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4chan skull and bones9/13/2023 ![]() ![]() Reynders also takes a lot of pride in the aesthetics of her artifacts. ![]() ![]() No one does this better than Scragg, who now spends all of his time trading online as well as managing his oddities shop-cum-museum in Essex. Instagram's network not only allows collectors to find new buyers and sellers, but also to curate and market their wares in a visually compelling way, much like a fashion label or jewelry designer might. I think for the real collectors it’s always that way.” "We just sell skulls so we can buy more skulls. Now they both work part-time and spend their remaining hours trading and maintaining their growing collection. She told me that when it arrived in the mail there was an initial “shock factor,” but this slowly transformed into fascination and, eventually, obsession. Like Scragg, Reynders and her husband started collecting after buying their first skull on a whim online. “But the people who collect and trade are really genuine people, open and lovely. “People outside of the community often see what we do as maybe a little disturbing,” she said. When I started following and reaching out to a number of accounts that were clearly advertising human remains, they denied it flatly, referring to themselves as “art collectors” or purveyors of “cultural history.” Many promptly blocked me or asked me not to contact them anymore.ĭebbie Reynders, a Belgian collector and trader who runs an Instagram account of almost 4,000 followers with her husband, told me that this reticence arises from fear of being stigmatized publicly as strange or morbid. While trading bones online might be legal, or at least legally ambiguous, there is still a degree of secrecy within the Insta-skull community. "It has transformed what was a fringe practice into a viable, global free for all.” ![]() “While the human remains market existed before Instagram, it has enabled so many more people to connect with each other and indulge in this obsession,” he said. Some accounts in fact have been removed because of such violations, the spokesperson said.īut Huffer maintains that this policy is not adequately enforced. According to a Facebook spokesperson, this bone trade contravenes platform policy-which bans the “trafficking or sale of non-generative human organs on Instagram, including bones”-and can lead to account suspension. Traders on Instagram have taken advantage of this apparent gap in the law to establish an international trade route, with major nodes in the UK, US, Canada, and Europe. (Scragg told me that as long as he labels his deliveries correctly, he is not bothered by UK customs authorities.) But for the most part, Huffer says, laws are ambiguous and unenforced. In the United States, Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee all have regulations restricting the sale and possession of human remains. Other jurisdictions have a less laissez faire approach to the bone trade, however. And while displaying human remains publicly requires a license from the Human Tissues Authority, this is not the case for posting photos of them online. In the UK, human bones fall under the “no property rule” in common law, which essentially means that they belong to whoever happens to be in possession of them, with no paperwork required to prove their provenance. Unlike other illicit markets on Instagram- exotic animals, looted antiquities, weapons-there is nothing explicitly illegal about trading human remains on the platform. ![]()
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