Third Severed Right Foot Washes Up On Valdes Island

Basic Information

February 15, 2008: Over the span of seven months, three severed, right, human feet have washed up on the beaches of three different islands in British Columbia, near Vancouver, Canada.

Update: As of August 27, 2010, the count was up to nine actual feet, plus two morbid hoax feet (one plastic, the other an animal foot in a sock and shoe). The most recent actual human foot was found on Whidbey Island in Washington State, many miles south of the early findings.

See Also

• Amputation

Sources

Bibliography

1. Article in The Province

2. a blog post about several related articles on the foot mystery

3. Telegraph article about the 8th foot found

4. Vancouver Sun article about the 9th foot, includes summary of the 8 before it and the hoaxes.

Game and Story Use

• Well, obviously, some people are missing their right feet. The question is why?
  • A group of cultists based in the Gulf Islands have voluntarily removed their right feet as they believe that the appendages in question are offensive to their worshipped deity.
  • A group of medical students playing an elaborate joke have been randomly depositing the right feet of unidentified corpses on the beaches of Gulf Islands.
  • A group of cultists have been forcibly removing right feet from randomly selected victims in order to sacrifice them to the sea-dwelling deity that they worship.
    • The sacrifice is chained by their right foot … everything upwind of it has been eaten…
  • A lone lunatic has been murdering people, dismembering their bodies, and throwing them in the drink — but by some strange quirk of fate, only their right feet have been washing up on shore.
  • As suggested in the linked blog post above, the feet may be from the bodies from an un-recovered plane crash in the region, but that would be a pretty bizarre coincidence if the bodies all lost their right feet.
  • The feet could be spontaneously generated, and have never been attached to a body, such as being the manifestations of a ghost of a person who'd died when their foot was cut off.
    • If you changed venues, you could tell a ghost story wherein something similar happens near the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, where the Conquistador Don Juan de Onate viciously amputated the right foot of captive Native Americans in the 17th Century. See also Wikipedia on Don Juan de Onate.
  • Based on the Juan de Onate note above, someone could be cutting a foot off each of their slaves to prevent them running away - there may be a black market factory or drugs lab somewhere containing a number of one-footed people.
  • Human cloning lab, run by a Mad Scientist with a foot fetish. His lab is on one of the islands, and his disposal methods leave something to be desired.
    • Or he's growing feet for transplant and throwing out the defective ones…
  • Years of inbreeding have lead to a creepy little family that's evolving to no longer be entirely human. Just as how some lizards can shed their tails, this creepy island tribe can shed and regrow their feet.
    • Their monster manual entry includes "Treasure Type: A, + 1d4 Right Feet". :)
  • Enforcement methods of the Pacific Northwest branch of the mafia?
  • Sharia Law prescribes the amputation of a hand and a foot from opposite sides of the body for the offence of "fitna" - variously translated and "mischief" or "resistance" - which can include prosthelyitising for other religions. Perhaps there are an equivalent number of left hands out there somewhere.
  • Cutting a foot or two from a corpse was said to be a good way to stop it making a nuisance of itself. Perhaps someone out there isn't taking chances.
  • Possibly something - perhaps a ghost is possessing people but doesn't feel right having two feet (perhaps its original death was caused by a gangrenous right foot) and cuts one off its host. Who then bleeds to death, forcing the ghost to move on…