Teenagers have a tendency to get up to mischief when they're bored.

That's as true today as it ever has been.

So when four teenage boys found themselves with the spring afternoon on their hands, they

did what any English lad might have done in 1943.

They went poaching.

They were only hunting birds nests, really.

It was April and spring met nests full of eggs, so they went exploring in their area

of store-bridge, there in the Midlands of England.

Over the course of that afternoon, their search brought them to a private park known as

Hagenley Woods, and that's where they saw the tree.

It was a massive elm with an overgrown trunk that looked more like a hedgehog than a plant

with thin, wispy branches that stuck out toward the sky.

Locals called it the witch elm.

It was strong, it was climbable, and most importantly, it was perfect for nesting, so one of the boys

scaled up the side.

When he reached the top and began to look for nests, he found something entirely different.

A skull was staring up at him from the hollow center of the tree.

The boy assumed it was from an animal and plucked it free from the branches.

That's when he noticed how large it was, and the patches of hair that were still attached

to it.

Human hair.

The grizzly discovery kicked off one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern England.

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