She Died in 1866, and Mystery of Her Skull Is Finally Solved

There was nothing fishy about the death of Esther Granger in Indiana in 1866. In a story fitting for Halloween, however, authorities have finally unraveled a mystery regarding her skull. As NPR explains, the mystery began in 1978 when a homeowner in Batavia, Illinois, ripped down a wall and found a human skull inside. Authorities could not identify it, however, and it went into storage at the Batavia Depot Museum. There it sat, forgotten, until workers found it inside a box in 2021, per NBC News. Detectives retrieved DNA and eventually tracked down a great-great-grandson to confirm the skull belonged to Esther, per the AP.

As it turns out, her life ended as a teenager. Esther was born in 1848 in Indiana, got married at age 16, and died the following year from complications of childbirth after delivering a baby girl. "So the question remains: If she died in 1866 in Indiana, how did she end up in a wall in a house in Batavia?" says Rob Russell, coroner of Kane County in Illinois. Detectives can't say for sure, but they have an educated guess: Grave robbers. At the time Esther died, the practice was relatively common because grave robbers could make a nice profit by selling remains to physicians who were trying to learn more about anatomy.

"There is this sense of closure," says Esther's newly identified descendant, 69-year-old Wayne Svilar of Portland, Oregon. "I wish my mom were here so I could tell her the story, she would have loved it." (More strange stuff stories.)