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The Mummies of Guanajuato · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: Casey, could we get a little bit of spooky music
0:27
Speaker 1: just for a second in the background here it is,
0:29
Speaker 1: in fact October perfect. Welcome to the show. Ridiculous Historians,
0:34
Speaker 1: we are men of our word. Earlier, we had floated
0:38
Speaker 1: the idea of finding some more frightening, disturbing, creepy tales
0:43
Speaker 1: as we get closer to Halloween. Ben, didn't we do
0:46
Speaker 1: a pope based kind of spooky creepy tail already? But
0:48
Speaker 1: that was pre October. No, you're right, that was pre October.
0:51
Speaker 1: And uh, we we talked about whether or not we
0:54
Speaker 1: should save that one, but that was just such a
0:56
Speaker 1: cool and strange story. We were compelled. The power of
0:59
Speaker 1: Christ compel us to put that podcast out in the world,
1:03
Speaker 1: and the power of super producer Casey Pegram helped make
1:08
Speaker 1: that reality. We're looking at a story today that is
1:13
Speaker 1: equal parts ridiculous and I would say tragic, Yeah, I'd
1:17
Speaker 1: say mainly tragic. And yeah, and this is this is
1:22
Speaker 1: something that you had you had hipped me to knowl
1:25
Speaker 1: which is the story of mummies in Mexico. Yeah, specifically
1:30
Speaker 1: the Mexican town of Guanajuato, which was established in the
1:34
Speaker 1: early sixteenth century. UM and and was something of a
1:38
Speaker 1: boomtown for silver mining. It became that in the eighteenth
1:42
Speaker 1: century to the point where I believe it actually kind
1:45
Speaker 1: of messed with the economy of silver because there was
1:48
Speaker 1: just so much damn silver coming out of there that
1:50
Speaker 1: it like jacked with the price of silver in a
1:52
Speaker 1: way that caused some real economic problems in the region. Absolutely. Yeah,
1:56
Speaker 1: for a time it was the third largest silver line
2:00
Speaker 1: on the planet in terms of production. They still have
2:04
Speaker 1: traces of this mining industry right especially what is it
2:09
Speaker 1: Bocca dell infer Bocca dell Inferno. It's a mine shaft
2:12
Speaker 1: that um boca meaning mouth, So that's that's the mouth
2:15
Speaker 1: of hell Uh and this is an attraction you can
2:17
Speaker 1: see um there are also it's known for its beautiful architecture,
2:21
Speaker 1: these brightly colored Baroque buildings and they are these like
2:25
Speaker 1: narrow kind of um alleys between the buildings and it's
2:28
Speaker 1: a very walkable, picked picturesque little city. But it also
2:33
Speaker 1: was an important stronghold during the Mexican Revolution um when
2:38
Speaker 1: Mexico was able to break free of Spanish control, and
2:42
Speaker 1: that is when Father Miguel Hidalgo in eighteen ten, who
2:46
Speaker 1: was the parish priest in Dolores put out his infamous
2:50
Speaker 1: Grito de la Dolores, which is the shout of Dolores,
2:53
Speaker 1: and he assembled a mob of peasants um brandishing machetees
2:58
Speaker 1: and clubs, and they eventually made their way to kwanda
3:02
Speaker 1: Wato because it was the most prominent largest city in
3:06
Speaker 1: the area and that became their stronghold in the site
3:10
Speaker 1: of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. So a lot
3:13
Speaker 1: of history in this town. But today's episode it's not
3:15
Speaker 1: about any of those things. Oh yes, yes, let me
3:18
Speaker 1: set this up. We should say that the name Guana
3:20
Speaker 1: Wato actually translates to mountainous place of frogs, and it's
3:26
Speaker 1: it's had several different names throughout its time because it's
3:30
Speaker 1: a very old city. So maybe an Aztec era where
3:33
Speaker 1: the name was, Yeah, what was it? It was the
3:36
Speaker 1: land of straw. And the word is beautiful when the
3:39
Speaker 1: way that's translated from and it was an Aztec word
3:42
Speaker 1: paks titlan. You that's that is a beautiful word. I personally,
3:47
Speaker 1: I also like the place of metals, yeah, which is
3:51
Speaker 1: the older makes perfect sense. It was also the place
3:55
Speaker 1: of a weird government sanctioned grave robbing. That's right. Today's
4:01
Speaker 1: story involves grave robbing, and it involves I'm just gonna
4:06
Speaker 1: say it, a really terrible move on the part of
4:10
Speaker 1: local government. So there's a big city, a lot of
4:14
Speaker 1: people get buried. You know, life happens born, you live,
4:17
Speaker 1: and you die. And there was a cholera outbreak around
4:22
Speaker 1: the area of Guanoatu in uh the eighteen thirties, on
4:27
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three or so, and these people when they expired,
4:31
Speaker 1: they were interned, they were buried. In some cases they
4:34
Speaker 1: were embalmed. But a few years later the local government
4:39
Speaker 1: puts attacks on graves. Yeah. So the thing is like,
4:42
Speaker 1: you would rent this place, like you didn't own it. Yeah, yeah,
4:47
Speaker 1: you would rent it. And I think the initial rental
4:49
Speaker 1: period was about five years, and then you had to
4:51
Speaker 1: re up your rental. Your family had to you know,
4:55
Speaker 1: assuming you had any family to speak of. And if
4:58
Speaker 1: you didn't pay this is this is something that was
5:01
Speaker 1: instituted between eighteen sixty five to ninety eight, by the way,
5:04
Speaker 1: very recently done away with. And if you did not
5:06
Speaker 1: pay for three years in a row, that's right, then
5:10
Speaker 1: your peeps would be uprooted, literally dug up, not really
5:14
Speaker 1: dug up because they were in these air tight um
5:17
Speaker 1: mausoleum chambers. They would be removed uh and evicted and
5:21
Speaker 1: they were either taken to a simple pauper's grave outside
5:25
Speaker 1: of town. And this is the the thing too, was interesting
5:27
Speaker 1: about the story the this so this um culture very
5:31
Speaker 1: much reveres death. You know, you have like the Deo
5:34
Speaker 1: Stella smuertos and all of these kind of death related
5:37
Speaker 1: rituals and just deep veneration for one's ancestors and paying respects,
5:43
Speaker 1: and you know, this very religious culture. The idea of
5:47
Speaker 1: digging up these loved ones and like putting them in
5:50
Speaker 1: a less desirable burial space had to have been very
5:54
Speaker 1: painful for some of these families. But that wasn't even
5:57
Speaker 1: the worst thing that could have happened, wasn't. There's stranger
6:00
Speaker 1: of things that happened, because they would be put in
6:02
Speaker 1: a pauper's grave, or they might be placed in an
6:05
Speaker 1: ossuary which was actually under the cemetery grounds itself, waiting
6:09
Speaker 1: in case the relatives would come back, cough up the
6:12
Speaker 1: money and have their loved ones reinterred, reburied, which did
6:17
Speaker 1: happen in a couple of cases. These people were taken
6:19
Speaker 1: out of the grave and then put back in. But
6:22
Speaker 1: when they were taken out of the grave, often they
6:26
Speaker 1: weren't decayed in the way that you would expect a
6:29
Speaker 1: dead body to rot over time. They were preserved. They
6:33
Speaker 1: were mummies. They were mummies. They had become mummies naturally.
6:37
Speaker 1: They were mummified by the environment in which they were interred.
6:42
Speaker 1: I believe the first one that was found mummified was
6:45
Speaker 1: a man named doctor Remigio Leroy in the Frenchman right
6:49
Speaker 1: of the French doctor, I think is what he was
6:50
Speaker 1: known as. So we're sort of burying the lead here
6:52
Speaker 1: and we were getting there. But um, yes, Ben, this
6:54
Speaker 1: is very important, the fact that they were naturally mummified
6:57
Speaker 1: from lack of oxygen and just the very dry client.
7:00
Speaker 1: I meant that that existed there as part of the world,
7:02
Speaker 1: and so they would literally just dry out and their
7:06
Speaker 1: clothes would rot quicker than their bodies would. Um. And
7:10
Speaker 1: here's the thing, these mummies. When they found this, this Frenchman,
7:15
Speaker 1: the first guy they found that had undergone this transformation,
7:19
Speaker 1: they were like, this is pretty cool, and that they
7:20
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the city people that ran the mausoleum,
7:24
Speaker 1: what do you think like city officially this was a
7:26
Speaker 1: state run facility. Right, they were like, Okay, this is
7:30
Speaker 1: pretty cool. We should hold onto this guy. And so
7:33
Speaker 1: they do that, and they continue doing that for several
7:35
Speaker 1: years before they realized, Hey, I think we might have
7:37
Speaker 1: a little money maker on our hands. So what happens
7:40
Speaker 1: then is the ones that the curators, let's call them
7:45
Speaker 1: deem I guess fascinating. Enough specimens are kept and in
7:52
Speaker 1: the fifties a museum is opened. Yes, it is true.
7:57
Speaker 1: This hearkens back to our earlier epich sood, which seems
8:00
Speaker 1: so so long ago. Now on corpses in a diorama,
8:04
Speaker 1: do you remember that I very much do with the
8:06
Speaker 1: camel and the Arabic gentleman with the human skull? I
8:10
Speaker 1: play right? And when yes, and when we say thought
8:13
Speaker 1: to be fascinating, what do we mean? This is pretty
8:16
Speaker 1: graphic stuff. These mean things like mummy that was pregnant,
8:21
Speaker 1: or people who appear to have been buried alive, such
8:25
Speaker 1: as Ignatia Aguilar. The people who were buried alive were
8:30
Speaker 1: almost certainly buried by accident due to the extreme nature
8:35
Speaker 1: of the choler outbreak. And yeah, that's right. And a
8:37
Speaker 1: lot of these um specimens were found to have cholera
8:41
Speaker 1: or have suffered from smoke inhalation. Um there's a really great,
8:46
Speaker 1: really short podcast from a show called Mexico Unexplained. I think, yeah,
8:51
Speaker 1: and um it it goes into some of these details.
8:54
Speaker 1: But um, really interesting that they would have had smoke
8:57
Speaker 1: inhalation because it was either from smoking cigarettes are any
9:01
Speaker 1: kind of tobacco, or possibly from working in those minds
9:04
Speaker 1: under less than ideal conditions. Oh yes, And before we
9:08
Speaker 1: get too far away from it, I want to clarify
9:11
Speaker 1: because I remember it. I did find the explanation of
9:15
Speaker 1: how this museum thing came about, and it's it's kind
9:19
Speaker 1: of disappointing in what it says about the human condition.
9:22
Speaker 1: Because once word of the Guandouato mummies started spreading around town,
9:27
Speaker 1: other people in town were apparently sneaking over and paying
9:32
Speaker 1: people who worked at the cemeteries just a couple of
9:35
Speaker 1: pesos to sneak in and take a quick peek. So
9:38
Speaker 1: it was a the workers were motivated by profit, and
9:42
Speaker 1: then they were incentivized, you know, because this burial tax
9:45
Speaker 1: is still around to pull more and more bodies out
9:48
Speaker 1: of the crypt and then find more and more mummies
9:51
Speaker 1: and charge more and more people to see them. So
9:54
Speaker 1: where were they keeping them before the museum situation took off?
9:58
Speaker 1: Before the museum they were eventually they would be kept
10:01
Speaker 1: in that ossuary under the graveyard, just like for a
10:05
Speaker 1: rainy day. And Kate, well, the official reason against just
10:08
Speaker 1: in case the families come back and say, we do
10:11
Speaker 1: have the money to pay the burial tax. But why
10:13
Speaker 1: would they keep them versus burying them outside of town? Like,
10:16
Speaker 1: my understanding was that they kept these because they were
10:18
Speaker 1: so crazy looking and they like I think, I think
10:21
Speaker 1: it's a situation again where there was an official reason
10:24
Speaker 1: and then there was a real reason, got it. So
10:32
Speaker 1: let's talk about this museum. When that started happening, l
10:35
Speaker 1: Museo de las Momias, which you know, the Museum of
10:39
Speaker 1: the Mummies, It was the same place where the cemetery
10:42
Speaker 1: workers were just charging people several pasos to enter into
10:46
Speaker 1: the building and see the bones and the mummies. Uh
10:49
Speaker 1: with with again Dr Leroy being the first one on display.
10:53
Speaker 1: But when did it officially become a museum instead of
10:55
Speaker 1: this underground display of death. Yeah, that's right, but like
11:00
Speaker 1: you said before, you know, um, there was money to
11:03
Speaker 1: be made here and the government wasn't getting those mausoleum
11:08
Speaker 1: lease rental fees, so they figured they would capitalize in
11:11
Speaker 1: another way, and they opened this to the public in
11:14
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and it was actually voted guanahats I
11:18
Speaker 1: believe number one tourist attraction. And so for a nominal
11:24
Speaker 1: fee of two pasos, you can take a look at
11:27
Speaker 1: the more than a hundred um hundred and eight hundred
11:31
Speaker 1: and eight um dried out human mummies natural mummies um
11:36
Speaker 1: and that this includes all different types of situations in
11:41
Speaker 1: varying stages of decay kind of Yeah, and you can
11:46
Speaker 1: still see their facial expressions in a lot of cases,
11:50
Speaker 1: which you know, we mentioned the somewhat gruesome details that
11:53
Speaker 1: have allowed investigators to determine who was buried alive and
11:57
Speaker 1: who was buried when they were actually dead. Well, when
11:59
Speaker 1: you mentioned that was buried alive, actually still has her
12:01
Speaker 1: hands like trans like you know, like covering her eyes, died,
12:05
Speaker 1: biting her arm. Yeah. And and the thing too is
12:08
Speaker 1: most of these um this cadavers um have these just
12:13
Speaker 1: pained expressions as though they're like shrieking in agony. And
12:18
Speaker 1: it's because of what happens when the tongue dries out
12:21
Speaker 1: during this momification process and the jaw starts to slacken.
12:25
Speaker 1: You start. It kind of looks like the scream you
12:28
Speaker 1: know that that painting um and this is pretty crazy.
12:32
Speaker 1: Ray Bradberry actually wrote a short story about based on
12:36
Speaker 1: his visit to this this museum when he was vacationing
12:40
Speaker 1: with his wife in in Guanahuato, um And he wrote
12:43
Speaker 1: a story called The Next in Line where he very
12:46
Speaker 1: vividly describes this. So I'm gonna read a little bit
12:49
Speaker 1: of that. Take it away, Casey, can we get that
12:51
Speaker 1: spooky music back for this? This is this? I think
12:53
Speaker 1: I think this is this deserves it. M h. They
12:57
Speaker 1: were screaming. They looked as if they had leaped, snapped
13:01
Speaker 1: upright in their graves, clutched hands over their shriveled bosoms,
13:06
Speaker 1: and screamed. Jaws wide, tongues out, nostrils flared and been
13:12
Speaker 1: frozen that way. All of them had open mouths. There
13:16
Speaker 1: was a perpetual screaming. They were dead and they knew
13:20
Speaker 1: it in every raw fiber and evaporated organ, they knew it.
13:26
Speaker 1: She stood listening to them scream. They say, dogs here sounds.
13:30
Speaker 1: Humans never hear sounds. So many decibels higher than normal,
13:34
Speaker 1: hearing that they seem non existent. The corridor swarmed with screams,
13:40
Speaker 1: screams poured from terror, yawned lips and dry tongues, screams
13:45
Speaker 1: you couldn't hear because they were so high. Who not cool,
13:51
Speaker 1: Ray Bradberry? Not cool? What do you think about that? Then? Yeah,
13:55
Speaker 1: I've actually I've read the story. It's um. Ray Bradberry
13:58
Speaker 1: is a fantastic writer and very appropriate for Halloween. The
14:02
Speaker 1: Mummy Museum also inspired other works of fiction. In the
14:07
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, Veroner Herzog took uh number of shots
14:12
Speaker 1: of these various mummies for the title sequence of his
14:15
Speaker 1: film nos Feratu the Vampire because he just wanted a morbid, eerie,
14:20
Speaker 1: atmospheric opening sequence. I remember that sequence, and I did
14:23
Speaker 1: not know that, Ben. And one of the museum's other
14:26
Speaker 1: notable points of interest is that it has the smallest
14:30
Speaker 1: mummy in the world. It is a fetus from the
14:35
Speaker 1: pregnant woman that we had mentioned earlier. It's a heartbreaking thing.
14:40
Speaker 1: And it's strange to feel the turns of history so
14:44
Speaker 1: immediate and tactile, you know, because so often we think
14:48
Speaker 1: of these horrific or tragic events as an abstract thing
14:52
Speaker 1: from a history book, but going and seeing these real
14:55
Speaker 1: people is tremendously profound and moving experien orie. It's one
15:00
Speaker 1: other work of fiction that we absolutely have to mention
15:04
Speaker 1: is the film that incorporates the mummies of Guanda Wata
15:07
Speaker 1: in a not accurate way, is called Santo Versus the
15:12
Speaker 1: Mummies of Guandauato, Santo being a very popular These are
15:18
Speaker 1: these wrestlers that wear those cool masks, and this guy
15:22
Speaker 1: was like a real celebrity and it was almost sort
15:23
Speaker 1: of like Abbott and Costello, you know, meets Frankenstein or whatever.
15:26
Speaker 1: It was like a very well known national figure fighting
15:30
Speaker 1: a very well known national monster. Yeah, Rudolfo Guzman, famous
15:36
Speaker 1: wrestler at the time. And we found we found some
15:41
Speaker 1: various clips of this film. You know, we get made
15:45
Speaker 1: two and I'm all in, I want to check it out.
15:48
Speaker 1: I want to watch the whole thing. I'll come back
15:50
Speaker 1: with the review. If I'll come back with a review,
15:53
Speaker 1: if there's some interest. What makes it relevant for our
15:56
Speaker 1: interest today is that this film spread word of the
16:00
Speaker 1: mummies outside of Mexico and people began to learn about
16:03
Speaker 1: this on an international level. Yeah, I mean it started
16:06
Speaker 1: kind of became much more of a fixture of popular
16:10
Speaker 1: culture at the time, and it wasn't really replicated for
16:15
Speaker 1: many years. UM. But it's certainly spread awareness and then
16:19
Speaker 1: likely up the value um to the government of this place,
16:23
Speaker 1: right right. And this leads us to the ethical question
16:28
Speaker 1: that we've run into before, you know, and that the
16:31
Speaker 1: question is is it right to display the bodies of
16:36
Speaker 1: these people? Certainly, I mean it's certainly not with their consent,
16:39
Speaker 1: and we don't know if their family members were asked,
16:43
Speaker 1: if their family members consented. Yeah, there's actually a quote
16:46
Speaker 1: in this piece from the Guardian UM that just talks
16:49
Speaker 1: about how there were no laws broken in doing this,
16:53
Speaker 1: that the Mexican people have a different attitude towards death
16:58
Speaker 1: that they don't I don't know, and it's kind of
16:59
Speaker 1: counter to what I said at the beginning of the show.
17:00
Speaker 1: I would assume that it would be this would be
17:03
Speaker 1: very disrespectful, This would be considered, um like heresy kind
17:07
Speaker 1: of you know, to disenter people's loved ones. Um. But
17:12
Speaker 1: you know, the guy that's in charge of this place
17:14
Speaker 1: seems to think differently. This guy our touro To Barras,
17:17
Speaker 1: who is the head spokesman for the Guanahuato government said
17:22
Speaker 1: in this daily mail piece, I think I misattributed to
17:24
Speaker 1: the Guardian earlier, um that quote. The museum is an
17:27
Speaker 1: important part of Guanajuato's tourist appeal. Okay, that's your first point. Uh,
17:31
Speaker 1: the museum breaks no laws and displaying its exhibit to
17:34
Speaker 1: visitors who are given fair warning of a graphic content.
17:37
Speaker 1: Here's the important part. We have a different cultural approach
17:40
Speaker 1: to death in Mexico. Here we celebrate the cycle of
17:43
Speaker 1: life and accept death as inevitable. Of the visitors leave
17:47
Speaker 1: the experience pleased with what they saw. But here's the thing.
17:51
Speaker 1: So many of these infants uh in in the museum,
17:54
Speaker 1: of which there are several, are often dressed as saints.
17:58
Speaker 1: So there's one that that's that goes by that they
18:00
Speaker 1: call colloquially little St. Martin. Who is It's basically the
18:05
Speaker 1: skeleton of a tiny baby wearing um, the traditional garb
18:10
Speaker 1: of St. Martin, something called a cassock, and holding a
18:13
Speaker 1: broom and holding rosary beads, and it is uh maccabre,
18:19
Speaker 1: my friend. So I'm glad that you mentioned the Guardian,
18:22
Speaker 1: because there's a Guardian piece I remembered I wanted to
18:25
Speaker 1: bring up. It's called Why Mexicans Celebrate the Day of
18:28
Speaker 1: the Dead by Antonio Weiss, and in there it has
18:31
Speaker 1: this just stunnying Octovio Paz quote about what he sees
18:37
Speaker 1: as the Mexican attitude with death. He says, the Mexican
18:41
Speaker 1: is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps
18:45
Speaker 1: with it, celebrates it. True, there is as much fear
18:49
Speaker 1: in his attitude as in that of others, but at
18:52
Speaker 1: least death is not hidden away. He looks at it
18:55
Speaker 1: face to face within patients disdain or irony, and I
19:00
Speaker 1: think that's you know, maybe that's maybe that's what makes
19:04
Speaker 1: it okay. Maybe this is an important thing rather than
19:08
Speaker 1: an exploitative thing, you know what I mean, Because they
19:10
Speaker 1: can't be making that much money, right, Profit can't be
19:13
Speaker 1: the sole motivation at this point. It's just four thousand
19:16
Speaker 1: visitors a week. I mean, that's a decent amount of cash. Yeah,
19:19
Speaker 1: I guess it does add up. Yeah, sure, it's it's
19:21
Speaker 1: been open since the fifties. I mean, you know, yeah,
19:23
Speaker 1: you're kind of a bit of a cash cow, if
19:26
Speaker 1: you say so myself. But I guess what I'm getting
19:27
Speaker 1: out I'm struggling with is there was even so this
19:30
Speaker 1: this tax was relinquished right uh and at the end
19:35
Speaker 1: of the fifties. But but there actually was a recent
19:40
Speaker 1: addition to this collection was a baby that died in
19:44
Speaker 1: nineteen nine as six months old. So I want to
19:46
Speaker 1: clear something up, real question, and we actually had a
19:48
Speaker 1: little discussion off Mike um. The law that required the tax,
19:52
Speaker 1: there was a grave tax went away in but there
19:56
Speaker 1: was also like you still had to rent these spaces.
19:59
Speaker 1: You still had the least the lace the land, and
20:01
Speaker 1: like you would up re up it for like twenty
20:03
Speaker 1: years or something like that, Like it started like a
20:05
Speaker 1: five year and then if he didn't come back, then
20:08
Speaker 1: they could still remove your loved ones corpse. And that
20:11
Speaker 1: happened with this baby. And the really heartbreaking thing is
20:15
Speaker 1: apparently the baby is in the collection the museum and
20:18
Speaker 1: the mother who's still living ah pretty regularly comes and visits. Yeah,
20:25
Speaker 1: and there's something the description of how this happens sounds
20:28
Speaker 1: remarkably cold. So if the if the family, the surviving
20:33
Speaker 1: relatives choose not to pay or resign on that lease,
20:38
Speaker 1: then the body is removed and it goes to the
20:41
Speaker 1: museum's curator, and the curator inspects the corpse to see
20:45
Speaker 1: whether it's good enough to be added to the collection.
20:49
Speaker 1: And I had earlier said the number was a hundred
20:51
Speaker 1: and eight corpses in the display, but I believe it's
20:54
Speaker 1: a hundred and eleven now because they have added some.
21:02
Speaker 1: I though that wasn't too confusing with the difference between
21:04
Speaker 1: the grave tax and the lease, because they were two
21:07
Speaker 1: different things and through me for a little bit. But no,
21:09
Speaker 1: I mean, we we got there. I think we did.
21:11
Speaker 1: I think we did. Um, So what's what's next? Yeah,
21:14
Speaker 1: this sounds like a place that I would be intrigued.
21:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm into kind of like this sort
21:18
Speaker 1: of dark type stuff. I went to the Museum of
21:20
Speaker 1: Death in l a And quite enjoyed that, even though
21:22
Speaker 1: some of it was even a little little much for me.
21:24
Speaker 1: A lot of like embalming videos and uh, you know,
21:28
Speaker 1: murder crime scene photographs and things like that. Um, but
21:31
Speaker 1: do you think this is right? Ben? Do you think
21:34
Speaker 1: this is a value to society to be able to
21:37
Speaker 1: experience death in such a raw, uh you know, kind
21:40
Speaker 1: of detached way. It's it's interesting to me. I mean,
21:43
Speaker 1: that's the question I asked earlier in the show. You
21:46
Speaker 1: know what, ethically, is this more useful to humanity as
21:51
Speaker 1: as a memorial, as a a way of educating people,
21:57
Speaker 1: or is it exploitative. It seemed like the museum itself
22:01
Speaker 1: has a lot of support from the local community, and
22:05
Speaker 1: it is of benefit to science because we're able to
22:09
Speaker 1: research the process of natural mummification. Texas State University had
22:14
Speaker 1: some great research on how this stuff occurs and how
22:19
Speaker 1: the environment interacts with the corpse. But I would say
22:25
Speaker 1: it's similar to UM. Did you ever see that bodies exhibit?
22:28
Speaker 1: I never did, UM, but I've seen photographs of it,
22:31
Speaker 1: and that perfectly preserved condaverage whether you see the muscles
22:35
Speaker 1: and all that, and it's fascinating. Yeah, where you see
22:38
Speaker 1: organs or the circulatory system or nervous system taken out
22:42
Speaker 1: and kind of plastic size to give you a better
22:45
Speaker 1: look at human anatomy. But those people, when they were alive,
22:49
Speaker 1: didn't consent to that, right, Surely not in every case,
22:54
Speaker 1: And we have to ask ourselves at what point does
22:57
Speaker 1: the benefit to science or the benefit to history outweigh
23:01
Speaker 1: the the ethical pitfalls of displaying someone's corpse after they die.
23:07
Speaker 1: I will say that I if I'm in that town,
23:10
Speaker 1: I will go visit just because I think it's in
23:13
Speaker 1: a way it if it were like memorial or commemorating
23:18
Speaker 1: the deaths of those people, and these were not. These
23:20
Speaker 1: were not for the most part, these were not well
23:22
Speaker 1: off folks. These were what's sort of the point, right,
23:25
Speaker 1: these were common people. Yeah, I mean the idea they
23:27
Speaker 1: had to you know, because I mean rich people would
23:29
Speaker 1: have been able to buy a plot, right, and you
23:31
Speaker 1: certainly didn't have to lease. That's not the law. It's
23:33
Speaker 1: just they couldn't afford to buy a grave plot, so
23:36
Speaker 1: they were able to lease it in one of these
23:38
Speaker 1: municipal cemeteries, mausoleums or whatever. Right, absolutely, and I would
23:42
Speaker 1: air on the side of scientific benefit and historical commemoration. Uh.
23:48
Speaker 1: Guandawato's mayor, Dr Eduardo Hicks at that back in two
23:52
Speaker 1: thousand seven, initiated the Guandawato Mummy Research Project and invited
23:58
Speaker 1: several scientists to go out and spend more than a
24:01
Speaker 1: year exploring the origin and the development of the mummies.
24:04
Speaker 1: And it's also been a subject of national geographic documentary
24:10
Speaker 1: series which I'm gonna tell you the name of it.
24:13
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the series, but the name throws me off.
24:16
Speaker 1: You're ready, I am the Mummy road Show. Nice, So
24:20
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the Antiques road Show, but with
24:22
Speaker 1: with mummies. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, that's a little glib.
24:27
Speaker 1: But in these recent years they've learned a lot about
24:30
Speaker 1: the people, the individuals who were interred here and then
24:34
Speaker 1: later displayed in this museum. It's it's an incredibly interesting
24:37
Speaker 1: article and if you would like to read it, let
24:40
Speaker 1: me know on Ridiculous Historians and we can just post
24:43
Speaker 1: it up there. And if you are a person who
24:47
Speaker 1: does not want to see any of the visuals of
24:49
Speaker 1: this stuff, we completely understand. This particular article has no photographs. Well,
24:54
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty good place to leave it.
24:56
Speaker 1: There's certainly if you're into photographs, there's plenty of them
24:58
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. And these are really pretty upsetting images,
25:02
Speaker 1: to be honest, But it's also they're strangely beautiful, I
25:05
Speaker 1: want to say, very hunting as as you may have
25:08
Speaker 1: gotten from that Ray Bradberry passage, and it really apparently
25:10
Speaker 1: severely affected him and that he felt the need to
25:13
Speaker 1: write this piece to kind of exercise some of those
25:16
Speaker 1: demons from himself. Um, and I could see that. I
25:19
Speaker 1: wonder what it smells like in their ben It probably
25:21
Speaker 1: is kind of musty, like an old library or something,
25:23
Speaker 1: because these these corpses would not have had a smell
25:26
Speaker 1: of putrification because everything was just dried up, right the
25:29
Speaker 1: momentification happened so rapidly, uh, like a lot of museums.
25:34
Speaker 1: It probably just smells old in some inexplicable way. But
25:39
Speaker 1: our senses are so vulnerable to our pre existing uh
25:43
Speaker 1: mental states, right, so maybe we are mentally capturing the smell.
25:47
Speaker 1: You know what. It probably it probably smells like cleaning
25:50
Speaker 1: cleaning supplies because there's a lot of glass, so I'm
25:54
Speaker 1: sure they have to use a ton of windex. It
25:56
Speaker 1: probably smells faintly clean. Yeah, we a little bit of
25:59
Speaker 1: a chemical sme and I have a question too. So
26:02
Speaker 1: so far we have we have covered a very interesting
26:06
Speaker 1: specific type of vampire native to the Philippines. We've looked
26:11
Speaker 1: at mummies, although they were not monster mummies from an
26:14
Speaker 1: old universal horror film or something. What particular monsters are
26:19
Speaker 1: historical cases of monstrosities? Sha? We should we look at next?
26:23
Speaker 1: Should we look at the trials of werewolves? That's always
26:27
Speaker 1: an interesting strange path to go on one of the
26:29
Speaker 1: things we did the other night, when we had a
26:31
Speaker 1: game Night of the Obvious, played a game called werewolf
26:33
Speaker 1: um where I ended up falsely accusing several of my
26:38
Speaker 1: closest friends and co workers of being warewolves and had
26:41
Speaker 1: them lynched. And they didn't deserve that. Then they were
26:44
Speaker 1: they were villages, they were townspeople the whole time, and
26:46
Speaker 1: they will be able to forgive myself for that. They
26:48
Speaker 1: probably won't be able to forgive you either. I deserve it.
26:52
Speaker 1: I deserve it. But um in in in their memory,
26:55
Speaker 1: we should, in fact research something about werewolves. I think
26:58
Speaker 1: that's smart. Yeah, let us know there's a werewolf story
27:01
Speaker 1: that particularly stands out to you. I'd love to ben.
27:04
Speaker 1: You might be saying, but how on earth do I
27:07
Speaker 1: contact you? Guys? Well, it's quite simple. We've got good news.
27:11
Speaker 1: If you are on the internet, you can find us
27:13
Speaker 1: on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter. You can
27:15
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, in particular, check us out on
27:18
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians our Facebook community page, where you can talk
27:23
Speaker 1: with your fellow listeners, all of whom I assure you
27:26
Speaker 1: are brilliant, wonderful people with great taste and podcast right,
27:31
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Yeah, I support that. Um Let's thank
27:34
Speaker 1: our super producer Casey Pegram for you know, being super
27:37
Speaker 1: as always. Thanks to our friend and colleague Alex Williams,
27:42
Speaker 1: who composed our theme. Thanks to Christopher Hasciotis and Eve's
27:45
Speaker 1: Jeff Cote, our research associates. Thank you to Jonathan Strickland,
27:51
Speaker 1: a k a. The Quister. There's been quiet lately, uh, folks,
27:57
Speaker 1: I suspect Noll really know you like him? Dear friends, Sure,
28:01
Speaker 1: whatever you say, but oh man, alright, well, I will
28:04
Speaker 1: try to keep the Quister heat off of you. Like
28:06
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I welcome it. I need a little little
28:09
Speaker 1: kick in the pants every now and then. Who better
28:11
Speaker 1: to do it than that guy? And most importantly, we're
28:13
Speaker 1: gonna thank you for bringing this great story to the show.
28:16
Speaker 1: Oh man, no problem. There was a lot of fun. No,
28:18
Speaker 1: that's not that's not the right thing at all. It
28:20
Speaker 1: wasn't really fun at all. It was kind of disturbing
28:22
Speaker 1: and upsetting. But I'd rather there's no one I'd rather
28:25
Speaker 1: be disturbed and upset with in this world bend than you,
28:28
Speaker 1: and you, folks, we'll see you next time.