Three teenagers in Texas have been accused of digging up a corpse and using the skull to smoke marijuana.
"They made the confession to officers then guided them to the graveyard in isolated woodland in Harris County.
The three teenagers, two aged 17 and one aged 16, said they had taken the skull from the corpse to use it as a 'bong' to smoke drugs.
A bong is a type of pipe commonly used to smoke cannabis and marijuana.
Officers in Harris County had been working on a stolen credit card case and had brought the youths in for questioning when one of them made a confession and explained the body had been dug up from an abandoned graveyard.
Another took officers to the site and showed them where they had removed the body.
The grave which the boys desecrated is believed to have belonged to an 11-year-old boy called Willie Simms, who died in 1921.
A spokesman for Harris County District Attorney's Office confirmed that charges of misdemeanour abuse of a corpse had been filed.
The investigation is continuing but it is believed that police do not currently have any physical evidence with which to charge the youths on the basis of their statements.
Graves and corpses have long held a macabre fascination for many.
A decade ago, the authorities in charge of Pere Lachaise cemetery in eastern Paris were forced to consider moving the body of 1960s rock star Jim Morrison, of The Doors, after obsessive fans tried to dig it up."
