The Maryland State Police is investigation how a human skull and femur bones in a black cauldron ended up in a wooded area near the Harford County border.
The mysterious bones were discovered by a passerby on March 2 in the 500 block of Bell Manor Road in Conowingo. Police also found a second cauldron with a plastic skull, animal jawbones, toy handcuffs, feathers and several “religious artifacts” that police did not identify.
The skull showed no obvious signs of trauma and appeared to be very old, police said. It was sent to the medical examiner?s office. No results were available yet, a police spokesman said Monday.
It appeared that the items might have been used in some sort of pagan religious ritual, said Sgt. John Blades, a shift supervisor at the State Police North East Barracks.
The human remains wouldn?t necessarily have had to be dug up for that purpose, Blades said, because animals often unearth bones in the area.
“This is a rural area with lots of old grave sites. People used to bury their loved ones on their farms,” he said.
As a teen, Blades recalled, he had a summer job mowing the grass at Aberdeen Proving Ground, across the river in Harford County. Once, he discovered some bones turned up by groundhogs digging holes. A stone marker indicated that the person died in 1758, he said.
AP contributed to this report.
