Easter Egg Hunt Goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Easter egg hunts are supposed to be a time of joy for a young child. You know, that time in every young semi-Christian child's life where they learn about the magic of the Easter bunny and all that other biblical stuff, like Peeps. Not so for one four-year-old living in Knoxville, Tenn., whose mother found a dead body during an Easter egg hunt with her child.

The woman found the man's body on Wednesday under a deck during the hunt, which unsurprisingly ruined the party badly enough to make everyone forget all about the rest of the eggs in the yard. (Curiously, the news team at WBIR in Knoxville thought this was a detail worth mentioning.) Police said they believed the man died at least a week prior to being found, but they're not sure how the man's body got there.

In the story's most disturbing detail, the woman had been looking for the source of a bad smell around her house for days, but couldn't find it. She'd also asked a person mowing her lawn to look for the smell, but they didn't find the body, either. Only while looking under the deck during the hunt did the mother finally find the body, about 15 to 20 feet from the edge of the deck.

The New York Daily News reports that the man's body was too badly decomposed for police to obtain fingerprints, nor did it appear that the man was living under the deck. An autopsy indicated that he died of a medical condition, but they're not yet sure whether the death was natural.