He Just Wanted His Thigh Bone Back
Friday April 18, 2008 8:29 AM
It's said in folklore that the dead will come back to take care of unfinished business. Sometimes that business is very strange. Take the case of a drowned man who would not rest until he got his thigh bone back.
The case, documented in scientific literature, took place between 1937 and 1940 in Iceland. Hafsteinn Bjornsson, one of Iceland's most famous trance mediums, was conducting a series of seances. Suddenly an uninvited ghostly visitor appeared and in a grouchy manner said, "I am looking for my leg. I want to have my leg." The leg, he said, was "in the sea."
It took more sessions for Bjornsson to learn that the invisible communicator was a man named Runolf Runolfsson [PDF link], or "Runki" for short, who died in 1879 at the age of 52. He had gotten drunk at a friend's home and had attempted to walk home in the dark along the shore. He passed out, and the tide came in and drowned him. His body was carried out to sea.
The corpse washed up in a few months, and birds and animals tore it to pieces. The thigh bone was missing, Runki said, and even though 60 years had passed, he wanted the bone returned to him.
Amazingly, the bone was found, sealed inside a wall in a home. Runki was pleased. The bone was placed in a coffin and given a proper religious burial. Speaking through Bjornsson, Runki said that he attended the funeral, and was happy his thigh bone was at last laid to rest. And Runki could rest in peace.
The case became the most famous example of "drop-in communicators," entities who show up at seances and seem intent on delivering messages or taking care of unfinished business.
