The Most Disturbing Things People Found In Their Backyards That Made Their Jaws Drop
Just when you think you know your backyard, you end up finding $10 million worth of gold coins hidden underneath. Okay, well that's not the reality for most of us, but it certainly is for people in this article.
There's a surprising amount of stories that revolve around people digging up their backyard for whatever reason (for a pool, or garden) and end up stumbling across items that will make your jaw drop. What would you do if you found some of the items buried beneath your back yard?
400 Year Old Church Bells
In 2013, a man from the Czech Republic was digging up his backyard to install some pipes when he stumbled across an unusual metal object. It piqued his curiosity and he decided to start digging. It took him days to dig out, but what he found was worth it.
There were two large church bells about 400 years old laying in his backyard. It turned out that the bells were stolen 11 years earlier from a nearby church and the thief buried them but didn't come back.
1700's Cemetery
When Vincent Marcello from New Orleans decided to dig a plot in his backyard for a swimming pool, he ended up discovering a historic cemetery that dates back to the 1700s. That's not creepy AT ALL. Okay, no, that's super creepy.
The workers unearthed 13 caskets with human remains which unfortunately isn't a one-off in the area. In 1984, 36 corpses were found when an apartment complex was being built. Put your hand up if you're never moving to New Orleans.
The Nuclear Shelter
The Zwick family was well aware that they had a metal door in their house that led to somewhere. They never really wanted to explore it because they figured there'd be a whole lot of nothing on the other side of the metal door.
But, one day their curiosity got the best of them and they decided to open the hatch. It turned out that there was a Cold-war era fallout shelter buried in the backyard. There was clothing, medical supplies, tools, and flashlights down there.
Giant Earthworm
Chinese worker Li Zhiwei was putting some of his clothing on a clothesline to dry in his backyard when he saw a snake. Actually, it wasn't a snake, but it looked exactly like one.
When he took a closer look, he realized that it was a worm almost 20 inches long. Biologists wondered how it was able to grow to be that big considering earthworms are always a product of their environment. This one looked like it ate a whole human.
Grenades And TNT Explosives
Imagine walking into your backyard and finding a hand grenade. In May 2013, that was the reality for a 39-year-old from the Czech Republic. He wanted to dig out a stump in his yard when he noticed there was something under it.
He was kind of confused about the unexpected finding and called the police. After they retrieved the items, they found out that the man's backyard contained tons of hand grenades and several TNT explosives from the Second World War.
Mastodon Vertebrae
When you're a young boy going out to play with one of your buddies, you don't expect your day to be anything out of the ordinary. Eric and Andrew from Detroit were building a dam in the creek that flows through their backyard.
Eric was picking up sticks and rocks to use for the dam when he saw a weird looking "rock". He showed his mom what he'd found and she decided to call a paleontologist (like one would do?) to get it checked out. Well, it turns out that it was a vertebra from a mastodon 13,000 years old.
Mammoth Bones
A family in Iowa were enjoying a nice day picking fruit in their wooded backyard when they saw a white object sticking out of the ground. The mom thought that it might've been something she accidentally planted in her garden, but it turned out to be anything but.
After digging it out, they were surprised to find out that it was a femur bone. Scientists from a local university later identified it as a 12,000-year-old wooly mammoth bone.
Alligator In A Swimming Pool
In Florida, alligators being found in backyards are all too common. This is one of the reasons that Florida is crazy and people are afraid to move there. Sharon Bente and her husband from Bradenton, Florida got up-close and personal with a gator when they heard a noise coming from their backyard.
Apparently, an 8-foot-gator got lost and decided that the family's pool was a perfect place to call home temporarily. The couple saw the alligator and called the sheriff and it was just another day in Florida.
10 Million Dollars In Gold Coins
Someone call the treasure hunters because they're missing out on this discovery. A couple from the Sierra Nevada region in California experienced what all treasure hunters dream of. When they were walking their dog on their property, they saw the top of a rusty canister poking out of the ground.
The canister ended up containing a bunch of gold discs that dated back to the 1890s. The coins ended up having a face value of $27,980 which made the coins estimated to be worth nearly $10 million today.
$150,000 In Straight Cash
Picking broccoli in your backyard doesn't seem like an activity that pays too well. Pfft, tell that to Wayne Sabaj who was an unemployed 51-year-old who found $150,000 stashed in his garden in a nylon bag.
He reported the discovery to the police with the understanding that if the money was not claimed by anyone else a year after he found it, the money would be his. Sabaj's neighbor got rid of the money apparently because it was "cursed" and a judge gave a portion to Sabaj and the neighbor's daughter.
A Ferrari
When digging for fun in a backyard in 1978, two kids from Los Angeles found a Dino 2446 GTS Ferrari. After excavating the car and doing a little bit of investigation they were able to determine that the car was stolen and buried several years earlier by thieves.
Interestingly enough, no one in the neighborhood had any idea that it was there. It was believed to have been a part of an insurance scam with the intention to retrieve it later.
A Cheetah
If you lived in the U.K and your kid ran into the kitchen screaming that there's a cheetah in your backyard, would you believe them? The obvious answer is NO.
That's exactly what happened when Julie-Ann Taylor's son ran in and told her there was a cheetah in the backyard. She didn't believe him, but she looked anyway. To her shock, there was actually a cheetah on their property. Apparently, the 6-foot-long predator had escaped from a nearby animal sanctuary.
1000-Year-Old Human Remains
A man in Utah was digging up a pond in his backyard and made a startling discovery that would traumatize anyone. He found human bones in his backyard, so, he immediately called the police to investigate.
After thorough testing, the examiner came back with even more surprising test results. She said she hadn't seen anything like it because the bones once belonged to a Native American who lived in Utah about 1,000 years earlier.
Loaded Machine Gun
Guns might be pretty common in the U.S, but in most other countries they're extremely rare. A man from Calgary, Canada made a very disturbing discovery when he went to take the garbage out and found a pillowcase lying beside it in his back yard.
He opened the bag and found that there were a fully loaded machine gun and a cell phone lying beside it. The creepiest part? They still don't know who any of it belongs to.
Meteorites
The chances of finding a meteorite are pretty small, to begin with. Add that to actually recognizing a meteorite over a regular, darkened rock makes it even less likely. But, a Serbian man living in a little village in northern Bosnia found six separate meteorite pieces in his backyard.
For whatever reason, it looks like the man's property attracts space stones. He even thinks that aliens are targeting him with the meteorites specifically which is kind of funny.
650-year-old Treasure
An Austrian man from Wiener Neustadt found a treasure trove estimated to be about 650 years old while digging to expand a garden pool in 2007. This story seems like it's straight out of The Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's real.
The trove contained more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other random pieces of ancient pearls. Someone call Captain Hook because we've finally found what he's been looking for.
Bombs From World War Two
During World War Two, there was a lot of land in the U.S that was used for testing out new bombs and weapons. To date, thousands of homes have been built on tens of thousands of acres that were once part of a shooting range.
One range in particular was in Orlando. When houses started to be built on what was once a 12,000 acre explosive range, people were discovering shards left, right, and center. The first one was discovered in 1998, but since then, more than a hundred rockets have been found in backyards of the residents that live there.
Dinosaur Bones
It's crazy to think that dinosaurs actually walked the same turf millions of years before us. In 1997, John Lambert from Ipswich, U.K was building a fence in his backyard when he found a large and unusual bone.
He held onto the bone for over 16 years before deciding to take it to a museum to figure out what it really was. Experts were astounded to see that the bone was 250-million-years old and once belonged to a pliosaur.
A Famous Actress
Imagine walking into your backyard to find a random woman frightened and paranoid, wearing dirty clothing and missing some teeth. You might assume that she's had it hard her entire life and was probably homeless. Well, that's not the case.
In 1996, then 47-year-old Margot Kidder, also known as Lois Lane in the Superman movies was found in that frantic state in someone's backyard. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed in psychiatric care where she has since made a full recovery.
Ancient Stone
When an amateur historian Stephen Davis from England was researching the history of his own home, he came across a reference to an ancient stone that was thought to have marked a burial plot from the Bronze Age dating back to about 2,500 BCE.
Davis searched for the stone and after some time found it in his backyard completely covered in ivy. At the time, the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was expected to pronounce the stone a "scheduled ancient monument."
