The human body never fails to amaze — and sometimes horrify — with the strange things it can harbor. From a man who discovered a two-inch spruce tree growing in his lungs to another who found a live fly larva inside his eye, nature’s surprises can be downright unsettling. But few phenomena are as eerie as the lithopedion, more chillingly known as the “stone baby.”
A lithopedion occurs when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy — a rare condition where the embryo develops outside the uterus. Because the fetus is too large for the body to reabsorb, it slowly calcifies, turning into a “stone” as part of a natural defense mechanism. This process protects the body from infection, essentially mummifying the unborn fetus inside the abdomen.
In 2013, doctors in Colombia made a shocking discovery when an elderly woman, 82 years old, sought medical help for abdominal pain. A scan revealed she had been carrying a stone baby inside her for an astonishing 40 years. The calcified fetus weighed around four pounds and had gone unnoticed for decades.
Dr. Kim Garcsi, who headed the OB/GYN clerkship program at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland at the time, told ABC News that lithopedions are extremely rare, with only around 300 recorded cases in medical history. She explained that while the idea sounds horrifying, calcification is the body’s way of protecting itself: “When cartilage or tissue ages, it can calcify — it’s the body’s method of sealing off what it can’t remove.”
Abdominal pregnancies themselves are already uncommon — about 1 in 10,000 — and modern medical imaging can typically detect them before complications reach such an extreme. But decades ago, especially in rural or underserved areas, many such pregnancies went unnoticed.
The concept of stone babies has existed for centuries. The first recorded mention dates back to the 10th century, described by Spanish Muslim physician Abū al-Qāsim, and later documented in the 18th century across Europe and even in animals like sheep and hares. Archaeologists in Texas even unearthed a lithopedion dating back to 1100 BCE, proving how long this rare phenomenon has existed. The most recent known case was reported in Kenya in 2020.
When this story resurfaced on Reddit, users were both horrified and heartbroken. One wrote, “Poor woman — I can’t imagine how emotionally painful that must have been.” Another added, “Forty years without a proper diagnosis? That’s unbelievable.” And one summed up the sentiment best: “Wake up babe, a new existential fear just dropped.”
