 In 1887, a leg with a boot still attached to the leg washed up on the shores of Faults Creek and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The police in Vancouver in that time in the 1800s collected this said leg and put it on display in the police department so that people could come and claim it. People would come and gawk at this disembodied leg, but no one ever came to claim it. The area of Vancouver where this leg was found is now known as Leg in Boot Square. This incident in 1887 would not be the last time a disembodied leg or foot would show up on Canada's western shore. In fact, in modern times, this is a pretty normal occurrence. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Also, a very special, special thank you to all of our patrons. Without you, this channel would not be possible. If you would like to join our Patreon program, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the case of the disembodied feet. We go into our mystery today. I do want to give you guys a bit of good news. We have a new camera for our show. This is not being filmed on our new camera and there might be a few more episodes you see before we actually use the new camera because we have to figure out how to use it. I know the camera that we've been using is a pretty cheap camera and sometimes the eyesight isn't quite on the marker because the camera is cheap. But now hopefully within a week or so, that will not be a problem anymore. All right, let's get into our story. So I've known about this story. I've kind of heard things here and there. And I always assumed that this story was probably about a modern day serial killer. However, after studying this story and this crazy mystery of why all these feet keep showing up on the western coast of Canada and northern America and the state of Washington, I now have a different theory. It seems that there isn't a serial killer in my opinion. However, once the story is said and done, I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. The Salish Sea is an inland waterway that borders both Canada and the United States. Ports in the Salish Sea are Tacoma, Seattle as well as Victoria where most of these disembodied feet have shown up. Now, I'm from the southeast and most of you probably know or get it. Some of you may not. But geographically, the northwestern part of the United States and the southwestern part of Canada versus the northeast where I live are very, very different climates. Seattle is very rainy. It's cold where I live. I mean, they call us hot Lana. It's hot as hell down here most of the time. And so when I think of the sea, my thoughts of the sea are hot, muggy. You get the picture. But up in that area, it's a very different climate and the climate of the area does seem to play a bit of a role in what is happening, this phenomenon of these body parts showing up on their shorelines. The first modern day discovery of a disembodied foot took place in August of 2007 in Jedidiah Island in the Salish Sea. Now, the owner of this foot has been identified. However, his name as of now has been withheld from the public. Over the next 13 years, people would continue to find disembodied feet and sneakers and running shoes, tennis shoes, as we say down here, all along the shoreline. Many people have suspected that we have a serial killer on our hands. There was even a theory that the 2004 tsunami that happened in the Indian Ocean was to blame for all these disembodied body parts. Yes, this was quite a good theory at the time. However, it is believed that this theory might be debunked because some of the victims have been identified. This also begs the question of a serial killer because all of these different victims have different stories and come from different demographics. Since 2007, 21 feet have showed up along the shorelines. It's a lot of feet, but now we have to ask ourselves if we know in 1887 that a leg showed up on the shoreline. Is this a new phenomenon or has this been happening for a long time? And we are just now noticing. So another reason why it's probably not a serial killer again has to do with the people themselves. A lot of the people who have been identified were people who were severely depressed, a few of whom we know committed suicide by jumping off of bridges. For example, feet number four and number seven were owned by the same woman who jumped off the Batula Bridge in 2004. Her feet weren't discovered until 2008 when they washed up on Kirkland Island just down from the bridge. But we know that she herself was a suicide victim. Foot 12 belonged to a man who went missing in 1987 while he was on a sailing trip. His foot wasn't found until 2011. In fact, there's only one victim of this foot mystery that seems to be an actual victim of a homicide. And that's the 20th foot that washed up on January 1 of 2019. This belonged to the person known as Antonio Neil, who went missing a few years before he was classified as a missing person. Now Antonio's story is long and complicated. I am going to link a documentary down in the description box below of someone who covers this story pretty thoroughly in regards to this phenomenon that happened. But Antonio Neil struggled with drug abuse and as he was starting to get his life together, he fell off the wagon again. He ended up getting kicked out of his parents' house and was living with some roommates where we believe or people believe he might have been murdered one night by one of his roommates allegedly. Now as far as I can tell in my research, Antonio's body has not been found. The only part of his body we can find is his foot. In fact, there's only one victim out of all these 21 victims whose body has been recovered. The rest, we've only found their feet. Well, why is this? According to the experts, none of the detached feet look like they were detached from the body forcibly. We all know that once a body dies, it starts the process of decomposition. When a body that is decomposing is submerged in water, the water can start to affect the soft tissue. The soft tissue which holds the joints together where there's tendons and ligaments will be the first to give way. Therefore, the foot or the leg might be the first to break off of a human body in the decomposition process when the body is submerged in water. Now, as I said earlier, the weather, the water, everything in the Pacific Northwest is very, very different from the weather, the water, everything down here in the Southeast. And that might be why we're seeing this phenomenon more up there than we are anywhere else in the world because it's just like the perfect storm with all these different elements. We also have to remember that in this area, there is a lot of wildlife, especially in the seas. If any of you guys watch those crazy fishing shows, a lot of times they're up even more north in that Pacific area, you know, fishing for big, big fish. And this is a very dangerous job. This whole area can be very, very dangerous with the terrain. I mean, if one thing old man in the sea taught us, it's that man versus nature. Nature always wins. Well, once the foot is detached, if it is covered by a shoe that is like a sneaker, and remember all 21 of these feet that have washed up have been in a sneaker or a running shoe. Well, that sneaker wraps around the foot, protecting it a bit from the elements of the decomposition and the water around it. Other parts of the body are exposed to all sorts of fish and insects in the water and sharks possibly to be used and devoured as food. And so as the lone foot or feet start to break away from the body, they are protected by the material of the sneaker and they become buoyant, rising to the top of the water and then coming into the shore where they are discovered by rather unfortunate passerbys. We know that if a body is submerged in water and decomposing, a lot of times the body will float to the top of the water when it's filled with enough gas. However, because again of the elements of the area, that doesn't happen that much because the body is typically again devoured before that can happen. So unfortunately for these victims' families, most of what's left of the victim is really just their their foot. Now the documentary I spoke of earlier is called The Mystery of the Washed Up Feet that I am going to again place in the description box below for you to watch. He shows an experiment that they did in the area with a dead pig and it's really pretty unbelievable to see how quickly the body of the pig was eaten by all of the living creatures of the Salish Sea. This experiment is pretty much what sealed the deal in regards to these bodies probably were not victims of a serial killer. Again, most of them we know committed suicide or like our unfortunately Antonio Neil was a murder victim who had gone missing or in some cases they were sailing and their boat capsized and they died drowning. Now one thing that's also covered in this documentary is the fact that this phenomenon only really started happening to our knowledge in August of 2007. But again as I said upon further digging I have found other incidents where the same phenomenon happened in the past. Again 1887 we had the leg and boot which created leg and boot square and we also had another incident in 1914. Well the guy who conducted this documentary brought up a really good point and this is the idea of frequency illusion. Frequency illusion is a form of our own survival. The human mind is adapt to pick up patterns. Even when we're not even looking for patterns our brain is looking for patterns. This is part of our survival and for people like me living in the middle of a major city I can walk out my front door and see shoes laying everywhere all over the sidewalk from homeless people or for trash cans, shoes falling out of trash cans or whatever. Most of the time I don't give the missing shoe an extra thought. I just pass it by. You probably do the same thing. But let's say one day you're out at the beach on the shoreline and you walk by a missing shoe. Only this time the shoe is turned in a way that you can see what's inside the shoe. And when you see inside the shoe just glancing passing by you realize the shoe is not empty. You then call the police. The police show up. It's all over the news. People are looking for a potential serial killer. They don't know who the victim is right away. XYZ you understand what I'm saying. So when you live in the area now every time you're out walking around and you pass a shoe subconsciously or consciously because of this idea of frequency illusion you will do a double take just to check and see what's inside the shoe. Therefore 20 more shoes were found with feet inside of them. So if this is a theory we're going to work with which I think we should be working with this theory because this is definitely a pattern of how the human mind picks up patterns. It's safe to say that before 2007 we know this has happened like way in the past but before 2007 most people walking around the shore in the city might have seen a missing shoe and their peripheral vision and just never thought gave it a second thought. Thought it was just somebody's lost shoe. So with that being said how many feet have washed up on the shore that we're just not even aware of. In fact this theory is so popular that in 2017 the British Columbia Coroner Services said that none of these feet except for maybe Antonio Neil were the result of foul play. They seem pretty confident that all of these people lost their lives either at their own hand or during an unfortunate accident like drowning on a sailing trip. However of course there are people out there that still want to believe that potentially there is a serial killer in the area of the Pacific Northwest. Now this is one of these cases where there's a lot of information and also not much information. I do urge you to watch the documentary I have placed in the description box below. He does a really good job working through this case. However I would love to hear your thoughts as well. Do you think that we're wrong and that the science that the science is just something to cover up an actual serial killer? What are your thoughts? And to all the victims that met such a horrific and I do hope your passing was quick. Gosh I can't even imagine having a family member go through what these people went through and I do pray that they are all resting in peace. Don't forget to join us tomorrow night on The Dark Outpost with David Zublik as we go through section eight of the Gospel of the Holy Twelve and I'm super excited to be working with my new camera soon so I can bring you hopefully longer videos and better quality videos. It might be a trial experiment. There might be some days where I have to go back to the cheaper camera because I'm still trying to figure out the newer camera but I know in time it will all work out well. Thank you so much to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase our opening song there is a link down in the description box below and thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all today. I hope that you're having a wonderful Monday and I will talk to you soon. Bye.