Photo: Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61 Photo: AP Photo: Houston Police Photo: Robert Nickelsberg, Getty Images Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Staff Photo: Mark Mulligan, Staff Photo: Metro Video Services, LLC/For The Houston Chronicle Photo: Metro Video Services, LLC/For The Houston Chronicle Photo: Mark Mulligan / Houston Chronicle Photo: Melissa Phillip Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Staff Photo: J. Patric Schneider, Freelance Photo: Melissa Phillip Photo: NIGEL BARKER, STR Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff Photo: Emily Foxhall Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office

A child-size casket filled with an infant's organs - but no body - was found Monday night sitting on a North Philadelphia street just across from a cemetery.

The casket that police described as "fresh" had been recently pried open when people walking down the street made their grisly discovery around 9 p.m.

"I was pretty shocked," Chris James told local CBS affiliate KYW-TV. "It looked like something straight out of 'Thriller.'"

When police arrived at the scene on West Clearfield, they opened the small white casket wrapped in a trash bag.

Initially, officers thought it was "a false alarm," James told Philly.com.

But inside, they discovered a black plastic bag filled with dirt and "something organic," James said.

"According to the medical examiner, (they) were in fact human organs," Chief Inspector Scott Small of Philly PD told the TV station. "They believed they belonged to an infant or a child."

The medical examiner will launch a further investigation into the unidentified remains.

"What's unusual is other than the bag of organs there was no body," Small added.

The casket could had been stolen from a funeral home or dug up from the nearby cemetery, Small said. But an initial search of nearby cemeteries did not turn up any additional evidence, according to ABC affiliate WPVI-TV.

"There have been cases where people take remains or human bodies for whatever unusual reason they decide," Small said, "but we're going to look into that."