Ronald Tammen's disappearance has been the subject of ghost stories and internet folklore. In April 1953, Ronald Tammen walked out of his second floor dorm room at Miami of Ohio University in Oxford, Ohio while he was doing homework. He was never seen again. His biology book was still open on his desk.

"Every year the University holds séances and there's been ghost stories continuing for the last 55-years," said Oxford Police Detective Frank Smith.

Two months after Tammen disappeared, the body of a young man was found alongside Rogers Road in Walker County. It was just off Highway 27, which was then the main road from Ohio to Florida. Interstate 75 had yet to be built. The body was never identified.

Detectives with the Walker County Sheriff Office recently took another look at the unidentified person's case and noticed some similarities with the Ronald Tammen case. The body was buried in the Lafayette Cemetery in a bag inside a wooden coffin. A decision was made this past February to exhume the body to see if enough remains could be recovered to compare DNA to Tammen's family.

The GBI'S Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kris Sperry oversaw that exhumation on February 8.

"The casket was essentially dissolved except for a few metal fittings that we found and even the body bag that he'd been placed into was cracked and broken," Dr. Sperry said.

He had little hope of getting DNA from the minimal remains.

"Finding the pieces, the little pieces that we found and knowing that there had been a lot of ground water over the years that had flowed through there we really didn't think that there would be much chance of finding any DNA," Dr. Sperry said.

The few remains included some teeth and sections of pieces of the thigh bones according to Dr. Sperry. Those remains were sent to the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Virginia. Dr. Sperry received the results of the FBI tests last week. To his surprise they were able to get mitochondrial DNA from the remains and determine that the body in Walker County was not Ronald Tammen's.

But Dr. Sperry says what they learned scientifically was heartening; that DNA can be recovered from a badly decomposed body. He said there is also hope that the unidentified remains in Walker County can one day be identified. The DNA from the remains is now entered in a national database.

"If another specimen from somewhere else happens to be submitted to their lab and it is shown to match the specimen from the body we exhumed from Walker County, we may just have an answer," Dr. Sperry said.

The ghost stories at Miami of Ohio University will continue. One with a connection to Georgia can be put to bed.

Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson says he is disappointed the remains were not Ronald Tammen's. He is optimistic that one day the remains in Walker County can be identified.