From Hollywood actresses to real live cheetahs, here are twelve of the strangest things found
in people’s backyards!
127.
Cash in a Bag
In August 2011, Wayne Sabaj, a 51-year-old unemployed carpenter from Illinois, was picking
broccoli in his backyard garden when he found $150,000 stashed in a nylon bag.
He reported the discovery to the police with the understanding that if the money was not
claimed by anyone else by the end of 2012, it would be his.
Would you have done the same?
Soon after, 87-year-old Sabaj´s neighbor, Dolores Johnson claimed the money saying she
had got rid of the money because it was “cursed“.
The court gave a part of the money to Johnson's daughter with a portion of it set to go to
Sabaj as a reward.
However, Sabaj died just 10 days before receiving the prize from complications from diabetes.
Delores Johnson also died before she could claim the money, making people wonder if she
was right about that curse.
Another interesting twist is that a local store owner filed a claim for the money, saying
the same amount was stolen from his store in 2010.
However, half of the money went to Johnson’s daughter and the other half to Sabaj’s son.
As far as anyone knows, the pair lived to enjoy their prize.
11.
Human Remains
In 2011, Don Selby in Salt Lake City, Utah was working with his crew in a homeowner’s
yard.
Some reports say they were digging out a water main while other reports suggest they were
digging up a pond.
Either way, they made a gruesome discovery – human bones.
Frightened by the unexpected find, he called the police.
When physical anthropologists from the state got to the scene, they uncovered the skeletal
remains of an adult, but no head.
Later, when Selby tried to continue work, he found the skeleton’s skull.
Results concluded that the bones were not of a recent murder, but once belonged to a
Fremont Indian who lived in Utah about 1,000 years ago.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, similar finds have been uncovered in the area.
Plans were made to test to see if they can be traced to a modern tribe and all local
tribes were to be contacted.
According to law, if a tribe wishes to claim the remains and rebury the person, they may.
If no one claimed the remains, they would be included with a burial vault in Emigration
Canyon where unclaimed Native American remains are kept.
10.
Bronze Age Headstone
When amateur historian Stephen Davis from England began researching the history of his
house, he came across a reference to an ancient stone called the Horestone near Stroud, which
had been lost for 350 years!
Eventually, he began swapping notes with a local historian named Claire Forbes and eventually
decided to go on a hunt for it.
Eighteen months after starting an active search for the stone in 1987, it turns out it was
in Davis’ own backyard, covered completely with ivy!!
That’s the benefit to living in a historic home!
Surprises are everywhere!
The first mention of the stone was in a legal document written in the 12th century, and
the last mention was in a tax record from the 17th century.
It’s believed to have marked a burial plot from the Bronze Age and dates back to about
2,500 B.C.
At the time of the find, the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was expected
to pronounce the stone a “scheduled ancient monument.”
Congratulations to Stephen!
9.
Loaded Machine Gun
Earlier this year, a man from northeast Calgary, Canada made a disturbing discovery in his
backyard.
Between his garage and the fence, he found a plastic bag containing a pillowcase.
This is always a bad sign.
When he looked inside, to his surprise, there was a fully-loaded machine gun along with
a cell phone.
How the gun ended up in his backyard or who it belonged to is still not clear.
And now for number 8, but first be sure to subscribe if you are new here!
And let us know the strangest thing you've ever found in your backyard!!
8.
1700s Cemetery
Some people say that New Orleans is built over the dead and it seems that way, with
its plethora of cemeteries.
When Vincent Marcello from New Orleans, Louisiana decided to dig a plot in his backyard for
a swimming pool, he ended up discovering a historic cemetery dating back to the 1700s.
The workers unearthed 13 caskets with human remains.
The caskets were stacked one on top of the other underground, at the property that used
to be St. Peter Cemetery before it was closed down due to overcrowding.
Wealthy families were probably able to afford to have their relatives moved to the newer
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 while poorer families had to leave the remains of loved ones in
the St. Peter Cemetery.
However, it was not the first time bodies have been discovered underground in the area
– in 1984, 36 corpses were found when an apartment complex was being built.
To quote Marcello, “This is the French Quarter.
No telling what’s underground.”
Not sure if Vincent was able to get his swimming pool.
7.
A Hollywood Actress
In 1996, 47-year-old Canadian-born actress Margot Kidder, the spunky original Lois Lane
in the “Superman” movies, was found in someone's backyard in Glendale, California.
The actress, who was battling health and financial problems at that time, had been missing for
three days before she was found.
She was supposed to have flown to Arizona from Los Angeles to teach a class.
However, when she didn’t arrive, her manager filed a Missing Persons report.
According to the police, she was frightened and paranoid, wearing dirty clothes and missing
some teeth.
Her paranoia was centered around her ex-husband, who she claimed was the head of the CIA and
out to get her.
She had even cut her hair with a razor blade in an attempt to hide.
Doctors later diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and placed her in psychiatric care where she
made a complete recovery.
Today, Margot Kidder is a spokeswoman for the mentally ill and has gone over ten years
without a manic or depressive episode.
6.
Church Bells
In 2013, a man from the Czech Republic was digging up his backyard to install some pipes
when he stumbled across some unusual metal objects.
Just as a side note, always call the city before you start digging deep in your backyard!
After excavation, he found out it was two large church bells about 400 years old!
And those things are huge!
Later, it turned out that the bells had been stolen 11 years earlier from a nearby church.
The thief who buried them might have attempted to hide them and later come back to get them
but for some reason or another, he was never able to.
5.
Mastodon Bones
In 2012, two boys named Eric and Andrew from Detroit, Michigan were building a dam in the
creek that flows through their backyard when Eric saw a strange-looking rock sticking up
from the ground.
Eric thought it was a rock but his cousin, Andrew, immediately recognized it as an animal
bone.
Eric’s father, an internal medicine doctor, confirmed Andrew’s assessment.
The family called in a paleontologist from the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield
Hills who later authenticated the bone as an axis, or neck bone, from a mastodon some
13,000 years old!
Pretty cool right?
This is not the first such find in Michigan.
In 2015, a contractor working on a client’s property discovered 42 bones.
Scientists determined they belonged to a 37-year-old male mastodon who walked the Michigan area
some 14,000 years ago.
Those bones are now part of a permanent exhibition at a museum in the Ann Arbor area.
4.
Meteorites
The chances of you finding a piece of meteorite in your backyard is pretty small, let alone
a meteorite hitting your house six times in a row.
But that is exactly what happened to Radivoke Lajic, a Serbian man living in a little village
in northern Bosnia.
It looks like the man´s property, for some reason, attracts space rocks!
The man even thinks that it might be aliens trying to bombard his house.
Lajic sold one of the meteorites to pay to reinforce his roof against future attacks.
Scientists are studying the property to see if it has any special magnetic properties.
Pretty crazy right?
3.
WWII Bombs
During WWII there was a bombing range called Pine Castle Range.
Now thousands of homes have been built along the northern side of the 12,000-acre area.
Usually, when we think of World War era bombs, we think of Europe, where the majority of
the fighting occurred.
However, Pinecastle Range was located in Orlando, Florida.
Though plenty of bombs were dropped on the site, talks of cleaning up didn’t happen
until bombs were discovered in 2007 near the running track of a local middle school.
Kind of dangerous…
Before that happened, in 2002, a ranch hand clearing brush in the same area set off a
bomb with his tractor.
Since then, over a hundred rockets and bombs have been found on the school property and
in backyards of nearby houses.
In 2008, Army Corps of Engineering launched a multi-million dollar large-scale cleanup
of the area, eventually finding around 400 pieces of unexploded weapons.
2.
Whale Fossil
In 1978, 17-year-old Gary Johnson from Palos Verde, California noticed a large rock sticking
out of a hill between his house and a neighbor’s.
It appeared to have a bone pattern.
Thinking it could be an important find, Johnson called in an expert to evaluate it.
I don’t know what kind of expert he was but anyway, he said it had no value.
The stone sat in the ground for over 35 years until February 2014, when Johnson was watching
the news and saw a huge piece of a 12-million-year-old sperm whale skull found just a few hundred
yards away from where he had found the stone!
Johnson called another expert, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum.
This time, he was lucky.
The paleontologist estimated the fossil to be the 14-16 million-year-old jaw, skull,
and baleen of a very rare baleen whale.
Baleen whale fossils are very rare with only about 20 known specimens in the entire world.
1.
A Cheetah
In 2008, nine-year-old Toby from Hamerton, in the U.K. ran to his mother shouting that
there was a cheetah in the garden.
His mother dismissed his claims as childhood excitement.
Clearly.
I mean, its the UK.
That is, until Julie-Ann Taylor looked out of the kitchen window.
To her astonishment, she realized her son wasn’t joking.
Toby had been playing in the backyard with his bicycle when he suddenly saw the African
big cat.
Or, rather, the big cat saw him.
Toby ran the forty feet to safety and, luckily, the cheetah had no interest in little boys.
Instead, the animal, a male named Akea, settled for chewing the tires and the seat of Toby’s
bike.
The 6-foot-long predator had escaped from a nearby animal sanctuary.
The keepers soon arrived to the house and took Akea back home to his enclosure.
The incident terrified poor Toby because, really, no one expects to come upon a cheetah
in England although if you look into it, it happens more often than you might think!
However, the keepers played down the incident, saying that Akea was as tame as a dog since
he had been raised by humans since he was a baby.
At least it wasn’t the beast of Dartmoor.