If you have a thing for cold, wet feet, then it looks like Canada is for you.

In particular, you’ll want to head to British Columbia, where police are now investigating the 14th occasion of a human foot washing up on their shores since 2007.

The latest gruesome find was made on Gabriola Island in the strait of Georgia over the weekend, with the foot found lodged inside a hiking boot.

The Guardian with a disturbing look at this now regular occurrence:

Since 2007, another 13 feet have washed up in British Columbia, all of them clad in running shoes.

Some have linked the grim finds to natural disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami, or plane or boat accidents at sea. Others have theorised that the feet might be the work of a serial killer or organised crime.

Pranksters have also attempted to add fuel to the fire at times. “We’ve had people put dog foot skeletons in runners and leave them on the beach,” Barb McLintock of the province’s coroner’s office told the Guardian in 2016. “And somebody even used old chicken bones.”

Here are all of those findings mapped out – just click on the image for a closer look:

Creepy.

The previous foot was found in December of last year, and was found to belong to a 79-year-old man who had gone missing.

The coroner does have a few details to work with:

In prior cases, the provincial coroner’s office ruled out foul play, noting that none of the feet showed signs of trauma. Eight of the feet have been identified and they included two pairs. The remaining lone feet all belonged to men.

All of the individuals either killed themselves or died accidentally, with their feet naturally coming apart from their bodies during decomposition, said the coroner.

When the 13th foot was found, Vox did some digging, and their findings seem to back up those of that coroner mentioned above:

Though morbid and grisly, there is nothing sinister about these finds, according to scientists and health officials. They aren’t the handiwork of a serial killer or the remains of plane crash victims, as some have proposed. Instead, several innocent scientific phenomena converge to periodically deposit human feet on the shores of the Salish Sea, the body of water between Vancouver and Seattle that includes Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia…

Tennis shoes also keep decaying feet in a neat package rather than letting toes and heels disperse, and footwear protects feet from hungry sea creatures, which end up gnawing on other exposed areas like ankles instead.

Looks like nothing too sinister afoot, then.

It’s early, and it’s been a long week – cut me some slack.

[sources:guardian&vox]