When I was a child, I once had a skeleton Halloween costume. It was a one-piece black garment with bones printed on the front and sleeves. The back was all-black. I can't remember why I wanted it at the time. Even as an adult who accompanied many a grade-school field trip to the Denver Museum of Natural History (now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science) and other displays of dinosaur bones, skeletons of long-extinct animals don't bother me. But mummies give me the willies. I don't really like to see their exhumation, unwrapping and examination on television documentaries, and when I visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo earlier this year, I had plenty to look at without going to the mummy room.
Needless to say, I was less than excited to learn that one of the supposed highlights of a tour of Guanajuato included the city's Mummy Museum.
The museum backs against the municipal cemetery, where relatives could pay a one-time high fee for the grave or pay a lower fee each year. The mummies displayed were "evicted" from their crypts when their survivors or other relatives (if there were any) could not or would pay a tax or fee for the continuing occupation of the grave. The mummies displayed date from between 1865 and 1958, when the grave-tax law was changed. They are known as "the accidental mummies," because natural conditions created mummification, rather than a deliberate intention of mummifying human remains.The museum collection comprises 119 mummies, some standing, some lying down, some erect, some contorted, some clothed, others not. But to me, they were all creepy.
I managed to hold it together until I reached the room with the small children and babies. Then, I snapped one photograph and fled. Those small mummified bodies really creeped me out.
The parking area in front of the museum is lined with small businesses. Early in the morning, this "Mummy Sweet Shop" was not yet open.
Numerous souvenir stands sold all the regulation Mexican tourist schlock-- plus skulls of various designs.
According to the Mummy Tombs website, which describes mummies in various lands and is clearly maintained by someone who does not share my antipathy to mummies, 36 Guanajuato mummies started touring the US on October 10 and will visit seven museums before they return to Guanajuato. Some have reportedly never been on public view before, even in Guanajuato. The Detroit Science Center is the first stop for "The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato" exhibition, which closes there on January 31, 2010. I haven't had any luck finding out which other six cities is is supposed to visit. If one happens to be Denver, I doubt I'll go to see them. 
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