FTA: It is understood the body had been there for about six months and that it may have been recently disturbed by animals.

I'll say.

Well, if you have to be beheaded, I guess a hospital is a good place for it.

StaceyNC: An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said the death did not appear to be suspicious

Dude dies on grounds, rots. Animals come along. Head gets pulled off.

hdhale: "A post-mortem examination is due to take place in the next few days to try to find the cause of death," he added.

I'm no CSI, but off-hand, lack of a head?

Hey! Leave that kind of thing to the professionals!

/I'm not saying it was aliens...but it was aliens.

hdhale: "A post-mortem examination is due to take place in the next few days to try to find the cause of death," he added.

I'm no CSI, but off-hand, lack of a head?

Maybe heart failure?

Headless bodies laying around? Not unusual in these parts.

He probably died from eating all that salt.

"The hospital, in Marmalade Lane"

In? YUM!

Allen. The end.: Recently, I have been misquoted as saying that I called for the beheading of all white women...

Wooo wooo wooo. Look at Mr. Bigshot Alien here. Several million aliens living on this planet but of course I'm talking about you. What? You don't put your pants on one tentacle at a time?

ragsthetiger: rudemix: I saw him on a double feature with Mr. Toad. He had a voice that was like spun gold, and suprisingly Bing Crosby-esque.

A Halloween perennial at my house -- the chase scene is brilliant animation, and pretty darn scary when I was eight.

/we also watch "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" every year

Terrifying for me was the Light Bulb Monster on Johnny Quest. The one where it's screaming underneath the lightbulb. I didn't walk into a dark room for years. But I developed okay.

TheShavingofOccam123: ragsthetiger: rudemix: I saw him on a double feature with Mr. Toad. He had a voice that was like spun gold, and suprisingly Bing Crosby-esque.

A Halloween perennial at my house -- the chase scene is brilliant animation, and pretty darn scary when I was eight.

/we also watch "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" every year

Terrifying for me was the Light Bulb Monster on Johnny Quest. The one where it's screaming underneath the lightbulb. I didn't walk into a dark room for years. But I developed okay.

The scene from Casper the Friendly Ghost where the guy looks in the mirror and instead of his reflection he sees a skeleton.

photo of the suspect

twfeline: Chinchillazilla: Dude dies on grounds, rots. Animals come along. Head gets pulled off.

What animal goes for long-dead meat? Badgers, maybe. They certainly have the strength to dig up a shallow grave, detatch and drag a head around.

Predators and scavengers often like their meat quite ripe. Spoiled doesn't necessarily mean toxic or hard to digest, and dogs, for example, don't have much in the way of taste. That's why dogs will bury bones and other food for later consumption. Also, they will eat their own vomit and faeces. You may have noticed that dogs will eat cat faeces. This allows animals to deal with hard to digest foods even though they don't have long multiple stomach digestive tracks like cows do to deal with cellulose. They'll also roll in dead bodies--it seems to serve as a way of destroying ticks and fleas.

Dogs are common scavengers in urban areas, along with foxes, coyotes, cats, racoons, rats, crows, etc.

There are many small scavengers such as rats, mice, ants, etc., that would also disturb a ripe carcass.

Many cases of cattle mutilation involve the failure to recognize the characteristics of scavenging. Birds will peck out eyes and snip off other soft bits. Rats and mice can produce nearly surgical precision when chewing off genitals, etc. Rats and mice will enter a carcass through the anus or the mouth to eat soft internal organs--the hide is very hard for some animals to cut, so they concentrate on vulnerable bits such as udders, etc.

Insects will finish off bits that larger animals can't tackle, such as the hide, which is rich in molecules which insects can use.

Many animals, including some herbivores, will gnaw bones for the calcium and other mineral content. In a wooded area, the acidic soil will dissolve anything that predators and scavengers don't eat. This is why you almost never find bones or antlers or such things in the woods despite the large number of animals that live and die there. It's also the reason why human and primate remains are rare in much of Africa, etc. They just don't go un-recycled long enough to fossilize.

When a carcass decays, the feet, hands and heads often separate from the torso because limbs have vulnerable points (the wrist, the ankle, the neck) with fragile bones and thinner flesh and skin.

That's why shoes with feet in them keep washing up on the beaches of British Columbia--the feet easily become detached from the body and float differently in currents, so they are sorted out and dumped in certain areas more frequently than a random distribution would predict.

AngryJailhouseFistfark: Patertot: Evil Mackerel: Someone is after the prize.

Beat me to it. Came to say "there can be only one!"

Whenever I see these stories I always hear the female news caster saying, "It also left a man's decapitated body lying on the floor next to his own severed head. The head, which at this time, has no name."

Then the Kurgan snarls, "I know his name..."

I know his name