In the dense heat of Monday evening, an adult softball league playing at Memorial Field noticed the worst kind of smell emanating from the woods behind their dugout.

After walking into the woods to investigate, they called Concord Police around 7:30 p.m. to report they’d found a decomposing body. Pending the results of an autopsy, the person’s name, age and gender are not yet known, according to Deputy Chief Barret Moulton. A firm timeline has yet to be determined, but Moulton estimated the remains had been there for at least a few weeks.

The deceased individual was found in what appeared to be an encampment, Moulton said. While not always active, that area of woods on city land between Memorial Field and Redington Road has historically been a place where homeless camps have existed.

Luukas Mayer and Jacob Ryder, who work for Concord Parks and Recreation, estimated the small camp was about 100-250 feet away from the junior varsity softball dugout. They think the body was located on top of a rock at the end of a path into the woods.

The makeshift campsite had bottles, cans and trash strewn about. Two weathered umbrellas were open on the ground. A dark blue blanket covered a portion of the large, flat rock, with a large bag of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and a squashed black shoe sitting nearby.

“I think the moral of the story should be that the homeless population around Memorial Field and in the woods surrounding is becoming an issue,” said Ryder, who has worked at Memorial Field for three years. “Especially with the amount of kids you can see that are here.”

This is the third time in two months that long-dead remains of an unsheltered person have been found in Concord.

Skeletal remains of two men were found in early May just days apart: Michael Schilz, 59, was found in a shed across the street from the state prison, and thirty-six-year-old Curtis Ayer was found under the I-393 bridge. Neither had been reported as a missing person.

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. Yaa Bame can be reached at ybame@cmonitor.com.