By Tim Binnall
A Seattle woman has found herself with a strange mystery on her hands after discovering a box containing what appears to be ashes from a cremation. Sasha Martin reportedly made the odd find last Saturday when she went out to her SUV in the parking garage of her apartment complex and noticed that someone had seemingly carefully placed the object on the hood her vehicle. Bewildered by the weird box, she initially feared that it could be dangerous and then reasoned that perhaps someone had simply misplaced it in a moment of confusion while exiting their vehicle.
Eventually, Martin decided to place the box near the parking space and headed out for the day. However, much to her chagrin, it was still there when she returned. It was at that point that Martin became drawn into the mystery of the box as she posted some pictures of the object on Facebook and was informed that it appeared to be a container for an urn. In light of this unsettling insight, she felt compelled to retrieve the box from the parking garage, lest someone's final remains wind up in the garbage.
Since that time, Martin says, she has been on something of a quest to solve the bizarre mystery and, in turn, wound up learning "about cremation than I ever wanted to know." Turning to the authorities, she was told that the puzzling box was not a matter that police would investigate since it constituted a 'found property' situation. Martin also researched cremation methods in an attempt to determine if the container held human or pet ashes, but was unable to come to any definitive conclusion.
That said, having hit a number of dead ends in her impromptu investigation and growing worried that someone out there may be frantically searching for the lost object, Martin eventually mustered up the courage to remove the screws that sealed the box. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw that, indeed, it contained a small bag of ashes. Unfortunately, there was no identifying information inside the container nor on the bag. The verification that the box held ashes has led Martin to redouble her efforts to reunite the object with its rightful owner, declaring that she'll be holding onto the object until someone comes forward to claim it.