An anthropologist leisurely shopping at a Florida thrift store on Saturday reportedly widened his eyes when he realized that a realistic human skull found in the Halloween section was actually…really real.
“According to the observations of the investigators on site, the skull appears to be that of a human being. The store owner said the skull was in a storage unit purchased years ago,” the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post Sunday.
On Saturday, the anatomy expert was doing some shopping at a thrift store in North Fort Myers, Florida, when he reportedly spotted a realistic skull in the store’s Halloween section.
However, after careful examination, he determined that it was actually a real human skull, the sale of which is prohibited under Florida state law, CBS News reported.
“No one may knowingly offer to buy or sell […] a human organ or tissue in exchange for valid consideration,” according to the law, according to American media.
For their part, investigators called to the scene confirmed the condition of the skull before confiscating it so that a local forensic pathologist could carry out further investigations.
But at first glance, the authorities assumed that the case was not suspicious, according to the police statement. They did not say whether charges would be filed in connection with the discovery of the human remains at the store.
This isn’t the first skull to make headlines in recent months: Last September, a Goodwill donation center in Arizona came across an ancient human skull decorated with a plastic eye among the donations going to the center.