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Skull probably used by fraternal group

Thursday, 25 May 2006

GOSHEN, Ind., May 25 (UPI) -- An Indiana family has been told that a skull found concealed in the ceiling of its home may have been used by a fraternal group for rituals.

Jerry Hochstetler of Goshen took the skull to the Elkhart County Sheriff's Department in a cardboard box after it fell from the ceiling in January during remodeling.

Deputies handed it over to the coroner, who sent it to the Archaeology & Forensics Laboratory at the University of Indianapolis.

Investigators say the skull was probably that of a woman aged at least 50 who was American Indian, Polynesian or Siberian, the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune reported. They reported finding signs of light burning, suggesting that the skull had been held close to a candle, a ritualistic practice of some 19th- and early 20th-century fraternal groups.

"We still wonder how in the world it got into the house," Hochstetler said. "It'd be nice to find someone who knows more about how it got there."

The family plans to send the skull back to the university for use as a teaching tool.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060525-071717-4227r

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

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“The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all -- the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”

Mark Twain