Construction workers in Japan uncovered secrets hidden in an old apartment they were demolishing when they found a skeleton in the closet.

The skeleton, with its head resting neatly on a pillow and covered with a blanket, was in a cupboard in a building in northeast Tokyo, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

Police believe someone had gone into the empty apartment long after it had been vacated, and died, the paper said, adding officers did not yet know the gender of the skeleton.

Reports of long-undiscovered corpses are not uncommon in Japan, where once-close-knit family ties are increasingly breaking down, leaving some elderly people to live out their final years alone.