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Grave diggers in the UK are stealing skulls and other human remains to fuel an unregulated online market of sick memorabilia, a shocking investigation has uncovered.
Some human bones are reportedly turned into pieces for Ouija boards and flogged on Facebook and Instagram. Skulls pierced with nails and emblazoned with slogans such as "kill me" are also being sold.
The two-part investigation by Live Science found that the remains of adults, children, babies and foetuses are all readily available to buy online.
READ MORE: Sick Halloween costumes including Jeffrey Dahmer and the Queen being flogged online
It found 50 sellers of the macabre items in England and Wales from 2020 to 2022, some offering skulls in private Facebook groups and others flogging remains on public pages associated with antiques, oddities and taxidermy businesses.
Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – prohibits the sale of body parts and bodily fluids on its platforms under its terms and policies.
A Meta spokesperson told Live Science: "We’ve removed the violating content brought to our attention and will continue to remove content in line with our policies."
There is no law in the UK against the buying and selling of human remains, given that the items were acquired legally.
Although the first part of the report noted that "most" of the items up for sale appeared to be "medical or anatomical specimens", the second found that grave robbing is also occurring.
"We're seeing an increase in vandalism to churchyards," Trish Biers, an osteologist and paleopathologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science.
"We're seeing some crypts online, and we're having to contact them [the people working in the crypts] in response to what we think is a security risk."
Biers coordinates a task force at the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) that investigates the unregulated human remains trade.
"I've been contacted personally with pictures of actual graves being completely disassembled," she said.
Although most sellers posted pictures of unaltered remains that had been cleaned, there were also instances of bones with hair and tissue attached appear, or bones that had been disfigured.
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One popular seller, named Henry Scragg online, listed items such as black-stained human skulls with iron nails for teeth, human bone wind chimes, human bone Ouija board pieces and wallets crafted from human and pig skin, according to Live Science.
There were no indications that Scragg had acquired the items illegally.
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