We See Dead People

If the sight of actual dead people gives you the creeps, I suggest you click away right now. We’ll put the scarier stuff toward the end.

You probably already know from La Dia Los Muertes that the Mexican culture isn’t the least bit spooked by the idea of death and mortality. The Museo de las Momias is a bit extreme, but hey, Bode really wanted to go.

We had told Bode about this place a few weeks ago after reading about it and he’s been keen on going ever since. We’ve commented before on his nonchalant bluntness discussing death. A few days prior, he asked me when I was going to get so old that I die. “About 85… I don’t really know,” I guessed. He paused as if to make a mental note and continued on his merry way.

So the story goes, the proprietors had to dig up some graves and move the contents to make more room at the cemetery (or the families hadn’t paid up or something like that.) Much to everyone’s surprise, many of the corpses were mummified and extremely well-preserved by the minerals in the local soil. What to do with them? Open a local attraction and charge people to come see.

People are dying to get in. We stood in line for over an hour.

It’s sort of gruesome, sort of interesting, and sort of boring, actually. If you’ve seen one mummified dead guy, you’ve seen them all.

They have some stories to go along with the bodies. One guy was stabbed to death and you can see the wounds. A slashed throat. A drowning. It’s all here. One person was supposedly buried alive based on the position and expression on their face (and apparently this may have been common due to medical misdiagnosis.)

Some of these folks died over 150 years ago and some are still in “perfect” condition (no holes!) Some are not.