Plumber Finds Pile of 20 Bones While Digging Under Bathroom: ‘Started to Stress Out'
Jonathan Betts made an unlikely discovery while rehabbing a bathroom in a 200-year-old English cottage
A plumber in England found bones underneath the sub-floor of a bathroom he was remodeling
Jonathan Betts shared his findings — and confusion — in a series of videos on TikTok
Eventually, the bones turned out to be from a pig, which made sense after Betts discovered the home used to be adjacent to a slaughterhouse
A plumber in England who was hired to remodel a bathroom found more than he bargained for after he started excavating beneath the home's foundation.
Jonathan Betts shared his unlikely discovery — more than 20 bones of an at-first indeterminate mammal — with his followers on TikTok, and his videos have since garnered nearly 1.5 million views.
“So I’m digging up here, and I’m finding bits and thinking, um, we were digging up a dead cat, child or human in my little trench I’m doing,” Betts, 36, said in the video documenting his curious findings while working on a 200-year-old cottage in Plymouth, Devon.
“Tell me, is this an animal or … I’m hoping it’s a dog,” he said as he picked up a piece of jawbone with teeth attached.
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In another video set to ominous music, a collection of more than a dozen bone fragments were laid out on a concrete slab.
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But in a later post, Betts revealed that he matched a bone fragment in a Google search, and that the mysterious findings were not as sinister as he originally thought.
“It’s not a human, yes!” he rejoiced.
It turns out, the bones were from a pig, according to SWNS.
In an interview with the outlet, Betts shared details about how the routine construction project took a turn.
“After I removed the toilet and floor covering, I found that the sub-flooring below was massively rotten and discovered the joists had just been fitted onto soil,” he said.
Betts added, "I made the customers aware, who have been on holiday, that I will need to dig out the soil to try and find some solid ground to concrete in an ore-formed lintel."
Yet when he began finding the bones, Betts was taken aback.
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"As you can imagine I started to stress out, especially when I found a jaw bone with teeth," he said.
He turned to both the internet and the homeowners to share the news — and he was happy, if not surprised at the results.
"After speaking with the owners of the home, they informed me that the house opposite used to be a pig farm and they think the barn attached to their property was in fact a slaughterhouse," Betts told SWNS. The homeowners also asked him to rebury the bones after they discovered historically "people buried them to ward off bad spirits."
For Betts, the whole experience was, well... jaw-dropping.
"Let’s just say it's not every day you’re at work and find a pile of bones under a bathroom floor,” he said. "I have been in the industry for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like it before."
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