Accessed: July 4, 2026 8:22 am.
What starts out as gardening turns into a creepy incident: a family from Braunschweig discovers human bones while working in the garden. Police are investigating but no crime has been ruled out.
Homeowner Felix Chall’s garden resembles a crater landscape.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t find something,” says Felix Chall. The 35-year-old man and his wife really wanted to make the garden beautiful for summer. But during the first work in the new garden, bones were discovered. Sometimes there were isolated bone fragments, sometimes teeth, and sometimes larger parts of the skeleton. The father of the family even found skull bones. What started out as simple gardening turned into a daunting task for the family.
Family found bones of children and adults
Felix Chall digs in his garden almost every day – he wants to collect all the bones before planting new beds.
Two years ago, Felix Chall and his wife bought a house in the Dibbesdorf district of Brunswick. By Easter they wanted to start remodeling the garden. While removing old paving slabs, they came across their first bone. Further discoveries soon followed. The couple and their three daughters recovered more than 1,000 bones and many teeth from the ground. Among them are the remains of adults and children.
The police arrived with a large contingent
Felix Chall also found a skull in his garden.
After the first discovery, the family reported to the police. On the same day, a forensic expert confirmed that the bones were human. A few weeks later, the police arrived with a large forensic team. A total of eleven emergency services searched the property and found boxes full of bones. The findings were then examined by forensic experts from the Hannover Medical School. Experts found no fractures or other bone damage that would indicate a violent crime.
The prosecutor does not see the criminal case
All finds have been collected.
According to the current status, this is not a criminal case for the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office. The investigation did not reveal any evidence of murder, says Christian Wolters from the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office. Investigators believe the bones are between 50 and 100 years old. “Personal items or parts of uniforms that could lead to conclusions about the identity of the victims have not yet been found,” Walters continued. Since there is no evidence of a crime at this time, the case will likely be closed soon.
Lots of open questions
The discovery of the bones is also a mystery to the local city guard, Thorsten Wendt.
“The house was built in the 1960s,” says resident Torsten Wendt. Before this, the area was used as arable land, sometimes even for growing vegetables. “It’s not uncommon to find bones in the garden,” Wendt says. “However, this often happens near churches.” However, there is no church near the Chall family. There has never been a cemetery at this location, Wendt continued.
A modern witness provides a possible explanation
But now there may be an explanation for the unusual findings. According to police, an elderly man spoke up and recalled construction work in Dibbesdorf in the early 1960s. According to him, then the cemetery land was used to fill in land plots. As a child, he discovered bones at a construction site. This statement supports the theory that human remains may have entered the site through dumped soil. What’s striking is that the Challs’ property rises significantly higher than the surrounding houses.
The family wants all the bones back
Felix Chall believes that an explanation with the littered cemetery soil is possible, but still sees open questions. According to him, some bones lay in the ground in anatomical order. It does not combine easily with displaced soil. So he wants to explore the sites again with experts. Until then, the family will continue to dig. Every new discovery is reported to the police. For Challa, the focus is on one goal: one day, the dead should be buried with dignity in the main cemetery. “If they were my relatives,” he says, “I would want them to be treated well, too.”
On the B213 between Cloppenburg and Ahlhorn, police have already dug up and sifted the soil around the scene.
After the body is found, police in a neighboring country find out who the dead man was. However, the man was wearing a special T-shirt.