Couple finds mysterious bones in attic of 125-year-old Illinois home. ‘It was weird’

Patrick and Tammy Snyder made a startling discovery while renovating the attic of their newly purchased home.

“I put my hammer down on the floor,” Tammy Snyder told The Register-Mail. “And when I went to pick it up, that’s when I saw right next to the chimney this deteriorated cardboard box with holes … and with bones in it.”

In March, the Snyders bought the 125-year-old home in middle of Galesburg, Illinois, according to property records. The two-story house sits near a hospital and a bed-and-breakfast on a mostly residential street.

As with many old structures, the home needed renovating and the couple was removing the brick chimney last week when they found the bones, which appeared to be the lower half of a body, The Register Mail reported.

“I thought it was like a dead raccoon or something up there and she handed me up through the roof a femur of a leg and so it was weird,” Patrick Snyder told KLJB.

Disturbed, the couple called the police. Officers who went into the attic described bones that appeared to be a human femur with old newspaper attached to the hip end, according to a police report obtained by KWQC. The Snyders bought the property after the home was vacant for a year, the news outlet reported.

“We are sending the bones out to be tested to determine what they are, how old they are, and then we will be investigating further once we have that additional information,” Deputy Police Chief Daniel Hostens told KLJB.

Galesburg is a city of about 31,000 people in northwest Illinois.

This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 1:47 PM with the headline "Couple finds mysterious bones in attic of 125-year-old Illinois home. ‘It was weird’."