Brain wrapped in package found washed up on US beach

Medical examiner confirms brain is not human

A man made an unnerving discovery on Tuesday after finding a brain wrapped up in tin foil on a Lake Michigan beach.  

Jimmy Senda was walking along the beach at Samuel Myers Park in Racine, Wisconsin, searching for seaglass to use in art projects when a strange package caught his eye.  

"I don't really know how to explain it, it didn't register ... I was just like, 'What is this?'" Mr Senda said. "I came across this square package, wrapped in aluminum foil, and around it, it had a pink rubber band."

According to Fox6 Milwaukee, Mr Senda gave in to his curiosity and opened the package.  

"Curiosity got to me, so I popped it open and it looked like a chicken breast - kind of. It took a little bit for it to really [register] of what was going on; it was a brain," he told Fox6.    

Mr Senda found some city employees working in the park and showed them his discovery. He hoped they could offer a second opinion that might make more sense to him than finding a random brain wrapped in foil.  

They did not.  

"Yeah, it looks like a brain," Mr Senda recalled them saying.  

He said that while the discovery was bizarre, he's glad he found it and not someone's child.  

"There's a lot of kids and families that are down here, and what happens if a kid would have found it?" he said.  

Flowers and what appears to be a paper of some kind with mandarin symbols printed on them were also found wrapped in the foil alongside the brain.  

After finding the organ, Mr Senda alerted the police. They took the brain and handed it off to the Racine County Medical Examiner for inspection.  

The medical examiner, speaking with TMZ, confirmed that the brain is not human.

Though finding a brain on the shores of a Great Lake is certainly novel, Wisconsin isn't the only state to have body parts washing up on its shores.  

At least 15 severed feet encased in running shoes or boots have washed up on Washington's shores over the decade.  

Unlike the mysterious brain, however, scientists are confident they can explain the feet.  

Essentially, currents and wind in the Pacific Northwest deposit the feet - preserved by the running shoes and boots - onto the shore. The feet are mostly from suicides or individuals who died in maritime accidents. As there are 7 million people living along the coast in the Pacific Northwest, it stands to reason that there would be a proportionately sizable number of individuals who die at sea.  

The brain wrapped in tinfoil will likely require a slightly more complicated explanation, assuming one is ever found. 

UPDATE 24.09.20: This article has been updated to clarify that the brain is not thought to be human.