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Bizarre

Where Human Feet Wash Ashore: Salish Sea

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The Salish Sea is seperated from the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. It covers an area encompassing part of Washington State and the Canadian Province of British Columbia.

Since 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found along its shores.

Gruesome Discoveries

It gets stranger. Not only have all these random feet washed ashore, some have been identified. Once identified, it has been shown that they died by suicide. It is not thought that any of the feet found were from murder victims.

Just to add to the bizarre nature of all of this. Most of the feet were found still with shoes and socks on. This helps identify where they are from and when they died due to the make and model of shoe.

Where Human Feet Wash Ashore, Discovery Map. By Dennis Bratland – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65655155

And it ranges greatly. Some are decades old, some are from other continents. But they all have one thing in common. Like migrating birds, they all end up here.

No other body parts have been found. So what on earth is happening? Why is this where human feet wash ashore?

Why no other body parts?

It’s speculated that the feet become detached from the body naturally, over time. The ankle is a weak point. As the body decomposes, extremities detach. However, hands and heads don’t float. Neither do feet, unless they are encased in shoes. Which so happens to be the case with most of these gruesome discoveries.

Phew! Mystery solved, right?

Not quite.

The odds of finding even two feet along the same stretch of coast is huge. Especially when no other body parts are turning up. Finding 20 or more is described as an anomaly.

You also have to take into account that not all of the feet are found in shoes. Somehow, they still float to here.

Tsunami Victims?

It has been speculated that some of the feet could belong to victims of the Asian Tsunami that struck on December the 24th, 2004. Which could help to account why so many have been found in the last two decades.

But it still leaves so many unanswered questions. Why here and nowhere else? How do suicide victims feet find their way here too? Where on earth is the rest of the bodies?

And why do we have accounts of this happening in this area going back to 1887?

What? I here you say.

Yep, there was a foot found in a boot in 1887 in British Columbia. It even led to the area being named Leg-In-Boot Square.

Again it happens in 1914. And then since 2007, massive amounts have been found. And nobody is sure why.

Sources:

Salish Sea human foot discoveries (wikipedia.org)

Human foot found on Canada shoreline (theguardian.com)

Canada coroner matches pair of mysterious feet (dailynews.com)

The human feet that routinely wash ashore (vox.com)

Header Image (pixabay.com)

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