A human skeleton is making the transition from apparent Halloween decoration to research tool.
The skeleton, nestled in a black coffin draped with fake spider webs, sold for $500 at an auction Tuesday.
Richards' Auction Gallery sold the unique item to a Tipton, Indiana, resident who agreed to donate it to a forensics center for research, said Anita Mattingly, fiancee of auctioneer Tim Richards.
Richards found the skeleton among furniture and boxed items he collected from New Castle for the auction. The bones, which were wired together, had apparently been someone's macabre decoration.
"'You won't believe what I found,'" Mattingly said he told her.
Tipton County Coroner Bob Nichols, after discussing the find with Richards, contacted University of Indianapolis forensic anthropologist Andrea Simmons, who examined the remains Friday.
Simmons concluded the skeleton was that of a European man who was between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5, Mattingly said. Simmons told Mattingly the man died sometime before World War I and was not murdered.
Simmons suggested that the skeleton be donated to research instead of being used for a Halloween prop, but Richards already had advertised that it would be sold. Tipton resident Jane Harper then made the purchase and donated it to the forensics laboratory at the University of Indianapolis, where Nichols was to deliver it.
"I just felt very strongly this person needed to be in a final resting place," Harper said. "And for him to go down there (to the university) is the right thing to do."
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