I have no idea of the accuracy of it (Imagineers are just as susceptible to folklore as the rest of us), but Imagineer Jason Surrell seems to be the source of the story in his book
Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Page 80
Skeletons in the Closet - and the Basement
Because the original Imagineering team felt that the faux skeletons of were just too unconvincing, the Grotto sequence originally featured real human remains obtained from the UCLA Medical Center. The skeletons were later returned to their countries of origin and given a proper burial when a new generation of Imagineers replaced them with equally convincing facsimiles.
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I don't necessarily find the idea of real bone skeletons that hard to believe. They aren't actually that difficult to get your hands on and I imagine it was probably much easier in the '60s than now (India used to be the main supplier of them but they banned export of human bones in the '80s, China did the same about a decade ago).
The part I find harder to accept is that when done with them they'd actually be returned to countries of origin for burial.