
Starting in the summer of 2007, some fairly strange athletic shoes and hiking boots started washing up on the shores of British Columbia in Canada and Washington state in the USA. Unlike most beach trash, this footwear contained the feet of their former owners. Authorities told the larger public not to worry, but by 2008, the media was in a frenzy with headlines guessing at the potential conspiracy behind these gruesome finds. Years later, the shoes and the questions that they raise continue to wash up on the shores of the Pacific Northwest.
Finding Feet in the Sand
On August 20, 2007, a young girl found a sneaker while looking for seashells on the beach of uninhabited Jedediah Island in British Columbia. Her family had dropped anchor while on a sailing trip that moody summer day, and though she’d initially found four sneakers, only one – a white, Campus-brand sneaker with blue mesh – contained a human foot. Days later, Vancouver couple George Baugh and Michele Geris were hiking on Gabriola Island when they spotted a Reebok runner by a madrone tree; upon inspection, it too contained a human foot. While most in the years since have been men’s right feet, the third was a left foot washed up on Valdes Island, and the fourth was a Woman’s New Balance that washed up on Kirkland Island in May 2008. Twelve more have washed ashore along the coasts of Georgia Strait between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, as well as the nearby Fraser River delta. Of the sixteen total, four of them match – making up one pair of women’s and men’s shoes.
Rising to the Surface

By early 2008, there was a media frenzy, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the public not to worry because there was no evidence of foul play. Although it seems strange to have feet washing up on beaches in the Georgia Strait, hands and feet commonly disarticulate from bodies submerged in water because they are only attached by a few tendons. In addition, rubber-soled shoes naturally protect feet from gulls and other harm while acting as floatation devices. Still, many questions remain unanswered, such as:
- Who do these feet belong to?
- How long have they been in the ocean?
- Where are the other body parts?
- Why have there been so many since 2007?
Men Gone Missing
Theories have proliferated with greater attention to this strange phenomenon. While police have focused on matching the feet’s DNA to men on the missing persons roll, various media have highlighted potential connections to the 2004 tsunami, the Quadra Island plane crash, potential serial killers, and regional gangs or drug cartels. A couple former NYPD detectives have even used the feet to argue that a loose gang of murderers are killing North American men and leaving graffiti smiley faces at the crime scenes. At the same time, such sensationalist reporting has highlighted an actual issue– rising rates of men disappearing in southwestern British Columbia. Meanwhile, the police have identified ten of the first thirteen men whose feet were discovered, with several linked to suicides and accidents.
The wave of feet continues. In February 2016, a family in British Columbia noticed bones in a shoe on Vancouver Island’s Botanical Beach and so discovered the sixteenth foot to wash ashore. Furthermore, some forensics experts are pointing to the number of feet washing ashore with real concern, as too many coincidences are building up. Even though authorities have been able to connect people to the feet that they have found, this phenomenon still raises more questions than answers. For now, we will have to wait and see whether the source of the severed feet will come to the surface.
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