Two men hired to clean out a Florida rental house thought they found a mannequin hanging in the garage so they cut down what they believed to be a Halloween-style prank and took it to a landfill.

But workers at the dump in west-central Florida grew suspicious of its foul odour and called authorities, who determined the workers had actually brought in a dead man in a "mummified state," said Denise Moloney, a spokeswoman for the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.