A crematorium operator has been arrested by US police investigating the discovery of scores of decomposing corpses which were stacked in sheds and scattered in woods near the facility, officers said.
Some of the bodies were in coffins that appeared to have been buried and disinterred, said police in the American town of Noble, Georgia.
When investigators asked 28-year-old Mr Ray Brent Marsh, operator of the Tri-State Crematorium why the bodies had not been cremated, he told them the incinerator was not working, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman Mr John Bankhead said.
Walker County Coroner Mr Dewayne Wilson said: "The worst horror movie you've ever seen - imagine that 10 times worse. That is what I'm dealing with."
Officials said there could be hundreds of corpses.
They broke off the search of the woods last night and planned to resume today.
Mr Bankhead said: "All we know for sure right now are the 80 bodies, and 13 of those have been identified.
"But they've found so many other partial skeletal remains and evidence of graves, we don't know how many more are out there."
Some of the bodies were found in rusty coffins, some of which could be up to 10 years old, he went on.
"At one time they apparently were buried in the ground in some other cemetery and were dug up and taken to the crematory," he said. "We don't know why that is."
Some of the bodies had been delivered to the Tri-State Crematory within the last few days, and some still had hospital toe tags, Mr Bankhead said.
Others had apparently been there for as long as three years.
Between 25 and 30 funeral homes in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama routinely sent bodies to Tri-State for cremation, Mr Bankhead said.
Mr Brent Marsh was charged with theft by deception, a felony, because he allegedly charged relatives to cremate the bodies without doing so.
AP