This isn't a blog post for the faint-hearted. Located in Mexico city, Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato (The Museum of the Mummies) is a place where you can hang out with gruesome mummies.
From 1829-51, the world was gripped by an enormous cholera epidemic, causing horrendous death rates across the globe. Guanajuato in Mexico, had run out of room in their underground cemeteries for all of the bodies that they were gathering and began interring them instead in a newly made above-ground crypt.
In this warm, dry environment, the partially embalmed corpses began to naturally mummify.
In 1865, the local government instituted a "burial tax," forcing families to pay a certain sum of money to keep their loved ones buried. When families were unable to pay the tax, their loved ones' bodies were exhumed from their resting place and moved to a storage facility.
It was then that the owners of the crypt first saw these bodies after their burial, and were shocked to see the extent to which they'd mummified, their faces frozen into what looked like screams of absolute terror.
Once word of the Guanajuato mummies spread, people began paying workers at the cemetery a few pesos to for a look at the terrifying sight.
One body pulled out, belonging to an Ignacia Aguilar, was found biting into her own arm; it is thought that she was buried alive when the symptoms of her cholera made her heart appear to stop.
Another of the Guanajuato mummies was a woman who died in childbirth and her 24-week-old fetus, believed to be the youngest mummy in existence.
The interest around the Guanajuato mummies only grew from there, and by the early 1900s, they had already become a tourist attraction. Eventually, 111 mummies were unearthed and put on display for tourists.
In 1968, a museum called El Museo de las Momias was established to display the Guanajuato mummies and they now form the largest collection of natural mummies in the world. The museum, containing at least 108 corpses, is located above the spot where the mummies were first discovered. Numerous mummies can be seen throughout the exhibition, of varying sizes. Some of the mummies can be seen wearing parts of the clothing in which they were buried.
