Police in Florida found out this week that a homeless man’s human skull puppet wasn’t a Halloween prop.
“It's definitely a human skull; it's still got teeth in it,” a horrified 911 caller told a very skeptical emergency dispatcher from Indian River County on Tuesday morning.
The vagabond told responding officers that he stumbled upon on the skull and other skeletal remains in a wooded area close to where he had set up camp.
He then brought it to a nearby shopping center only so someone there could contact the authorities.
Witnesses at first thought it was fake because the man was “using it like a puppet” they said, but when they caught a whiff of the rotting head, it became clear it wasn’t a Halloween prank.
“It smelled like death,” one person explained.
The unidentified homeless man led police to the rest of the corpse and the area was cordoned off while the remains were collected for analysis.
Investigators said that it didn’t appear the head had been unnaturally decapitated, but noted it was too soon to pinpoint the victim’s age, gender, or cause of death.
