Do we think it's haunted?

If you've ever paid much attention to true crime cases, you know that hope is rarely ever totally lost. Because random stuff like this can happen.

According to our friends at KWQC, a home in Illinois held a solution to a case over a century old.

The History

The skull was initially found in a house in Batavia, Illinois in 1978. The Kane County Coroner’s Office says property owners renovating a house found it. An investigation was launched but the case ran cold. It was then sent to the Batavia Depot Museum for storage.

People forgot about the skull until March 2021, when museum workers found it in an inventory audit. The skull was sent to the coroner's office and through DNA testing, authorities have finally determined who it belonged to.

Whose Skull It Was

KWQC/Kane County Coroner
KWQC/Kane County Coroner
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The DNA, pieced together with the deceased's now great-great grandson, determined that the skull belonged to Esther Granger, a 17-year-old woman who died during childbirth in Merrillville, Indiana, in 1866.

The question is how she ended up in Batavia when burial records show she was interred in Lake County, Indiana. Authorities speculate that grave robbers may have dug up her grave in Indiana to sell it to physicians who were trying to learn more about human anatomy. Now, Granger's skull has been interred at the West Batavia Cemetary.

With the DNA and the skull, authorities were able to put together a sketch of what Granger may have looked like, as they showed in a press conference.

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