A man who found skeletal remains in his childhood home has confirmed they are those of his father, who went missing nearly 60 years ago.
Mike Carroll, 57, always suspected something had happened to his dad, despite being told he’d just walked out on his family one day and never returned.
So much so, he bought the Suffolk County home from his mother before she passed away in 1998, with the sole purpose of finding the remains of his father, who was a Korean War veteran.
As reported by the New York Post, Carroll, along with his two elder sons, discovered the bones three feet below the basement in their Lake Grove home – on Halloween.
The 57-year-old had no doubts the bones belonged to his father, George Carroll, particularly because he’d previously enlisted the help of a psychic who informed him his father was buried in the basement.
He explained his reasoning for investigating his dad’s disappearance in such a way, explaining how his investigation properly started three or four years ago.
Carroll, a respiratory therapist at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, said:
There is, of course, premonitions, gut feelings, things like that. There was a chance I was going to do this and nothing would come of it.
Carroll spoke to scientific experts, as well as paranormal investigators, in order to make sense of what had happened to his dad.
Not only did he speak to them, he had them visit the house – some of them equipped with radars. The 57-year-old described how he did most of the work, excavating the concrete floor in his spare time.
He recalled how on one occasion, a psychic visited and went into the basement, where they pointed out the spot where the bones were eventually found, before saying:
The energy is here.
Carroll says he and his two sons dug up several areas of the basement before digging a three foot-deep hole in the spot which was pointed out by the psychic. He claims he immediately recognised the bones as human remains.
He continued:
They were twisted in a knot, weird-looking. It was down and twisted in the dirt… not totally exposed, either.
Mike called the police to inform them of his discovery, and now, authorities have confirmed the remains are those of George Carroll, who vanished without a trace when Mike was just eight months old.
Mike and his three older siblings – a brother and two sisters – said they could never get a straight answer from their mum, Dorothy, about the whereabouts of their dad.
Mike told the New York Post:
I was always told, ‘Don’t ask,’ so I stopped asking.
He told Newsday he was ‘happy’ to learn the remains are his dad’s after such a long time of having no answers at all:
I’m happy to learn that that is my dad. This is a deep and very emotional thing, and everybody is dealing with this in different ways. This has broken up my family.
The veteran’s death is now being investigated as a homicide, but police say they may never know who was responsible. As reported by NBC, the autopsy shows the skull had been fractured by a ‘blunt force trauma,’ which Carroll claims a psychic had already predicted.
Officials say this could have happened before or after death.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).