Family horrified after discovering urn they purchased online had someone else's ashes inside
Ordering second-hand items from the internet can sometimes be a gamble but one family in America made a shocking discovery after ordering an urn online.
Online shopping is often seen to be the quickest and easiest solution but when you see people receive things that are way smaller than imagined or simply don't look anything like what you ordered, it's easy to see the value of in-person purchases.
Unfortunately for one Arizona family, they were dealing with the loss of their grandma Dorothy Kuspis when they decided to order an urn in which to keep her ashes, after she passed away at the age of 98 back in May.
“She lived a good life,” Dorothy's granddaughter Ashleigh Wegner said. “So it wasn’t a surprise, but it was kind of a—with anything, any loss—kind of a shock when it happened.”
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Alongside her aunt and uncle, Ashleigh ordered a small brass heart urn, which had been posted on Amazon via a third-party seller.
Now, perhaps you normally wouldn't mind if something ordered was a little dusty but when it comes to urns, that naturally becomes a little more concerning.
"It came within a couple days,' Wegner told AZ Family. "When I opened it, it was just a little dusty."
It soon became clear that the dust was actually the remains of another unfortunate person who had died and been cremated, only to have themselves posted to a random family in Arizona rather than being spread anywhere meaningful.
"I unscrewed the back and that's when I noticed it still had remains inside of it,' the granddaughter said.
"And that was like, I have - who are you and what are you?
“I was shocked. I was kind of grossed out. I was uncomfortable.”
Bizarrely, this isn't the first time that Ashleigh and her family have come across some unidentified cremated remains, as she also discovered the remnants of another person inside a box in an alleyway.
“We’ve had a past similar situation,” she said. “So a few years back, me and my husband came across a box of ashes in an alleyway where we lived.”
Despite somehow managing to locate the person's family after handing them over to the police on that occasion, it seems as if the family simply weren't interested in keeping them, which is either a sad reflection on their own lives or the person who passed away.
On this occasion, the family have contacted the third-party seller but had no response, while Amazon issued a full refund, while Ashleigh confirmed that they have now sourced a replacement urn, which presumably was bought in person just to be doubly sure.
They are also keen to spread the new ashes they found to ensure that another person doesn't end up in the same scenario.
“I didn’t want it to end up on the warehouse shelf again and have somebody else make a purchase and have it accidentally get shipped to someone else in a moment like this,” Ashleigh said.
Topics: Amazon
James Moorhouse