Yesterday we went to the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato and it was amazing. And weird as hell. A bit about the museum: in Guanajuato, they had a tax from the 1860s to the 1950s for burial plots at the local cemetery. If families of the deceased were unable to pay the tax, their loved ones would be removed from the cemetery. To make this weirder, in Guanajuato the soil contains minerals that have the effect of preserving the bodies. The result is that when bodies were taken out of the cemetery, they were often in an amazingly, um, fresh state. Then along came some genius who decided to put the mummified remains on display for a $3 ticket and BOOM! You have the most creepy and cool museum we've ever seen!
Most of the mummies at the museum perished in a Cholera outbreak in 1833.
The mummies were immortalized in a 1972 movie Las Momias de Guanajuato. In it, the mummies come back to life and try to take over the town.
There is evidence to suggest that several of the mummies were mistakenly buried while still alive.
Ray Bradbury visited the museum and was deeply shaken by what he saw. He said the museum "wounded and terrified" him and afterward all he wanted to do was get out of Mexico as soon as he could. He wrote the short story "The Next In Line" about the experience.
The museum houses at least 108 mummies.
This is thought to be the smallest mummy in the world. It was 6-month-old unborn fetus who died when it's mom (behind) perished.
The museum is a critical cultural cornerstone of Guanajuato. It brings in tens of thousands of visitors annually.
There are also several small child mummies on display.