Stealing Human Bones / Boneghazi

Submission 45,221

About

Stealing Human Bones also known as Boneghazi refers to a blog post which accused a Tumblr user of "stealing human bones from cemeteries in Louisiana." After the accusation was made in mid December 2015, other Tumblr users began mocking the story with posts related to bone theft.

Origin

On December 17th, 2015, Tumblr user pastel-prouvaire published a post accusing Tumblr user littlefuckinmonster of taking human bones from a cemeteries in Louisiana.^[1] Tumblr user nopathfollowed replied with a screenshot of a Facebook post published by Ender Darling, who has been identified as littlefuckinmonster, on "The Queer Witch Collective" group,^[4] which discussed removing washed up human skeletal remains at flooded grave sites. The original post was subsequently deleted, but remains available in reblogs. Within one week, the post gained over 36,100 notes.

Spread

On the same day as pastel-prouvaire's accusation, Darling published a post on the now defunct blog fuckinheathen.^[3] In the post Darling claimed to have merely picked up bones that had washed up, not digging or disturbing any grave sites. Darling accused critics of racism, saying that they offered to give the bones to others in "a safe space for PoC [Person of Color] witches." In the rant, Additionally, Darling wrote about the poor groundskeeping in New Orleans, and claimed that others would break in and steal remains from crypts and graves. That day, the fuckinheathen blog was deactivated.

Expand Post

No I am not digging up fucking graves jfc
Long story short a post that was posted in a queer witch collective where ‘sell’ is understood to mean 'cover shipping’ (ESPECIALLY WHEN I MADE THAT CLEAR) and curse is understood to mean 'any spell you cast on another physical person’ was screen shot (just my post. NOT THE MASSIVE THREAD THAT FUCKING FOLLOWED) and removed from the group where it had context and posted.

What has followed has been extremely racist, especially towards those who still practice indenginious craft. Physical harm has been threatened, including towards my child. (Ya’ll fuckers can cool it on that front before you really start saying shit you can’t back up. Because I swear if any of you actually have the guts to try something my automatic response when it comes to my child is to put your teeth in my alter. Try. Me.)

Here’s what happened. You can either understand there’s an entire part of the story you aren’t getting or you can continue thinking your outrage is righteous and I’m actually knee deep in bodies. I don’t care.

There are a few inground cemetaries around where I live. For some reason people think I’m going to Holt, which IM NOT AND IM NOT SURE HOW YOU ALL GOT THAT CEMETARY. But anyways, bones eventually wash up. Because that’s what happens in in ground cemetaries, especially ones where it rains a lot and grounds keepers aren’t doing their jobs.

I was walking into the grave yard like I usually do once a week, because its fucking in disrepair and I try to do what I can with weeding and offerings, and I witnessed an old man digging with a shovel and a backhoe tearing into old plots. You fucks wanna threaten me yet don’t actually sit to rationally think about how in ground cemeraries actually continue to be able to have bodies buried there. I made a quick decision when I watched a few bones tumble from the dirt and into the street. I picked them up and went through the grave yard and picked up ones I saw on my path knowing that they were either going to be crushed or swept away. And I’m sorry, but for me, a spiritual person who works with death, seeing a fucking machine tear into graves like that seemed a lot less respectful to the dead you all are so concerned about, than me picking them up and saving them.

I. DID. NOT. DIG. UP. ANYTHING.
What the post fails to show is how many times I explained what I was doing.

I’m not sure how people even got that.

Anywho. I made a choice, in what I thought was a safe space for PoC witches, especially PoC witches who practice indenginious, dark, or otherwise not Wiccan/fluffy magic, to post something offering the little bits of bone I had sitting on my alter, to other PoC witches who might use human bones in their practice. Somehow this blew up into me digging up fucking bodies.

I’m not.

I repeat:
I am not digging up bodies or bones.

I’ve also been heavily shamed for my indenginious practices. Here’s the thing ya bunch of fucks.

Magic is dark. Magic is bloody. Magic is scary. Magic isn’t just fucking white light, fairy dust, bowls of honey on your damn alter. You all can stop touting the 'three fold rule’ or 'Wiccan reed’ or 'karma’ thing. That shit applies to only those who believe in it ::FULL FUCKING STOP::

I am not Wiccan. I am not fluffy.
I work with death and bones. Curses and hexes, the dark and the things not for the faint of heart. And you aint about to shame me for it.

Fucking ya’ll want to pretend that I’m not in New Orleans, where I have watched black voodoo priests break into crypts and steal random full bodies.

Ya’ll wanna sit there and pretend that graveyard keepers aren’t actually selling bodies or bones to hospitals and colleges. (Yeah yeah they have legal ways to do it but if you honestly think people aren’t being paid to bury empty coffins, you’re way more niave than I need to point out.)

Ya’ll want to be mad at the kid who saved some bones from being crushed, because fuck getting the actual story. Let’s go with this screen shot that in no way shows the entire story. Sure.

Ya’ll wanna prented that occult leaders, ::cough the leader of the New Orleans chapter of the OTO cough:: aren’t actually breaking into graves to steal skulls and get body parts to practice their necromancy (hint:I’m not a necromancer that’s not whatbik doing so can that pile of horse shit please)

Instead of being angry at the Frat parties that actually break into cemetaries and cause fucking damage for stupid college parties, you want to be angry at the kid who literally picked up bones from the ground to save them from getting swept away. The kid who continues to care for the cemetaties they visit, the kid who offers offerings and prayer when ever anything is taken.

Cool. Sounds legit.

But yeah. I’m knee deep in bodies, with a shovel eating and selling the bones. Sure. Whatever.

I’ve only gotten a little bit of hate mail, which reads to me as people don’t actually care, they just wanted something to be pissed about.

If you feel the need to send me hate mail please be aware that I am not actually going to read it, I’m going to delete it.

Thanks.

Meanwhile, the Meme Documentation Tumblr published an explanation of the "stealing human bones" meme and Tumblr user nopathfollowed^[5] submitted a followup post claiming that Louisiana law enforcement already knew about the bone collecting. Also on December 17th, Tumblr user Frank Castle posted a variation of the breadsticks meme fused with "The sign as" meme referencing the littlefuckinmonster bone theft story (shown below).

The following day, Tumblr user tired-internet-addict^[6] posted a photoshopped version a "Piracy is a Crime" ad with the caption "You wouldn't steal a cemetary" (shown below). Also on December 18th, the news site Fusion^[7] published an article referring to the incident as "Boneghazi."

Police Investigation

On March 29th, 2016, the New Orleans Advocate^[8] published an interview article with Ender Darling. In the interview, Darling revealed that the police conducted a raid and search at her home on January 28th, during which they discovered "at least 11 bones and four teeth." According to the court documents, investigators also subpoenaed all correspondence from Darling’s Facebook profiles, which amounted to more than 12,000 pages of information, which suggest that Darling had obtaining bones from a graveyard beginning on November 16th 2015. In the following days, the story was picked up by New York Magazine^[9], Jezebel^[10] and Fusion^[11], among others.