This may be one of the WEIRDEST stories I have come across…
New Hampshire family that has been ordered to bury the mummified baby the family has passed down to relatives for 90 years.
Relatives have kept the dead baby on top of a bureau and honored Baby John at holidays with cards and gifts. One year the stillborn infant was given, appropriately enough, a dried pet fish, relatives say.
Authorities seized the mummy last year after the man’s niece ratted the family out by mentioning Baby John’s existence to the staff at a day care center.
After tests revealed the baby had died of natural causes, either at birth or shortly after, officials refused to release the mummy to the Charles Peavey family unless it proved kinship, but Peavey says he can’t afford DNA testing.
Peavey said his family believes that Baby John was his great-great uncle’s child.
He claimed there was nothing unnatural about keeping a dead baby on top of his dresser.
“I’ve never treated him like a joke. No weirdness was going on,” Peavey was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
“It’s one of the few things from our family past that we have left,” Peavey said in a written petition to the court, according to the AP. “And when I pass on, I was looking forward to passing it on to another family member, to keep some of the history for future family members.”
I have no words. Most families give a lost family member a burial – not Xmas cards or Goldfish!
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