Emily Chan
Whenever you visit the beach in the summertime, you probably expect to sit back, relax, and bask in the warm sun, watching the waves roll in. Beaches have a soothing ambiance that might even lull you to sleep.
You might even go hunting for seashells in the sand to take home as souvenirs of your time there. However, there are certain beaches that don’t exactly fit this image.
Instead of finding shells in the sand of the beaches surrounding the Salish Sea near Vancouver and Seattle, people have come across much more gruesome items: decomposed human feet. Since 2007, more than 20 severed feet have washed up on the shores. But where did these Salish Sea feet come from?
For years, the strange phenomenon remained a mystery to the locals in the area. Theories about eerie hauntings and brutal murders surfaced as people strived to find answers.
After researchers had conducted a series of investigations into the case of the severed feet, they finally came up with an explanation as to how the feet were washed ashore.
The first foot was found by a 12-year-old girl who was strolling along a beach on Jedediah Island in British Columbia in 2007. At first, she thought it was just a blue and white size 12 running shoe that had belonged to a man.
But when she looked closer, she realized there was a human foot in the shoe. Soon after her discovery, more feet started appearing in the area.
A week later, a second foot made it to the nearby Gabriola Island. It was another right foot, and it was in a different shoe, meaning that it was from a different individual. Since then, more than 20 different feet have been discovered around the Salish Sea. Most of them were wearing tennis shoes, but there were also some with hiking boots.
To figure out where the feet were coming from, researchers studied the tides of the Salish Sea and how dead bodies behave underwater, experimenting with pig carcasses.
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