ATLANTA, GA–A routine class exercise ended in horror and disgust yesterday when Elias Ranger, Professor of Undergraduate Archaeological Studies at Georgia State University, and his students unwittingly exhumed thousands of dead bodies hidden only a few feet below the grounds of Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. The discovery has sparked controversy within the student populace, who accuse city leaders of covering up the largest genocide in history, spanning hundreds of years and extending to all races, genders, and ages.

According to authorities, Ranger had previously buried several small trinkets and tchotchkes throughout the cemetery grounds only the day before. The class’ assignment involved each student successfully locating as many of the trinkets as possible. “I should have made the guidelines clearer,” said Ranger, “this was definitely not the kind of work I was expecting from first-year students in an 1100 lab course, but by the time I returned from picking up my afternoon latte, the students had already uncovered at least two hundred complete skeletons. After that, it was only a matter of time.”

“Death and decay… everywhere,” a visibly-shaken freshman Megan Ripley said. “All sizes, all shapes… and they knew, they all knew…” Ripley and several of her classmates were admitted to the school clinic citing extreme nausea after Ripley accidentally stepped on what appeared to be her recently deceased grandmother. Another student described the incident as “straight-up Indiana Jones-style shit.”

To further complicate matters, Atlanta Police cannot explain why most of the bodies were entombed in cramped wooden boxes. “This brings to mind the mystery of the pyramids,” an APD spokesman was quoted as saying. “Was this some sort of ritualistic mass suicide? We may never know.” Conspiracy theorists have already unleashed myriad accusations and circumstantial evidence, many pointing to the nearby seafood restaurant Six Feet Under as damning evidence (six feet is the approximate depth at which all bodies were found) of an Illuminati-style cover-up dating back to Oakland’s founding.

The startling revelation of the mass burial site has done anything but scare away Ranger and his associates. “It certainly was shocking at first, I’ll admit,” concluded Ranger, “but just think: who knew there was so much history laying here right under our noses? Think of what else is hiding out there, waiting to be discovered. This is getting me excited for next week’s dig by the Chattahoochee River.”