"Occult Shed" Somehow Newsworthy

Police in Lakewood, Colorado were recently called to a vacant home being readied for sale when bones and a handful of "occult items" were found in a disused shed. The items suggest that the shed may have been used for some sort of ritual work long ago, but in terms of what most practicing occultists keep in their homes the find was pretty underwhelming. Since a few of the bones looked as if they might be human, cadaver dogs were called in to search the property for additional human remains but found nothing. The police operation is probably why it made the news at all, because otherwise there's not much to it - as you can see from the photo.

Animal skulls, chains, bones from a goat and possibly other animals, a skull mask with a black hood, candles and a machete were among the items that were found in the home's backyard shed. Police say that some of the bones, including a partial skull, are suspected of being human and have been sent to an out-of-state lab to determine whether any DNA evidence can be found. Up to 20 bones were found and investigators even brought in search dogs trained to find decomposing bodies.

Neighbor Carlos Fraire said the discovery was very eerie. "It's weird that it's this time of year, right around Halloween," Fraire told 9News. According to a report by Westword, neighbors described the woman who lived there as a Christian and the items in the shed are suspected of having belonged to her now-deceased husband, who reportedly left the country in 1998. For the last 15 years, his wife apparently either hadn't known the items were there or left them completely alone because when they were discovered most were covered in thick dust.

I don't personally use bones as part of my own practice, but they play a role in many schools of magick and are not that unusual. And otherwise, there's not a whole lot there. I'm not even convinced that all of the apparent occult implements were even used for ritual work. Chains and a machete? Those could just be regular hardware. It's not like the shed was set up as a temple - from the photos the bones and so forth were piled with a bunch of other junk that one might find in a normal shed.

Now it's possible that the ex-husband cleaned out all the "good stuff" when he left, but it amazes me that a find this meager is somehow newsworthy. I mean what is this, 1982? If police came across my temple, they would find small altars at the four corners with statues of Egyptian deities, an Enochian Holy Table in the center, an alcove with a full Gnostic Mass altar setup, and enough tools, candles, and other implements to perform just about any sort of ceremony. And that's not even counting the library!

So color me unimpressed with this supposed "occult shed." Every occultist I know has a far better setup.