My husband and I bought a new house with a yard and recently moved in.  The previous owners hadn’t lived there for a long time, so the yard was in terrible condition.  We had to clear away huge amounts of old dry leaves, branches, and trash, and that’s when I noticed something terrifying right in the ground.  Staring up from under a layer of soil was a stone face. 

For the first few minutes, my heart almost stopped, but then I finally understood what it was.  More in the first comment 

When we started cleaning up the terrace of our new house, we had to remove a huge amount of dry leaves, branches, and dirt.

I bent down to pick up another handful of debris — and literally froze in fear. From under the soil, a face was staring at me. Stone, huge, with empty eyes and a strange mouth — it looked like I had found a buried human head.

Honestly, at that moment I almost fainted from fright. My heart was racing like crazy. My first thought was: who is this? why is it here?

Then, after catching our breath, we decided to investigate and looked for information online.

It turned out to be just a decorative Hawaiian-style mask, a garden element the previous owners had probably left behind.

I really don’t understand why anyone would place such a scary “decoration” in their yard — but at least now I know it’s not an ancient curse or some creepy artifact.

But in that first moment, my heart truly almost stopped!