A family’s Easter egg hunt took a dark twist this week when a mother searching for chocolate with her three-year-old son found a dead body lying under the deck of her house.

Tara Hanouskova was in the garden with her son helping him look for eggs when she noticed a pair of feet wearing tennis shoes in the dark of the tight space under her raised patio area.

Prior to the discovery Ms Hanouskova had been smelling a terrible odour that had been getting progressively worse over the past week, she told The Knoxville News Sentinel.

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Police later recovered the body, which was of a fully clothed middle-aged man who is believed to have laid there dead for around two weeks. The death is not being treated as suspicious

“I really don't even know how he got there,” Ms Hanouskova said. There was no evidence that the man had set up a camp in the space and he is yet to be identified.

Luckily, Ms Hanouskova managed to get her son inside the house in Knoxville, Tennessee before he saw anything.

An autopsy carried out on the man found that had a medical conditioned which likely resulted in his death, a Knoxville Police Department news release said.