I spent some time this weekend gardening and came across the most unusual find half-buried behind a bush in the front of my house.

The Initial Find

At first I spied what you see above, just barely peeking above the dirt. It appeared to be an insignia of some sort, or a copper coin lying on the ground. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it appeared to be attached to a tree root. Wood disappeared into the ground. But I found I could move it, so I pulled — and sure enough, this thing on the right was in my hand. It appears to be a goats head. The wood turned out to be the decomposing horns. It’s quite elaborately covered in copper. Copper covers the snout of the animal with two beveled nostrils.

How'd you like to have this staring at you from the dirt?

The underside appeared to be made of a children's shoe

The eyeball sockets contained blue marbles, kept in place by more ornate copper. Quite creepy, I must say, to pull this thing out of the ground to find a shiny blue eyeball staring back at you.

Turning over this goats head, the underside appeared to be made of a children’s shoe, also covered in copper.

Copper also covered where the teeth would be, and indentations made in the metal make out the form of upper and lower teeth. The horns had mostly rotted away, leading me to suspect this had been buried on the property for quite some time.

It makes me wonder if my house was under a curse! The prior owners got a divorce, and during some backyard landscaping, the workmen uncovered a lot of wood ash — evidence of a fire that may have engulfed the home at one time. I’m not familiar with the proper anti-voodoo work, so I just bagged the thing and put it in the garbage can. That may be enough: the discovery co-incided with the moving of my idiot next door neighbour.

I'm not familiar with the proper anti-voodoo work, so I just bagged the thing and put it in the garbage can.

The following comment was made to the original blog post:

Your goat is for good luck, not bad! I’m fairly certain that your mysterious, heavily decorated, goat skull is a Tantric Buddhist (Mahayana/Vajrayana) “ghost trap”, probably from Tibet or Nepal, where people hang such charming things above their doorway to protect the home from the entry of ghosts and other evil spirits. Were the previous tenants of your house from that part of the world, or had they visited there? Of course, I’ve seen these things for sale at the Pickering Flea Market, so it’s not necessary to be from the Himalayas in order to own one!

Regards,
Chris J.-Andersen
Archaeologist