Man who bought skeleton decoration for Halloween at yard sale discovers it is real

A Hillsborough County man thought he was buying a Halloween decoration when he spent $8 for a box of bones at a yard sale in Brandon. But when he and his wife got the box home, they realized it was an actual human skeleton. "I got looking at it and thought, gosh, this is the real thing," recalled Judith Fletcher, wife of Mitchell Fletcher, the retiree who bought the box of bones.

The couple called the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office. Detectives took the mystery bones to the medical examiner's office. Experts there determined it's a professionally prepared human anatomical skeleton, the kind used in college and university medical courses, like the example pictured here. They estimate it's worth more than $3,000.

"We did find a serial number on the femur," says sheriff's spokesperson Cristal Bermudez Nunez. She says detectives are contacting colleges and universities who may be missing a skeleton. The Fletchers can't remember the exact address where they attended the yard sale. They told deputies it was somewhere on Parsons Avenue in Brandon.

State law says individuals can't own human skeletons, so the Fletchers won't get their blockbuster find returned. "If I see any more, I'll report them to the sheriff's office," said Mitchell. "But I don't want them." The Fletchers say they will continue to search for deals at yard sales. "But, I don't know about anything that would be that spectacular," added Judith. "It's hard to top a human skeleton."