A 14th human foot, this one in a hiking boot, washes ashore in British Columbia
The macabre string of discoveries have revealed tales strange and sad, but not necessarily sinister
Like nearly all of the 13 human feet that had mysteriously washed up on Canadian shores before it, the 14th foot appeared, unexpectedly, on the banks of the Salish Sea in British Columbia. This time, a man walking the beach on Gabriola Island discovered the appendage last Sunday afternoon, trapped in a mass of logs, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The law-enforcement agency described the foot as “disarticulated” – that is to say, disconnected from the human body to which it had belonged. It did not specify if it was a left foot or a right foot. Curiously, Foot No 14 was clad in a hiking boot; all but one of the others had been wearing athletic sneakers.
So continues the mystery of the human feet floating ashore in the Pacific Northwest, a phenomenon that has captivated residents, scientists and area law enforcement since 2007. In August of that year, not one but two disembodied human feet, both right ones, were found on islands in the Salish Sea, a network of coastal waterways between Vancouver Island and Canada’s westernmost province.
Authorities were alarmed.
“Two being found in such a short period of time is quite suspicious,” Corporal Garry Cox of the Oceanside Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the Vancouver Sun in August 2007. “Finding one foot is like a million to one odds, but to find two is crazy.”