
Police have intervened after a man posted an antique coffin for sale on Craigslist which contained a real skeleton.
The Order of Odd Fellows, based in Council Bluffs, Iowa, put the ghoulish item up for sale for $12,000 in a bid to raise funds to pay property taxes on a meeting hall.
Police were alerted to the online ad, seized the coffin and its contents and deemed the sale of the skeleton illegal under Iowa law.
The bones were sent to the State Medical Examiner's Laboratory to be examined by an anthropologist, who warned that identification would be "extremely unlikely".
Order of Odd Fellows member Dave Burgstrum said a local historian told him the skeleton was donated to the organisation by a local doctor after he retired in the 1880s.
The coffin itself dates to the 1900s, but Burgstrum didn't know how the bones came to lay inside it.
"They were just there as long as anyone could remember," he said.
Burgstrum added the laboratory were welcome to keep the skeleton as his priority is just to sell the coffin.
"I'm ready to wheel and deal on it," he said. "I'd like to get those taxes paid."
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Appropriately named Order he belongs to. However, I have a bone to pick with this guy. Where did he get this coffin in the first place?