Skullduggery

In an old house in Batavia, Illinois, concealed within a crumbling wall, lay the skull of a woman, later identified as Esther Ann Granger [1] . The skull, discovered in the early 1960s, had been stored briefly in a local museum and eventually forgotten, sealed away in a dusty cardboard box. Only recently was it unearthed once more, whereupon DNA testing confirmed the identity and revealed a lone living descendant—a great-great-grandson. Esther, born on October 26, 1848, had died tragically young during childbirth in 1866, a common fate in those difficult, dangerous days.

Originally, Esther had lived and been buried in Merrillville, Indiana. Yet her remains had somehow been removed from their rightful place, crossing state lines to rest in a Batavia wall, where a man named James Skeen uncovered them in 1978. The question remains unanswered: how, and why? Speculation leans toward grave robbing, a grim profession that fueled an often morbid trade.

During the Victorian era, “resurrection men”—graverobbers by trade—plundered burial sites, providing fresh cadavers to medical researchers. The laws governing the practice were severe, with stiff penalties for those caught. But the demand for bodies, coupled with the desperation of poverty, drove many to risk the gallows for this grisly work. Robert Louis Stevenson immortalized this terrifying reality in The Body Snatcher, inspired by the exploits of two notorious body snatchers: William Burke and William Hare.

The Ressurection Men

Burke and Hare [2], infamous in their day as Edinburgh’s most brutal "resurrection men," worked between 1826 and 1827, not merely digging up bodies but producing them—through murder. Between them, they killed sixteen people, beginning with an intoxicated woman and ending with a young man named James Wilson, or "Daft Jamie." The lodgers they murdered included poor women and vulnerable individuals, many of whom had fallen into the desperate circumstances of alcohol and prostitution.

Their chief customer was Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomist whose need for cadavers outweighed his concerns about their origin. Though Knox himself faced no legal charges, his reputation was destroyed; he was burned in effigy by an enraged public, denounced as the facilitator of murder-for-profit. Burke, captured thanks to suspicions raised by the tenants in his building, was ultimately hanged. His skeleton, stripped of flesh, now sits on display in the Edinburgh College Anatomical Museum, a final irony for a man who had profited from the deceased. Hare, on the other hand, was offered a plea deal and cooperated with authorities, escaping punishment.

From these dark events, a new term emerged: “Burking.” The word became slang for a particularly merciless style of murder—suffocating victims by pressing their mouths and noses closed until life slipped away. It’s easy to imagine Burke’s ghastly satisfaction at being immortalized by such a term, his crimes having inspired the term for an act as chilling as his legacy. In the end, he became a museum specimen, just like the bodies he once sold for a price.

Returning to Esther, one might wonder: did her skull somehow find its way behind the wall of the Batavia home of its own accord, lingering in a secret place like some relic from a forgotten horror? Perhaps it waited knowingly, biding time until its discovery could baffle those left behind. Or did someone hide it there for a purpose we cannot grasp—perhaps for a ritual or occult purpose, a relic of morbid fascination?

Eventually, her only known descendant finally laid Esther’s remains to rest in a quiet, private ceremony. Even now, though, whispers linger that Esther’s spirit may haunt the house where her skull lay hidden. Perhaps she walks its darkened halls, lamenting her fate, dragging behind her a long chain—perhaps symbolizing the umbilicus, marking the childbirth that cost her life. We might imagine her apparition tapping on walls, shifting objects, or appearing as a sorrowful figure at the foot of a bed in the dead of night. But Esther’s secrets remain just that, and she—well, she isn’t talking.

Sources:

[1] Genetti, Dominic. "Mystery solved: Skull found in Illinois home identified as 176-year-old Esther Ann Granger." The Telegraph, 28 October 2024, www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/esther-ann-granger-skull-identified-19868410.php.

[2] "Burke and Hare". Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, October 24 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders.

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