A group of friends who rented a house on Airbnb for a party weekend in a French town got a nasty surprise when they discovered the decomposing body of a woman in the garden.



“Her body was found at the bottom of the property which opens out into a woods,” a police source said. Foul play is suspected.

The house in the town of Palaiseau, 17km (10m) south of Paris, was rented on popular home-sharing website Airbnb by a group of friends who made the macabre find on Saturday.

The woman’s body was found “hunched in a dug-out area, her head against the ground, covered in branches and surrounded by wood stumps”, said the source.

She was dressed, but was not wearing shoes and had a “ring with a large stone” on her finger. No identifying documents were found with the body.

The body’s advanced state of decomposition meant it was not possible to determine cause of death, and an autopsy will be carried out.

The renters were being questioned by police on Sunday.