Man dead 8 years found hanging in flat near Paris

Michael Winter | USA TODAY

The buyer of an apartment outside Paris was shocked last week by the discovery of something more at home in haunted houses on Halloween: the hanging, mummified body of the previous owner, who killed himself eight years ago.

The dead man, who was about 40 years old, had severed ties with his family in Cambodia and was last heard from in 2005 when he filed a complaint after being fired from his job as a security guard, Agence France-Presse reported. He had hanged himself with a sheet.

The flat, in the eastern commuter suburb of Bussy-Saint-Georges, had been repossessed by a bank and was sold at auction, police and judicial sources said. The buyer bought the property sight unseen and needed a locksmith to enter.

"The body was in perfect condition, as was the apartment," one source told AFP.

Authorities could not immediately explain why the body had not decomposed and putrified or why neighbors in the four-story, 20-unit building did not detect or report any foul smells.

Some residents said that they thought the previous owner, who was not identified, had returned to Cambodia, or that the apartment was abandoned.