hunted for treasure.
Riley Bryant, 23, his father Chuck and a few of their friends were metal detecting around a deserted property in Holly Springs, Miss. — 50 miles southeast of Memphis, Tenn. — when they peered into the building and saw the corpse.
“We actually noticed through the window of the vacant building that there was something that didn’t look right on the floor in one of the back rooms,” Bryant told WREG.
Bryant has found rare items in the past, including Civil War-era bullets, an 1880s glass bottle from the J.J. Henrich Bottling Company, and an old oar lock for a row boat, but was shocked to find a human corpse inside the vacant house.
“We thought ‘This is strange’ and determined it was definitely something we needed to report to the authorities,” he added.
Bryant believes the ill-fated person was seeking shelter from the cold but did not survive.
“He had taken stuff in the house, ripped the curtains down, towels, anything he could find had to kind of pile on himself to try to keep warm,” he said. “When you really look at it just gets sadder and sadder. This is not someone that was wandering around drunk or something. It was somebody that obviously wanted to live.”
The treasure hunters stayed at the scene while local law enforcement investigated the mysterious death.
“I waited until they had removed the body and cleared the scene. I was there the whole time. it took him about two hours or so,” Riley Bryant said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. The realization kind of sunk in that that was somebody dead.”
The identity and gender of the body has not been determined.
The body was transferred to Pearl, Miss. for an autopsy that would determine the cause of death, according to WREG, citing the Marshall County Coroner.
Chuck Bryant turned the ordeal into a learning experience, saying they should become wary of others and help the less fortunate.
“We had some discussions on the way home and continued to talk about it, trying to deconstruct the whole thing and learn from it,” the elder Bryant said. “Try to be a better person. Be aware of people that might be in need around you.”
On Thursday, a Long Island girl walking to school with friends discovered a severed human arm off a road in Babylon, NY.
The gruesome finding led police to uncover a leg “sticking out of a pile of leaves” on Graham Place between Beverly Road and Martin Place, about a mile away from the first find, according to officials.
Authorities said the human remains had not been there long.
