Internet Freakshow

The Body

Internet Freakshow - The Body

On April 17, 2019, a user posted 2 pictures to Facebook. One looked like a drawer and, written it Sharpie, it said, “the truth is under”. From what we can only assume was the bottom of the same drawer, more Sharpie text read, “The body lies at…” followed by a series of GPS coordinates. The Facebook user who posted this posted alongside the photos text that read, “it was donated to the store i work at a few months ago. Pics were taken but i don’t know if anyone followed through with a report. It was sold later that day.”

Pictures like this have a way of filtering down through the Internet into Reddit, a collection of all interesting photos across the internet. This picture was no exception, landing on Reddit 10 days later, April 27th, 2019, by the user wooden_head.

It didn’t take long for users to track down the location of the GPS coordinates. They were in Florida, on the Avon Park Bombing Range or MacDill AFB Auxiliary Field. Reddit users that lived near this location noted that visitors weren’t exactly welcome here. The land is of course very dangerous for trespassers, due to unexploded ordinances. Because it is a military installation, drones were also not welcome to explore in the absence of human visitors.

The original pictures were quickly spawned into the own subreddit to keep up with the case and any news or updates.

Unfortunately, however, news slowed to a trickle nearly immediately. At this point, we have 2 photos that are too close-up to really decipher anything from, and GPS coordinates that cannot be explored. The desk had already been sold off. All the internet could do was wait longingly and hope for a break in the case.

Fortunately, that break happened a few months later on July 14th. Another Reddit user, MissAveCarrie posted that she was in possession of the piece of furniture. Reddit users were, of course, cynical about the claim, but MissAveCarrie presented videos verifying her claim. Sure enough, she showed the text on the top and the GPS coordinates on the bottom, alongside a sheet of paper with her username proving that she was, in fact, in possession of the desk.

First and foremost, she clears up that this piece is not a desk at all. It is something called a sideboard. I was not familiar with what a sideboard was, but it is apparently similar to a buffet. It is meant to stay in a kitchen or dining room, and meals can be placed on top to be served.

MissAveCarrie also frequently mentions a man named Stuart who is apparently central to this story, but she never quite explains exactly who he is. As best I can figure, he obtains furniture from various thrift stores and flea markets, and MissAveCarrie works in the part of the shop that restores these pieces of furniture.

As to her history with the piece, she says, “I texted Stuart today and he said he purchased it in 2017... from the Goodwill in North Port, FL. I started working at the furniture biz in October 2017 and it was already there then... so we’ve had it at least 21mos... so just shy of 2yrs... and that’s if he bought it a few days before I started there. I’ll try to get an actual purchase date from inventory tomorrow.”

This was in response to a question as to whether or not she knew the person who posted these photos to Facebook. If you recall from the beginning of this episode, a user posted these pictures claiming to be working at a store where this piece of furniture came through, then it was sold almost immediately. MissAveCarrie dismisses this claim entirely, stating that she didn’t even know the Facebook user and she’d been working in the store alongside the piece of furniture for almost 2 years. So if we’re going to believe both MissAveCarrie AND the user who posted them to Facebook, then we have to assume that the Facebook user saved these pictures for 2 years, and she worked at the Goodwill in North Port FL where the piece of furniture sat for at least a short time. This is not impossible of course, but maybe a bit unlikely that she kept these photos for so long without bothering to post them.

So that leads to more questions. If the person who posted them to Facebook originally did not take the photos, where did she get them? And why did she post them and lie about their origins? I guess this is sort of easy to speculate on. In the world of Facebook and Reddit, and really the internet as a whole, you’re on a quest for likes, share, and upvotes. A good story always helps. Maybe she took the pics herself and promptly forgot about them until reminded by any number of those “last year on this date” apps? I’m just speculating here.

But MissAveCarrie speculates herself on where the original pictures on Facebook came from:

“I asked Stuart if those were his pics ... thinking maybe he texted them to somebody at that Goodwill...maybe even her...since he’s in there almost daily and knows everyone... but he couldn’t say if they were his or not. Maybe they are her pics? But if so... and if she saw the writing... why in the world did she let the piece out of her sight? She couldn’t have gotten the pics off the internet cuz the only other people that would have pics would be Stuart and people at where I work... and none of us put anything about it online. Hell, I was sorting thru pics on my phone on Saturday night and came across the drawer pic I had and when entering the coordinates for shits and giggles, I did it via google and to my shock, it brought up all sorts of stuff and I was STUNNED! And no, I don’t work with her and never have. She worked at the Goodwill in North Port and I work in Sarasota at a design house that does high-end furniture restoration/restyling.”

The videos from MissAveCarrie revealed a few other things reddit users had wondered about, namely the conspicuous writing that read, “The truth is under”. Turns out the writing was actually underneath a piece of green felt that needed to be lifted up to see. Going back to look at the original pictures, this became more clear but didn’t stand out so well in the original photos.

Please stay tuned for the conclusion of The Body after this word from our sponsors.

The mystery has been forwarded on to Highlands County Sheriff's Department, who stated on Facebook, “We are aware of this post making the rounds. The GPS location is in the middle of the Avon Park Bombing Range, and the information has been passed along to Air Force officials.”

But in this freaky internet of ours, we can’t let a good mystery die without other piggy-backing onto the mystery. In this case, we get another Reddit user who posts an image drawn in MS Paint, stating that the original coordinates were incorrect. If you download this image and separate the alpha channel, you get a separate set of coordinates in a ghost town in Death Valley. There is almost certainly nothing do this strange addition to an otherwise fantastic internet mystery, but I personally love it when people take ownership of something on the internet and try to expand the mythology of it. While this one didn’t really take hold, you have to admire the effort, right?

Other users have tried to figure out who the potential body is. There are some names out there that people speculate about, but I’m not going to spend time on them here. In these cases, there’s not much to prove for disprove. We don’t know when the note was written, other than more than 2 years ago of course, and there’s no other details tying this piece of furniture to any of the missing people. In this case, well-meaning internet detectives are just looking for people who disappeared in approximately this time period in approximately this area of the country. It’s good intentioned of course, but the truth is that the messages could’ve been written 20, 30, 40 years ago for all we know. There’s not enough information for anything more than blind speculation.

But isn’t that one of the great parts of the internet? Armed with only the smallest of details, if you get enough internet detectives on the case guessing wildly, eventually someone is going to guess right… right?