Over the last 15 years, at least 21 severed feet have washed up on beaches between the United States and Canada in the Pacific Northwest.
The appendages are usually still intact inside a shoe, with no signs of what happened to the body to which they were once attached. And each time a discovery is made, fear and speculation spread among the public. Where's the rest of the body? Is a serial killer on the loose? Maybe the Mafia is to blame? Does someone have an extreme foot fetish?
The first sneaker-clad foot in this rash of mysteries was discovered in August 2007 on British Columbia's Jedediah Island. A 12-year-old girl on vacation from Washington found a shoe and when she looked inside the sock, there was a foot. The remains were later identified as those of a missing man who was suffering from depression.
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Similar discoveries were made over the next decade and a half on beaches along the Salish Sea, on both the British Columbia coast and in Washington. In at least two instances, leg bones were still attached to the feet.
The latest discovery was made in January 2019 on Jetty Island in Everett, Washington. A human foot found in a boot was later linked to a man who had been missing for three years.
Dr. Karan Raj, a NHS surgeon, says there's really a simple explanation for why this grisly phenomenon keeps happening -- and it has nothing to do with people's feet being chopped off by some deranged psychopath.
Raj, who has more than four million followers on TikTok, says you need not look further than science and the footwear industry for a cause to these grim discoveries.
"When a human corpse sinks to the bottom of the ocean, it's quickly set upon by scavengers," Raj explained in a recent video. "These scavengers are lazy feeders. They prefer to tackle the softer parts of our bodies than the tough bits. Some of the softest parts of us are the soft tissues and ligaments around our ankles."
When scavengers -- like shrimp, lobsters and crabs -- chow down, feet easily detach from the body, Raj continued. Because the feet are still inside shoes, the dismembered limbs typically float away as scavengers continue dining on the waterlogged body. The limb is then preserved by materials in the shoe as it washes up on the shore and is found by a curious beachgoer.
"The reason it's happened more since 2007 is because of a change in sneaker design. Over the last few decades, shoes have become more buoyant," said Raj. "As a result, we could be seeing more severed feet wash up on our shores."
As foul play has been ruled out in almost every case, the feet are thought to belong to people who were either killed in accidents or are victims of suicide. Medical examiners have ruled that the feet became separated from the bodies as part of the normal decomposition process. Many of the limbs have been linked back to their humans using DNA analysis.
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