Wearyman wrote:
Well, not to take it in a morbid direction, but have you considered that you may have stumbled across evidence of a crime? IE: a Kidnapping or murder (or both)?
If a kidnapping it would seem logical that you would have multiple random items together such as identification items (photo, phone number) and random toiletry items such as lip balm and shampoo. If there was a subsequent murder, burning the identifying items such as the photos and other papers would be a likely response by the killer to attempt to hide the crime. Any bones or evidence of burial back in that mine?
A more lighthearted explanation could be a hiker's backpack being tossed there by pranking friends, and for some reason not being returned and then being torn apart by wild animals getting at any food in the backpack. The animal then dragging the backpack off, leaving a bunch of random items that had been in the backpack behind.
I considered that as well, I just don't know why you would put that stuff back in that mine. I doubt it was a backpacker with aquarium stuff and model trains. Plus there is a plastic 55 gal drum there that has been cut in half and I think used to house the stuff.
The stuff wasn't burned when I first found in over ten years ago, but had been tossed a little. There were pretty fresh ATV tracks back in 2000 in the mine, the same tracks are still there, along with my foot prints from the first time I went in over 10 years ago, not exactly a high traffic area.
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