What is your most 'unusual' find?

worldtalker

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Myself it is a pair of brass knuckles,this town was mafioso,still is,but,not like it used to be.

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GOD Bless

Chris
 

islamoradamark

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Nice Knucks see if there's any gold streaks on them where somebody got punched in the gold teeffis
 

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worldtalker

worldtalker

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Nice Knucks see if there's any gold streaks on them where somebody got punched in the gold teeffis

I found them in an area that has had activity since 1635,it is now a turf farm,found really cool stuff there,no human bones yet though.
 

ticndig

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Human skeletal remains on The Chancellorsville Battlefield. And no I was NOT in the park , only a small amount of the battlefield is owned by the Park Service.
I was hunting an area along the plank road where a subdivision called Royal Oaks was being built , so many relics were coming out of the ground it was crazy , relic hunters from as far away as New York were there with big campers set up along the wood line . no less than 50 hunters on any given day and no one seemed to care . I contacted the Sheriff when the bones were found. A deputy showed up and walked around a bit putting the bones in a trash bag , after a while he got in the car and left .
 

Xraywolf

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Human skeletal remains on The Chancellorsville Battlefield. And no I was NOT in the park , only a small amount of the battlefield is owned by the Park Service.
I was hunting an area along the plank road where a subdivision called Royal Oaks was being built , so many relics were coming out of the ground it was crazy , relic hunters from as far away as New York were there with big campers set up along the wood line . no less than 50 hunters on any given day and no one seemed to care . I contacted the Sheriff when the bones were found. A deputy showed up and walked around a bit putting the bones in a trash bag , after a while he got in the car and left .

Wow thats nuts, seems like its a mecca for relic hunters. Was such a large scale, scattered historic rout, would likely offer more lost items than the average battlefield.
I've been to Gettysburg a few times and all around the outskirts, Cashtown ect, never noticed any guys detecting [probably like 15 years ago though, when detecting was much more limited]

Did you find the remains digging up some metal item ? You would think they would have a team set up for proper recovery and burial around that location. I've watched relic hunters in Russia [some are out specifically hunting for human remains], and they have quite a system set up for finding, recovering, identifying and proper burial. Of course around a place like Stalingrad they often find corpses by the dozens, and if they can ID as German or Russian is about as good as they can expect. Once in a while they luck out and find some id tag or something that can tie them to a unit or even a name, but that is pretty rare.
 

ticndig

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The remains were unearthed by heavy equipment as the farmland topsoil was stripped off . Chancellorsville was not only a battlefield but camp for both sides. The big union winter camps were just a few miles north in Stafford . 140.000 men strong.
The big money builders would rather push history over the hill than to be slowed down with a proper recovery.
I was on another site a few miles east near what is called fall hill . the builder was pushing headstones over into a ravine as fast as they could .
they were very old and looked to be sandstone .
 

newnan man

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Human teeth on a large Indian mound on the St. Johns River here in Florida. Resized_20170225_100011.jpg
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They are washing out from erosion. I didn't touch them but took some pics. Lots of airboaters & fishermen use the mound to stop & stretch, picnic, etc. No one seems to mess with them. There were dozens laying around.
 

ticndig

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I wouldn't have touched them either . thanks for sharing.
 

watercolor

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Wow! I've been detecting for almost 15-years and consider myself fortunate not to have found any human remains.

However, I did find this detecting 5 or 8 years ago in a wooded forest preserve. . .

Scapula w:point.JPG
 

jewelerguy

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the builder was pushing headstones over into a ravine as fast as they could .

Wow. no respect what so ever. I'm practical enough to realize the world keeps turning after people pass away, but to obliterate a graveyard with no regard for those buried there and to erase history is just beyond cold.
 

ticndig

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I agree , no respect and cold hearted. they wanted to be rid of them fast so no Archeological did would slow them down.
the sad part is it was a common practice in Fredericksburg. even a documented and well known civil war fort was bulldozed for new houses.
 

Xraywolf

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Wow. no respect what so ever. I'm practical enough to realize the world keeps turning after people pass away, but to obliterate a graveyard with no regard for those buried there and to erase history is just beyond cold.

You would think illegal as well.
They go nuts if any indian burial mound or even artifact is touched.

Around my location there is [was] an old mental institution/asylum called Eloise. It was huge, literally a city onto itself and operated from 1839 to 1982. I remember as a kid driving around in there and creeping out the girls, it was no doubt very spooky at night. The last remaining original structures are just about gone [I went there 2 years ago and there were 2 left, 1 was gutted by fire, the other an old fire house].
Alot of its old area [and associated, extensive tunnel system] was eaten up by a golf course, subdivisions and strip malls, but they ran into a long forgotten cemetery where 1,000's are buried. They did use a number system to ID the graves but whatever master list they had to match numbers with names is nowhere to be found, so now this large field of acreage, owned by the county, is in complete limbo and has been for years, there is nothing they can do without notifying the next of kin, and can't notify next of kin without even knowing who they are.

Pretty interesting and twisted tale, but this is one of the reasons why is strikes me as illegal to simply bulldoze plots away - Under Michigan law it is a felony to disturb a grave site. I suppose if we are talking about battle graves well maybe therein lies the difference, but respect for the fallen and dead should not be conditional, and especially if there is a headstone, it is impossible for me to imagine them simply being bulldozed away. Here is a bit more in anyone is interested and a couple pics I took 2 years ago [And yes I have thought about detecting around there, no doubt others have. They have historic markers all over the place and a state police building a stones throw away, so I thought it best not to try]

edit: Looks like nothing remains, the large open field to the left is where I took the pics of the few remaining buildings, old cemetery is somewhere in the trees towards the right. At its peak the complex covered this whole area and much more north [away from Michigan Ave] I guess detecting might be a viable option now.

Eloise (psychiatric hospital) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_(psychiatric_hospital)


Eloise Cemetery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_Cemetery
 

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Xraywolf

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My bad, and I don't mean to derail this thread, but the pic I posted above is inaccurate, that is an actual cemetery that sits a little west of the remnants of Eloise.

In this pic we can see the original buildings still standing, circled in black. You can see the golf course encroaching to the north, strip mall [actually I think theres a Kroger store there] to the west, and the cemetery I posted above you can just past that.
Yellow circle is the burned building I took the pics of 2 years ago, looks like it is all leveled now ,,, And the mysterious, somewhat elusive inmate cemetery is somewhere within the red circle.
 

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jewelerguy

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I agree , no respect and cold hearted. they wanted to be rid of them fast so no Archeological did would slow them down.
the sad part is it was a common practice in Fredericksburg. even a documented and well known civil war fort was bulldozed for new houses.

My wife's best friend lives in Fredricksburg (never been there myself). Her and her husband have told us that historical sites are disappearing at an alarming rate to make way for big box stores and housing. Rich land developers don't care about history or the dead, they only care about getting richer. City councils are swayed by the sirens song of the tax revenue they stand to gain by turning their back on moral decency.
 

tamrock

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Long before the internet id buy the metal detecting treasure finding magazines. I recall an article about privy digging and all the techniques you wanna know to locate the old site of a privy. The article had pictures of old China and bottles dug up and change that accidentally spilled when they dropped their drawers to sit down, but one item was only mentioned, but showed no photo was a carve out of elephant ivory late 19th century dildo that was dug up out of an old privy site. I could only guess how that all ended up in the outhouse so long ago and how was it a woman of victorian times could so discreetly obtain such a device during those times.
 

ticndig

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My wife's best friend lives in Fredricksburg (never been there myself). Her and her husband have told us that historical sites are disappearing at an alarming rate to make way for big box stores and housing. Rich land developers don't care about history or the dead, they only care about getting richer. City councils are swayed by the sirens song of the tax revenue they stand to gain by turning their back on moral decency.

your wife's friend speaks the truth . I saw many graves wiped out over the 40 years I lived there. they even paved over graves when I-95 widened in Stafford. they are under an estimated 60' of fill .
 

Trezurehunter

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A dead body. She was a known drug user, and lady of the night. She had been murdered and dumped (they figure, the day before I found her). As far as metal detecting finds, that's a tough one. I have a few unusual finds. Brass Knuckles, and once I found 72 brass tags near a tree in a forest preserve. They were all numbered. Dont know if they had a race there or not, and these were used for the entrants numbers. They were not tree tags though.
 

Jon Stewart

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I was a police detective and was assigned to the Prosecutors major case team. We went looking for the body of a prostitute and I found her by smell.
 

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