Shopper Shocked to Discover Real Human Skull in Store's Halloween Section

A shopper who was out thrifting discovered a real human skull in the Halloween section of a Florida antique store, the local sheriff's office told Newsweek.

The customer, who happened to be an anthropologist, called the Lee County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) on Saturday after she noticed a skull and recognized it to be human while she was shopping at Paradise Vintage Market on North Cleveland Avenue in North Fort Myers, Florida, LCSO Captain Anita Iriarte told Newsweek in a phone interview on Sunday.

"This is definitely different," Iriarte said. "We don't usually get a call from an antique store that there's a human skull out on the floor."

The sheriff's office took the skull for testing, and the District 21 Medical Examiner's Office suspects, based on the preliminary inspection, it is real human remains, Iriarte said.

"It is our belief that it's a human skull," Iriarte said, adding that it will go through additional testing at the medical examiner's office before being sent to Gainesville for long-term testing to determine where it came from, how old it is and any other details that can be uncovered.

"It was found in a Halloween section," she said. "What's been described is that the antique shop was having a fossil day, so this female, an anthropologist, was shopping and noticed the skull and then was like, 'This is definitely not a Halloween decoration.'"

While some anthropologists focus on cultural and behavioral studies, others are experts in analyzing human remains, such as forensic anthropologists. Additional details about the shopper who discovered the skull were not immediately available.

Iriarte said that despite the unusual circumstances, the sheriff's office does not believe a crime has occurred.

"What's preliminarily been decided is it's like an archeological bone," she said. "The skull is estimated to be about 75 years old. There's no noted trauma to the skull. There's nothing that leads them to believe that this skull has been preserved by suspicious means of any sort."

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Shopper Finds Human Skull in Store

Detectives agreed that the skull appeared to be human but said the case did not appear to be suspicious, the sheriff's office said.

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The store owner said the skull was found in a storage unit that was purchased several years ago, according to the LCSO.

Beth Meyer, the managing partner of Paradise Vintage Market, told Newsweek in an interview on Sunday night that the store is an antique mall that spans 32,000 square feet and has more than 125 dealers and 180 booth spaces. Meyer, who also owns Elemental Art, a shop specializing in rocks, crystals and fossils, called Saturday's human skull incident "an interesting and unusual experience."

"A sheriff's deputy asked to speak to me about a report that we had a human skull at the store," Meyer said. "A shopper had called it in; she is an anthropologist and had concerns that the skull might be Native American."

Meyer said that while it's legal in most U.S. states to have human skeletal remains, Native American skeletal remains are "under restriction."

"The anthropologist came into the store, and gave a very informative and educational explanation as to why she thought it was Native American," Meyer said. "The medical examiner came in, bagged and tagged the skull, and took it to the lab for testing. If it is Native American, it will be returned to one of the local tribes and we will have a ceremony."

Meyer told Newsweek that the skull came from a storage unit that she purchased shortly before Hurricane Ian pummeled southwest Florida in September 2022. The items from the unit sat in boxes in her spare bedroom until she was able to re-open her store, she said.

She said she had no idea how the skull ended up in the storage unit and did not have any details about its history.

"I actually put the skull on display in my rock shop a year later in September 2023," Meyer said. "I thought it would be interesting to have out for Halloween."

Update 11/5/2023, 11:35 p.m. ET: This article was updated with photos and comment from Meyer.