Mystery as Man Stumbles Upon Casket on the Curb in California

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans produce around 292.4 million tons of municipal waste over the course of a single year. You could spend days or possibly months searching through all of that garbage but the chances are you would probably never come across a casket in that time.

Yet, that's exactly what a Redditor, who asked to be referred to as James, found in front of a residence in a suburb of Los Angeles. James told Newsweek his initial reaction to the casket was a mixture of "disbelief and then enjoyment."

James, posting under the username u/SegaTime, shared a photo on Reddit Monday of his find, a silver casket resting on the grass next to the sidewalk with a sign taped to the top that says "bulky item pickup."

"It was the strangest thing I've ever seen left on the curb," he said. "I've seen all the basic household and garage stuff on curbs for years but never something that's meant to hold a corpse for burial."

While it's not uncommon to leave items outside the home for others to take or for trash collectors to pick up, there was definitely something out of the ordinary about finding a casket.

Eager to share his discovery, James posted a picture of the casket to Reddit's "Mildly Interesting" channel along with the comment: "This unused casket was left outside for trash pickup."

The picture proved to be a source of considerable amusement online.

"Oh man, I could use one of those someday," one Redditor joked, with another person commenting: "Imagine the looks you'd get carrying this to the beach just to open it and pull out some beers."

"How do you know it is unused?" a third poster asked, with a commenter cracking: "free to a good funeral home."

James attributes the popularity of his post to the fact he described it as "unused" and the fact "you don't ever really see caskets left out like that," he told.

He does have one theory as to why the casket was left there: "I thought maybe someone had used it as a prop since we are close to Hollywood but there's no way to know for sure," he said.

In any case, the casket didn't end up being removed by garbage services.

"I went back a couple hours later and it was gone," James said. "Trash day was days away when I saw [it] so either someone grabbed it for their own use or scrap metal recyclers found it and took it."

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