12 Newly Unearthed Mass Graves That Hid Horrific Secrets

New mass grave sites are being uncovered all the time due to modern technology, like satellite and radar, as well as the passage of time. The idea of a mass grave filled with multiple corpses is creepy enough, but sometimes it's the details uncovered that provide a truly grim picture of the lives and deaths of the people within.

Decapitation, torture, disease, and even neglect are all evident in these newly discovered mass grave sites. What may be even more unsettling are the discoveries yet to be made as investigators attempt to fill in the blanks with forensic and DNA analysis. The human capacity for darkness is well known, but what makes these mass graves so frightening is the cold, systematic nature of the killing.

2014: One Woman Finds 796 Children's Bodies In A Septic Tank Of An Irish Orphanage

In 2014, a grisly discovery was made at a site that was formerly the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland: 796 skeletons of children between the ages of three months to three years. Local historian Catherine Corless discovered the home had death certificates for nearly 800 children but only one burial record, so she pushed for an examination of the grounds. The search uncovered hundreds of bodies in the septic tank of the abandoned Catholic home for unwed mothers and their children. This discovery confirmed the decades-long suspicion that the nuns who ran the home were disposing of the bodies of children on its grounds without a proper burial.

An investigation was launched and the bodies were exhumed and subjected to DNA analysis. According to the court-appointed Mother and Baby Homes Commission, the DNA results confirmed the children were all under the age of three and they were buried mostly in the 1950s. The children died mainly of disease and symptoms related to severe neglect.

2015: Construction Worker Discovers Spanish Flu Pandemic Burial Site In Pennsylvania

A construction worker contracted to widen Route 61 in Schuylkill Haven, PA, a small village 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia, made a gruesome find when he saw piles of human bones exposed from erosion. Kevin Mock, a transportation department archeologist, investigated and found evidence that the meadow was used a a burial ground during the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed over 50 million people worldwide.

According to the records, the town had 17,000 infections and over 1,500 deaths in one year. None of the remains found in the meadow were buried in coffins, speaking to the speed at which the disease swept through the town, and the number of the dead will remain a mystery until DNA analysis has been completed.

Authorities state that there should be no risk of contamination from unearthing the remains, despite the fact that no precautions were taken back in 1918 to contain or disinfect hundreds of diseased corpses without coffins.

2015: Colombian Authorities Uncover World's Largest Urban Mass Grave In Medellin

According to Justice For Colombia, a peace and social justice non-profit, Colombia finds an average of twelve bodies a week in mass graves. That number received a bump in 2015 when Colombian authorities discovered what may be the largest urban mass grave in the world in a landfill of Comuna 13, a slum on the outskirts of Medellin.

According to eyewitnesses, up to 300 corpses are buried in an area that measures 285,000 square feet (or about five football fields). They are suspected to be victims of the ongoing conflict between the government, paramilitary, and cartel forces. This makes the landfill the largest urban mass grave to ever be unearthed.

2015: African Union Finds Evidence Of Forced Cannibalism In Mass Graves All Over South Sudan

South Sudan is the world's newest nation; it declared its independence in 2011 and tragically devolved into a humanitarian disaster due to a civil war in 2013. A report released in 2015 by the African Union states that investigators found mass graves all over South Sudan with disturbing evidence of war crimes, including forced cannibalism, from all sides.

Some of the horrific acts described by the African Union report include "evidence that some of the people who had been gathered were compelled to eat human flesh, while others were forced to drink human blood belonging to a victim who had been slaughtered and his blood collected on a plate." An eyewitness account described seeing "SPLA (South Sudan army) soldiers burning dead bodies and compelling Nuer women to eat burnt flesh of burnt victims."

The South Sudanese Civil War is still being waged by a growing list of combatants every year. The cruelty of war puts the civilian population at risk and it is estimated that up to 300,000 have been killed and 1.5 million have become refugees.

2015: Malaysian Investigators Discover Human Trafficking Victims In A Mass Grave Network Across Malaysia And Thailand

Malaysian authorities unearthed multiple mass grave sites on the border of Malaysia and Thailand in 2015, uncovering a human trafficking network that exploited the refugee crisis of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar, as well as economic migrants from Bangladesh by capturing and selling them into forced labor. One hundred thirty-nine graves were found and Malaysia's national police chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters he was "not sure how many bodies are in each grave."

As many as 28 camps were found by Malaysian investigators, and each camp held hundreds of people forcibly crammed together in cages. Corpses were found rotting in pens, one so badly decomposed that five body bags were needed to remove it. The Thai police also uncovered more camps and a mass grave with 29 remains on their side of the border, pointing to a vast modern-day slave trade. Thai authorities launched an investigation of their own, culminating in the arrest of 102 people, including 21 government officials, on charges of forcible detention leading to death, trafficking, rape and belonging to organized transnational criminal networks.

The exhumed bodies show evidence of starvation and torture, but even more unsettling is the organized nature of the human trafficking operation. The campsites and graves are physical proof of the network's resources and power, and survivors speak of the horrific conditions that caused so many to die.

In November 2016, Iraqi Security Forces stumbled upon a mass grave containing 100 decapitated skeletons at an agricultural college in the town of Hamam al-Alil, south of the ISIS-held city of Mosul. Brig.-Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the Joint Military Command, stated that the condition of the bodies made it impossible to tell if the victims were civilians or military.

What is certain, is that there are children among the deceased, as evidenced by the stuffed toys found amidst the bodies. Mass graves have been a signature of ISIS and 72 mass graves have been found throughout their territory. Experts estimate the graves contain up to 15,000 bodies.

What makes this mass grave stand out, however, is its academic setting, numerous child victims, and the clinical nature of the decapitation. Civilians are clearly among the dead; it's as if the whole town was brought to the school, the victims were sorted out, and all were beheaded.

Aleppo has been an ongoing war zone and humanitarian crisis since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011. In 2015, Russia entered the war as a combatant supporting the government of Bashar Assad against the numerous rebel factions, including the Free Syrian Army. The rebels were crushed under the combined forces of Syria and Russia, and the damage from the aftermath is still being calculated.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced in December 2016 that their soldiers had unearthed a mass grave containing dozens of Syrian civilians who had been tortured and mutilated, many with body parts missing, in rebel-held east Aleppo. Booby traps were placed inside the graves, as well as items like children's toys, according to Russian officials.

What remains unknown is who the victims and the perpetrators were. The rebels were composed of many factions, including ISIS, and it's possible that the bodies could be victims of any of them, not to mention the Syrian government or the Russians. No official claim has been made as to responsibility for the death of dozens of people, and this mystery could go unanswered for many years.

2016: Archeologists Uncover 80 Shackled Skeletons Of A Rebel Army Executed For Invading Ancient Athens

Archeologists in Athens, Greece, made a chilling discovery when they unearthed a mass grave containing 80 skeletons: they were all shackled and neatly arranged in a row. Experts believe the skeletons belonged to prisoners of war and were part of a mass execution.

“They have been executed, all in the same manner. But they have been buried with respect,” Dr. Stella Chryssoulaki, the lead investigator, told reporters. Archeologists have pieced together that the prisoners were killed by head trauma sometime between 650-625 BCE. The skeletons show that the prisoners were young men in good health and shackled in iron with their arms above their heads. It is uncertain whether the killing blow came before or after they were neatly laid out in a row.

Further DNA analysis will hopefully yield answers about this mystery. The top theory is that the men were part of the rebel army of Cylon, an Athenian nobleman, who staged a coup in 632 BCE that failed. Cylon is said to have hid in the Acropolis while his men were taken prisoner.

2017: Scientists Dig Up 45 Human Brains From The Spanish Civil War That Turned To Soap

Scientists in northern Spain made a grisly discovery after exhuming a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War: 45 preserved human brains. Intact organs are extremely rare to find and 45 specimens make this an unprecedented discovery for forensic scientists.

The brains were preserved through a combination of precise microbiological, chemical, and physical factors that led to saponification, a process that changes dead bodies into a soap-like substance. Forensic anthropologist Fernando Serrulla believes the victims were shot and buried in the summer and fall of 1936. By winter, the mass grave was a "pool of saponified bodies," Serrulla reported in his findings. Forty-five of the bodies formed grave wax - a film of body fat that forms in corpses dues to low oxygen, which protected the internal organs from further damage.

The Khafsa sinkhole just outside of Mosul, Iraq, was a curious feature of the landscape discovered by a boy falling into it in 2003. In 2014, ISIS took control of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and began using the sinkhole as a site for executions and a repository for the corpses of their victims.

One witness recalled that "Daesh (ISIS) would drive the victims to Khasfa in convoys of minibuses, trucks and pick ups. The men had their hands bound and their eyes blindfolded. They were taken to the sinkhole and shot in the back of the head."

ISIS lost control of Khafsa when the US-led coalition forces took control of the area in the Battle of Mosul in February 2017. Iraqi authorities discovered the sinkhole and investigators estimate up 4,000 bodies could be inside. Attempts to exhume the bodies have been frustrating because IEDs and other booby traps have been hidden throughout the depths of the sinkhole.

The state of Veracruz, Mexico, made headlines early in 2017 when 250 human skulls were discovered in a mass grave. It made the news again a few days later when 47 more skulls were found in another mass grave, sealing its reputation as a popular dumping ground for victims of the rival Mexican drug cartels that control the streets.

According to a report produced by the International Crisis Group, only 681 cases of missing persons are recognized by the federal government, but civil society organizations report that up to 20,000 unsolved disappearances can be traced to Veracruz alone. Considering that experts estimate that the number of unsolved disappearances in the whole country to be 27,000, Veracruz takes up the lion's share of Mexico's missing.

State prosecutor Jorge Winckler spoke to the Mexican media and claimed that "Verazruz is an enormous mass grave. In my view, once we have opened all the mass graves in the state, [Veracruz] could become the biggest mass grave in Mexico, or even the world."

2018: Archeologists Discover Brutally Battered Skulls In An Underwater Grave In Swedan

In 2018, archeologists discovered a grave of skulls buried in a prehistoric lake in Sweden, dating back 8,000 to the European Mesolithic culture. The discovery baffled archeologists as the condition of the skulls challenged notions regarding rituals of death in Mesolithic cultures.

The skulls were of 12 individuals and found alongside a full skeleton of an infant that was likely stillborn or died shortly after birth. Seven of the skulls found had marks indicating blunt force trauma to the head, which would have resulted in a slow and agonizing death. The skulls appeared to have been deliberately buried underwater, and jawbones were missing from all but one skull.

Archeologists remain unsure why the individuals may have been buried in such a fashion. However, some scientists believe the markings and missing jawbones may indicate early Mesolithic tribes displayed the heads of enemies on spikes.

Well then, as much as you personally claim that poor jihadi invaders are victims (and you just claimed exactly that) and as much as you believe that children interred in a reliquary were really dumped in a sewer(and you did just claim exactly that, no excuse on your part for your anticatholic slur) I assert once again that this piece of shot article is I’ll researched socialist garbage with an agenda to elevate Muslims to victim status and to fabricate atrocities on the part of judeoChristian institutions so as to create parity with atrocities committed by socialist regimes and Islam.

2015: African Union Finds Evidence Of Forced Cannibalism In Mass Graves All Over South Sudan

What's left unsaid is that the victims were all Christian civilians from the Upper Nile hills, and the cannibals were Muslim "warriors" from down the Nile toward Egypt (Sudan proper).

It seems everywhere that Islam borders another religious peoples' territory, no matter how meek and mild that religion is, there is war, murder, atrocities and violence.

All due to Islamic Supremacism. The whole religion needs a time out, somewhere off the planet.

Gosh dang it!

In a pure Freaking Free Republic, there’d be no stinking need to cuss OR use euphemisms and other tricks to hid it.

Shoot, I can’t tell you how many goll durn times I see this here at this site. It’s crap, feces, poo and other kinds of excrement.

I did not make one thing up, at any point.

Those two are things which this article falsely claims, and I disparaged the piece of trash because of them.

You have a problem with the article being disparaged on the basis of its false claims. You don't get to have things both ways Niftser. Defending the article means defending the claims.

So again, tell us all why the Rohingya were victimized when Myanmar kicked them out. Go ahead.

You are also defending this article trying to revive the debunked Bon Tuam reliquary smear.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2014/06/associated-press-apologizes-for-its-coverage-of-the-irish-orphanage-story/

So it is absolutely fair to ask why you hate Catholics so much.

That’s interesting about the 80 skeletons from 7th-century BC Athens. Cylon’s failed attempt to make himself tyrant is the earliest well-documented event in Athenian history. Pericles’ mother’s family was supposedly under a curse for the manner in which their ancestor had put Cylon’s followers to death. In 432 BC the Spartans were urging the Athenians to send Pericles into exile because he was under a curse. The real reason was that he was successfully urging the Athenians not to give in to Spartan demands.

Hi, Alas Bbylon!

See, I knew there were other like minded FReepers on this site who believed like I do; Civilized Discourse!

I am so glad to see that you seconded my thoughts!

” no risk of contamination “

Uh yeah, They’ve been buried since 1918 so I doubt there is any lung tissue left.

“America is for too advanced and progressive at allow such a thing to happen.”

Are you including our NEW IMPORTS ? U No,,the ones that have a Holy Book that says— KILL THE INFIDEL ???

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