Found cabling in junction box with ground cut
When you're extending old ungrounded circuits, Just randomly hooking up grounds higgledy-piggledy can create an interesting problem.  I call it &quot;Islanded grounds&quot;.
When a device has a ground fault, it's going to energize the ground wire.  It's trying to return that ground fault to source (the panel and its N-G bond) so it can trip the breaker.
But imagine there is no ground wire back to source.  If the ground wire just stops there, then it energizes the chassis of the machine.
But what if all the grounds in a circuit extension are connected to each other (but not the panel)?  The &quot;islanded&quot; ground wire carries the ground fault around to all the other devices in the island. So now all their grounds are hazardous, even the cover plate screws on the light switch!  That's the very opposite of a safety improvement!
So someone extending a non-grounded circuit might do just what you see.  I'd prefer to coil it up and insulate it, myself, for the happy day the original wiring is replaced.