IT was in November 1968 when 13-year-old John Grey stumbled upon a box while on an adventure in the back yard of his 12 Kimberly St home in Suva.
What he found inside turned into a mystery.
The box containing a human skull, old stone adzes, wooden figures and an old army-type knife with US 1918 inscribed on the handle has raised the interest of a historical investigator.
Yesterday, 46 years later, that mystery widened with the discovery of more bones on the same property.
Mr Josh Gates was interviewing Mr Grey for an upcoming episode of the new travel channel series, Expedition Unknown – a show which follows Mr Gates as he travels around the world investigating history’s most compelling mysteries -when his queries raised some curiosity.
This particular episode is focused on aviator Amelia Earhart, and Mr Gates travelled to Fiji to explore the theory that the bones belonging to Earhart may have been discovered on a remote island in the 1940s and could now be somewhere in Fiji.
He wanted to know where the bones Mr Grey found as a boy were.
According to Mr Grey the skull was given to the Fiji Museum, however, no record of the skull exists in the museum’s archive.
After learning that nobody had thoroughly searched beneath the house since the initial discovery of the skull, Mr Gates and Mr Grey secured permission from the current owner and undertook their own investigation.
“I was wearing a headlamp and using a small pick to loosen some of the dirt near where John found the original box, when I began uncovering bones,” said Mr Grey.
“It wasn’t just one bone, but a variety of skeletal pieces. I was stunned!”
