Perhaps You Never Expected to Read About a Squidpocalypse or Black Bear Pastrami, but Strange Security Always Surprises

Fair warning: It’s Strange Security time here on the Today in Security section of Security Management. Each month, our editors run across strange news stories, and we collect them and present the best ones to you here. Each of the stories this month comes with its own warning.

As usual, we know security is a serious business, and while we treat these security-adjacent articles with a light-hearted touch, we do not want to diminish any suffering from the parties involved.

$10 Million in Gold Found Under Former Brewery in Belgium: Fair warning: If you are of Belgian descent and the family used to be in the beer business, you should check your family lineage. Construction workers found $10 million in gold working on a project to convert the former brewery site into transitional housing. The brewery’s owners have no known direct heirs.

Truckload of squid spilled onto Rhode Island Street: Fair warning: The videos in this story are pretty revolting. Dubbed locally as the “Squidpocalypse of ’26,” a full tractor-trailer load of squid overturned, spilling the cephalopods across the roadway. “Squid has a distinctive odor to it,” a local fisherman told the Providence, Rhode Island, NBC affiliate. “It can be very foul smelling, especially if it lands on the road and stays there for awhile.”

Cornell Students Skin and Butcher Bear in a Dorm: Fair warning: If you think you’ve covered everything in your policies, you probably haven’t. Two Cornell University students lawfully shot a bear. The students then splayed the carcass out in the communal dorm kitchen and proceeded to butcher it with the goal of using it to make black bear pastrami. The students faced no reprimand because there was no policy against processing big game in the dorm.

Body in Suitcase Turns Out to be Lifelike Doll: Fair warning: The main question you’ll have about this story will go unanswered. Two men found a suitcase on the side of the road a couple of hours outside Sydney, Australia, and were surprised to find a body stuffed inside when they examined it. The police determined that the head—complete with nose ring—and other body parts, which included coloration to mimic bruising, was fabricated. Why? That remains a mystery. The BBC article only covers the “what” and “where.”

Man in Chucky Mask Tries to Terrorize Philadelphia: Fair warning: This is story is creepy and weird. A man wearing a mask mimicking the Chucky character in horror films “walked aggressively” up to seemingly random people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to scare them. One woman turned and kicked him, causing him to run off.

Our editors found plenty of other strange, security-adjacent news in the last month, including these filed under “sometimes people don’t do the brightest things.”

• Video: Pilot caught with 70,000 ecstasy pills at Indonesian airport

• Person fined after using foghorn to wake sleeping polar bear

• Shake Shack worker allegedly robbed his own restaurant at gunpoint, then returned to work days later