The Gory Details (Gross)

Gory Details #5 "I Want My Mummy Back'"

Gory details is a monthly article dedicated to helping writers improve their writing by looking at some of the "real" places and things that often find their way into horror stories. This month's details are about mummies, yech!.

In movies and books (See Anne Rice's "The Mummy" and any movie with the word "Mummy" in the title) a mummy is almost always a body brought back to life by some evil spirit. The mummy's main goal seems to be to kill everyone in its path or sleep with lots of girls (See Anne Rice above.) It's such an overplayed story that some SFF magazines won't even read mummy stories. But is that all there really is to mummies? Certainly, there must be some interesting new angle an author could take. Let's look at mummies in the real world.

Loosely defined a mummy is any set of human remains more than a skeleton. There's also a general suggestion that a mummy was prepared for the afterlife by human hands but not always. The oldest natural mummy, named Otzi, happened to fall into a soon to freeze pool of water after having been shot in the back. The pool stayed frozen for several thousand years until Otzi was found by hikers.

The oldest intentionally made mummies are found in South America and are little more than sacks filled with bones. For our purposes, we'll consider five kinds of mummies that might somehow work their way into a story; peat mummies, smoked/dried mummies, Egyptian, Soap, and everybody else.

The bacteria that eat flesh don't thrive in acidic, oxygen poor bodies of water, like a peat bog or portions of the everglades. So, if you throw a body into this water, the skin and muscle may survive for hundred of years. In one famous case, the many hundred year old victim was still wearing a cap and had the rope used to strangle him still wrapped around his neck.

In appearance, a bog mummy is stained black though hair and fabrics (which often survive also) are often dark red. The body may be so well preserved that they appear to be sleeping. Having never been dehydrated, their features may still be rounded and quite life like. Other times, they may be flattened like a skin or sack. The same acids that protect the flesh eats the bones. In one instance the body was perfectly intact, right down to the eye lashes, only it had no form. It was a human sack.

You'll find peat mummies anywhere there is oxygen deprived, high acid waters, you could pull one out of a swamp or fen most anywhere your story was happening.

The second class of mummies are the smoked/dried mummies. This includes most any mummy you'll see on the discovery channel. Even societies in tropical environments discovered that ex-loved ones could be preserved by drying them over a fire. Often the bodies are also coated with saps or other ointments to prevent decay. Some societies in Indonesia keep the practice alive today and dress the mummies up for special occasions. Pretty much anywhere you've got a tribal witch doctor, it's a good place for the cross-legged mummy of the old witch doctor. In Peru there is a tradition of above ground burial. That combined with a very dry climate means that their graveyards are literally full of mummies.

Dried mummies can be surprisingly light, especially if they had their entrails removed. A full grown human only weighs about 40 pounds dried.

Egyptian mummies are actually preserved in natron and qualify as dried mummies but have a unique mystique. Here are a few facts you may not have known but would love to use in a story about Egyptian mummies. The entrails of Egyptians were removed through a hole in the side, the brain through the nose. These tidbits were kept in coptic jars that were buried along with the deceased. It was common to place other mummified animals in the tombs. Cats and crocodiles were common. Looters have traditionally had little interest in the mummies themselves and some tombs are littered with broken mummy bits. There is a controversy right now about a mummy that may be Nefertiti. The debate deals largely with the mummy's arm which was found in another room.

Soap mummies may be my favorite. When the Smithsonian released a list of the mummies it has in its archives, the weirdest by far was the soap man from Philadelphia. This poor soul was buried sometime in the late 1800 and, due to water in his grave, his body fat underwent hydrolysis (the gaining or losing of hydrogen atoms) and turned into soap. Not much is left of his original tissue but his bones are all held together in this nasty looking, bodyish lump of soap. Apparently, this is not uncommon in high moisture low bacteria environments. And the Gore Monger has been wasting his time with lifebouy.

There are a wide variety of other human remains that would fit under the heading mummy. The Catholic church keeps a collection of grisly relics that are the bodies or parts of bodies of saints and other religious notables. The best preserved are referred to as "The Incorruptables" and are said to be preserved through divine grace. The remains in Lennin's tomb are exquisitely preserved though western press has long speculated that there is a tremendous amount of wax and makeup involved. There are probably excellently preserved mummies in the local cemetery. Modern preservation methods and the sealing of coffins for public health purposes preserves many of our loved ones. A body buried using modern methods may last fifty years or more. In one other weird note. The folks who were pouring the concrete posts for the early suspension bridges couldn't stop pouring once they'd started because it would create a joint in the concrete. I've heard (though never confirmed) that there are several bridge supports around the US with small tombstone plaques on them where some poor sap fell in and was buried. What a weird place to find a mummy.

So The Curse of the Mummy is overdone? What happens to the woman who makes a purse from the skin of a bog mummy? Ever discover a mummy trapped in a glacier only to learn that you've trapped your own soul? Just because mummies are dead doesn't mean mummies are dead. Get out there and write!

Gory

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