MACON, Ga. — Many things are left at Rose Hill Cemetery.
For starters, people leave memories and flowers for loved ones, but in the back of the cemetery, someone left a skull in an iron pot.
The remains were found by a man walking Wednesday near the Bond Monument in the Holly Ridge section of the cemetery.
No one would talk to us on camera, but we did speak to multiple people who frequent Rose Hill who say they think rituals happen there often– leaving behind items like lit candles, voodoo dolls and other offerings.
Rose Hill Preservationists say the candle wax has damaged and stained monuments before.
However, a Tennessee-based cultural anthropologist, Tony Kail, says the skull and other items are likely a make-shift shrine not meant to harm anyone. He says he knows exactly what ritual the skull was likely a part of.
“I saw the media story surrounding the discovery. The object was an artifact that I'm very familiar with,” Kail said.
Kail, an adjunct professor of Anthropology at the Southern New Hampshire University, has studied religious cultures and practices for 30 years.
He reached out to Coroner Leon Jones who sent him pictures of the skull.
“The shrine looks very much like a very traditional, religious-based shrine,” he explained.
Kail says the Afro-Latin practice traditionally has a healer called a nganga before the practice moved from Central Africa to Cuba.
“The healer in a community can take dirt and sticks and pieces of bone and use them to make medicines,” Kail said.
He says after the religion moved to Cuba during slavery, the role of the nganga changed form.
“The vessel that we’re looking at is the nganga. No longer a traditional healer in person, but now a vessel, containing spirits of nature. Contains spirits of ancestors,” Kail explained.
He says the shrines often involve a cauldron, bones, tree branches or materials like chains or train spikes to honor certain spirits.
Kail says oftentimes Afro-Latin religions, Santeria or Haitian voodoo are used as negative and fearful tropes in the media.
“Even though, to many people, this is very unconventional. It's a very traditional practice. Does not involve violence towards people. It is, again, honoring those spirits of the dead, spirits of ancestors and spirits of nature,” he said.
The Bibb Sheriff's Office and the GBI continue to look into the skull with other items in Rose Hill Cemetery.
Coroner Jones sent the skull to the GBI crime lab and they’ll try to identify it. They'll also try to figure out if it was collected from a grave, crime scene or a medical specimen.
The Sheriff's office says it is unlawful for a person to have or dispose of human remains if they know it's been unlawfully removed from a grave, vault or tomb.