Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Woo Woo Channeling Crew. I'm Missy. And we are so excited to have you here today because we have a special guest in the house with us. And I'm like so excited. My knees are shaking. Thank you so much for all the support and feedback that we've been receiving. It means everything to us guys. Add a little disclaimer that I am feeling a little under the weather today.
So Denise will probably be spearheading most of it because of my voice. And without further ado, Denise, please take this over and introduce our amazing special guest for today as well as the topic.
Our special guest today is Donna Westridge. She is the project manager for the Mummies of the World exhibition. They are showcased all over The United States and are currently in Los Angeles, California. Welcome, and thank you so much for joining us, Donna.
Hello. How are you, ladies? Today?
We are good. So how we found Donna? Donna has been a client of mine. We're trying to do the math. And when you brought up the other person's name that introduced you to me, I would say we met maybe in 2014.
I call you guys my veterans. Wanted you to just introduce yourself because I know you didn't wake up one day and decide I'm gonna work with Mummies. I am so fascinated by people's journeys into what they're doing today because Missy and I have a very unique journey into what we do today. So if you don't mind sharing with the audience, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Yep. So I was actually born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. And, when I was going to high school, I kinda had the option of graduating early or going to school half a day, working half a day. And of course, being that 17, 18 year old, can't wait to make my own money, maybe even get my own apartment. How exciting. Be an adult. So I always say if I knew then what I know now, I would still be living with my mom.
Awesome.
So I went to work at part time at a travel agency. Then I started taking college classes. And one of the people that worked in the athletic department got to be good friends with them, kind of picked them up as an account, which was obviously a big coup for me back in the day. So I started working with the colleges in and around Cincinnati doing their travel just out of the blue. Then one of the coaches got a job in the NBA, took me along with him.
So I worked for like four different teams in the NBA. That was back in the day before the teams had their own private planes. We flew commercial. So I'd have to book the hotel, the buses, the pregame meals, all of that fun stuff. So I did that. Got near
I pity you if it was the Cleveland Cavaliers.
I'm sorry?
I have pity on you if it was the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Yeah. I saw Missy. You went like this when she said Cincinnati, Ohio.
Yeah. Well, I lived in Cincinnati for quite some time. Oh, did you? Down on 4th And Plumm. I was working for a large bank at the time. My aunt and uncle lived in Hyde Park. My aunt was a docent at the museum there and ran charity fundraisers all throughout Cincinnati, was very well known. Incidentally, they also had a home in Ocean Reef.
Oh, sounds
Yeah. So Quite a few connections to Cincinnati.
The reason why Missy brought up Ocean Reef is because before we started recording, we had realized that we have a connection, Donna and I, through Ocean Reef and Key Largo
Small world. Small world. So did you work for provident bank?
I worked for the bank that is represented by a fraction.
They're actually opening a bunch of them here. They're actually opening one right down the street from me. Oh. The reason I said provident because I worked for provident.
Oh, no. I worked for the bank on, on, Fountain Square there.
Okay. Well, we weren't far from Fountain Square. We were in the old Union Terminal Building where the trains were. So.
Yep. Yep.
That's where our office was
anyways can continue. Sorry about that.
That's okay. So then I got married. And one day I called my husband from four different cities and he was like, yeah, this really isn't working for me. So I left my job. And after about six months of being home with him, I said, yeah, this really isn't working for me.
What year are we talking? Do you mind sharing the year?
So that would have been around 1980. '89.
Okay. Okay.
So we got divorced. Then there was a I was living in Las Vegas at the time. There was like a minor basketball league they were trying to start up. It was like six, seven and under. And a guy from Cleveland who owned a drugstore chain, who ultimately ended up going to prison, was ciphering money from the successful drugstore chain that he owned to fund this league.
So they ended up going under, but the people that actually owned it, their business was pay per view. I didn't even know what pay per view was. So they were like, move to California, come to work for us. We do pay per view boxing. So I was like, interesting.
Yeah.
Moved to California And went to work for them. We did events for all of the major promoters, Don King, Bob Arum, main events.
And don't mean to cut you off. But for the younger generation listening, pay per view in the nineties, like, was a big deal.
It was a big thing. Yeah.
Yeah. To watch a Mike Tyson fight, it was, like, $50 and families would get together. One person paid it. So pay per view is a big deal. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.
No, that's okay. I forget sometimes that, you know, although I shouldn't have enough millennial of my own. So I went to work for them and then eventually Don King offered me a job. And it was funny because I said to him, if you paid me a million dollars, I would not move to New York because that's where he was based out of at the time. And he said, first of all, Donna, I'm not offering you a million dollars.
Secondly, if I did offer you a million dollars, trust me, you would move to New York. So about a year later, we were doing a fight for him, and we were in Vegas. And he said, pack your bags. You're moving. And I was like, yeah, I already told you I'm not moving to New York. He started moving everything to South Florida. I knew nothing about South Florida. So that was in 1993. Moved down here. Been here ever since.
Worked for Don for eighteen years. That was another thing. Didn't wake up one day and go, oh, I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna get in the boxing world. Just, you know, one of those things that happened, which brings us to Mummies. So one of the people that I worked with that did some outside things, the actual boxing stuff called me one day.
He had purchased this exhibition from someone and his general manager had quit. And he said, I really, really need this moved. Like, it needs to move from this city to this city in the next two months. And I was like, I have no idea how to move an exhibition. I have no idea what entails moving or traveling exhibition. He said, you've done multimillion dollar events. You've set up huge boxing events. You've done this. You've done that. Trust me.
It's a piece of cake. I said, I don't even know if I can work with mummies. Like it could totally freak me out because I said to him, he also had the bodies exhibition, which you guys might remember was huge back in the day. It was actually down in Fort Lauderdale. And he said, you know, oh, if you want to go to the exhibit.
So of course everybody was talking about the bodies, the bodies, the bodies, you got to go see the bodies. I didn't even make it two minutes in the bodies. I was with some friends of mine and I was like, listen, you guys go through. I this is not for me.
Yeah.
I'll meet you guys outside. So I told him, I said it could be the same thing. I could get there and I could be like, I can't work with these mummies.
Yeah.
So so I flew there. I met his production manager who is in charge of getting the exhibit set up. But when you have a traveling exhibit and you take it to these different museums, you go in and it is just a blank box, the room that they give you. It may have columns in it that you've gotta, you know, build your exhibit around or whatever, But we travel with seven semis of equipment, of walls, of cases. There's one semi that just carries the artifacts that's temperature and humidity controlled.
So you have to arrange the trucking. You have to arrange the hotel. You have to arrange the flights for the people. So I get there. It's early in the morning. The museum's not open yet. So of course it's dark. Right? So that only adds to my anxiety. So I'm waiting and they're like, okay.
We'll turn the lights on in a minute. And they finally got the lights on. And, of course, I'm standing there. I'm taking these deep breaths because I'm thinking, is this gonna be like with the body? So am I just gonna, like, run out the door? So, like, the first at the time, we've had, like, a couple versions of the exhibit because the artifacts all belong to museums. So some museums have rules. They can only be on the road for so long because they're old. They're fragile.
Yeah.
Even though we take excellent care of them, even though the truck is air ride, when they hit bumps or do you know, it's hard.
Yeah.
So we go in, and the first thing you see was just the lid of a sarcophagus. Right? It was beautiful. It was painted. It had the hieroglyphics on it. It was just it was gorgeous. Then we go around the corner. And to this day, the first thing that you see as far as the mummies when you do the exhibit, it was the baron and baroness, which are the two mummies that were find found in a family crypt in Germany. And the baron was wearing these leather boots. And I was like, how interesting.
So I kinda went around the side of the case because now I'm looking at them when we walk in. You're looking at them straight on. Right? So you can't really see the full body. So I go around to the side and there was something about it. I don't know what it was, but this calm just came over me. And there was like no fear, No. Oh my god. This is, like, one of the grossest things I've ever seen in my life. There was none of that that I experienced with the other bodies exhibition.
It was just this calmness. I don't wanna say, like, a connection to them because I don't think that came until, like, later after we had kind of been around one another for a while, but definitely a calmness. So I came back, and I was like, I think I can do that. He's like, listen. I'm looking for somebody. It's just gonna be a one time thing. Well, that was 2013.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
So here we are in 2026. And, actually the exhibit is coming to an end. It's currently at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. And when it closes there, and I don't think they've publicly said what the closing date is, so I don't wanna let that out of the bag. But when it closes in California, all of the mummies are gonna be going back home to their respective museums and or family crypts. So, you know, the mummies are from Italy, Germany, Hungary.
So they'll all be going back. And I have to tell you, when the crew, we were talking about it, we all got a little little choked up Yeah. That it's coming to an end.
Yeah.
So when we put them on their planes to go home, that's the last we're gonna see of them.
Wow. So thirteen years.
Yeah.
Doing this work. You know, some people may think it's silly to be so connected to what some people would call as objects, right? I don't look at them as objects. They were people. They're, you know, bodies.
When I watched, a special on Voyager, I don't know if you guys knew much about, I'm a space nerd. Voyager was the oldest satellites out in space right now. It took about thirty plus years to leave our solar system, going at an exceptional rate. And I saw a documentary where the scientists who put it together, they actually said the technology in it is what you would find in your key fob. Like that's how simple it was back in 1977.
And they didn't think it would last a year. And it has lasted, we're going on now forty seven or forty nine years, right? And when I watched the documentary and all the scientists talked about Voyager finally going into outer space, there was not a dry eye in the room. Right? And that was just a thing, but it was the meaning behind it.
It was the work they put behind it. It was the It becomes your baby. Right? And it must be hard to look at mummies and look at them like they're your babies to some degree, but I 100% understand the emotional connection that you have to it. Right? I'm curious about the Baron and the Baroness. Could you give us a little bit of detail of, like, how long ago? What's their story?
So what's interesting about the Baron and Baroness is they were found in a family crypt. There were actually five of them that were found in this family crypt in Germany. It's called Sommerdorf's Castle, and the family has continually lived in that castle for four hundred and fifty years. So the current baron who is now in his eighties, and he's come out a couple of times to see the baron and baroness, he wanted to know, like, you know, we did CT scans. We took samples of tissues.
We did all kinds of studies on these mummies. Part of the thing is it's scientific. Right? We wanna see what can we learn from these mummies. So we found out that the baron and the baroness both had back issues.
I don't wanna give everything out because I want people to come see the exhibit and they can learn about it. But the current baron has the same back issues. So he was like, oh, so, you know Yeah. We can just trace it all the way back. The boots I was telling you about that the Baron had on, those boots were made for him.
Those were his death boots. They had never been worn in real life. And if you could feel them, they are so buttery soft. Like, I have never felt leather that is as soft as that is. And you'll see that there was a buckle on there, and the buckle had been removed.
It was probably silver. And when Napoleon's army came through, they took the buckles off of his boots, probably melted it down for ammunition. We know that the baron and baroness were not married. We're not sure how they were related, so we weren't ever able to track that back. And the baron looked through what family stuff he had, and he really couldn't find anything either.
So I find them interesting and, like, so relatable because we actually have a living member of their family that's still there. And then, of course, we have the baron's kids who will be the next baron. The castle, if you ever wanna go, he did turn part of it into a bed and breakfast. So he did say when the baron of baroness get returned, you know, Donna, you're welcome to come anytime. They said, well, just never know when I might pop up on the doorstep of the moat.
Can you explain for our listeners what I don't know if I'm gonna ask this right. Not what is a mummy, but what the mummification process is. Because society or at least television shows, I've always thought, oh, mummies are tied more so to Egypt than anywhere else. But I learned through reading about the exhibition that they've come from all over the world and there's crypts. But I think it would help for everyone to understand what is a mummy?
What gets removed? What remains? There's several different processes. There's natural mummification. So could you maybe just explain a little bit about that process?
Sure. In order for a body to be a mummy, there has to be some kind of soft tissue left. So hair, muscle. If they don't have that, it's just a skeleton.
It's not a mummy. So the baron and baroness, they became mummified just by virtue of the environment that they were buried in. Got it. So they're buried in this kind of dark family crypt that's pretty much underground. I don't know if anybody can remember, but I know back in my day, like, my grandma had a cellar where she would keep her canned goods.
And you know, during the wintertime because you know, they lived in Kentucky on a farm. And so if you think of that like a cold place, there was a window, air. So just by virtue of the environment, their bodies became mummified. Wasn't anything that anybody did. Some people may have heard of Otzi.
He's one of the most famous. He's the ice mummy. He was found frozen. We have snow hair in the exhibit that was found basically in the same location that Otzi was found, that was mummified, you know, the same way.
For how many years do they know?
We don't really know. We don't even know how high he got up that high on the mountain because that's not typically somewhere that snow hare would go.
That's cool.
When the scientists looked at him, we thought, oh, maybe he had been picked up by a bird and then dropped, but he has, like, no claw marks on him. He has, like, nothing. So I think what the scientists find interesting with these mummies is that, yes, we get some questions answered. But I think in the research, more and more questions come up. So it's kind of like this ongoing thing with them.
And then with the Egyptians, they intentionally mummify their people. I mean, that was their belief was that their bodies needed to be preserved to get into the afterlife. So they wrapped them with the linen. They took them out to the middle of the desert for the bodies to dry out. The experimental mummies aren't really that common.
But in 1994, there were two gentlemen out of the University of Maryland that wanted to take what we thought was the recipe that the Egyptians used to mummify a body. It had to be the person that was gonna be the donor. There was like specific kind of things they were looking for. Like they had to die of natural causes. They couldn't have like cancer or some kind of disease.
It needed to be someone who, like, had a heart attack or whatever. So they got this donor. They went through the process. So that exhibit, which is called Mummab. Mummab is in the exhibit.
So he's our youngest mummy. He was done in 1994. And at some point, when he goes back, I don't think they're really sure right now what they're gonna do, if they're gonna continue the research to see exactly, you know, how long is it gonna take because we don't know. When the Egyptians did it, did it take those bodies fifty years? Did it take those bodies a hundred years? Will it take them a thousand years? You know, we just don't know. So that's They can't
tell through the tissue testing?
No. Well, we can tell how old they are, but we can't tell how long it took for them to actually become a mummy.
Got it. Got it. Mhmm.
So, like, the oldest exhibit or the oldest mummy that we have is one of the Egyptians, Nes Hor, who's around 2,200 years old, but he could have died three thousand years ago.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? Like, we don't know how long the mummification process actually takes.
Yeah.
I mean, we know how long it takes to carry out the mummification process, but they don't instantly become a mummy the minute that that happens.
Right. And that's a great segue, because you do have Egyptian pharaohs.
They're so they're actually priests, and they probably lived pretty high up in the social circles. We had scanned them previously, and then we scanned them again when we got to California. So we did find some kind of new things. The scanners that they have in California at the hospital are like second to none. So they were able to go in and look even deeper than we had previous looked.
So if they can verify it, it looks like one of the Egyptian mummies may have had surgery on his back, which if he did, that would be the first known back surgery. So that would be huge for the Buffalo Museum where they're on loan from. We have a lot of cases where there's been brain surgery. They just believe back in the day if you had headaches that obviously it was something pressing on your brain. They should just go in and relieve the pressure.
One of the bundle mummies had that done, but no one has ever seen it on the back before. But the doctors at CAC hospital are, as we call them, mummiesologists, are doing their research. So if that comes out, that would be really exciting. It's awesome. Is there any particular mummy whose story has stayed with you on a personal level?
I think so back in nineteen ninety four nineteen ninety four is a big year for mummies, obviously. There was a church in Vaz, Hungary, which is outside of Budapest. They were doing some renovations on the church and they dug up the floor. And when they dug up the floor, there were these stairs that were leading down. And then there was a door that had been cemented up.
So they took it down. I want to say it's up to like 296, or two seventy six. They found 200 and whatever these beautifully decorated caskets in there. So these people had been buried in the church, long forgotten about. So as they started pulling them out, they found that the majority of them had mummified.
Again, the same reason as the crip mummies. It was by virtue of the airflow, the pine oil that was on the floor helped. So the museums over there are owned by the government. So the government started pulling them all out, taking them to their labs, started doing research on them. The great thing about the Votch Mummies was that since they were buried in a church, the priest, they had the books from the church.
Back in the day, the priest was kind of the keeper of the town. So everything was written in there. So it would have said, Denise, born on this day, born to blah blah blah, married, blah blah, had this many children. So all of the information was in there. And therefore, we knew a lot about the mommies.
So we have three of the mommies. We have Michael, Veronica, and little Johnny, which is a mother, a father, and a little two year old son. So Michael was 41 when he died, but we know he was a miller. We know Veronica had I wanna say it was three children of them lived. But in studying all of these mummies, what they found was this church kept referring to this thing as the white plague.
So they were like, what on earth is the white plague? So when they were taking tissue samples from their lungs, which, you know, is pretty much basically the only place that we can get them after they're mummified. We found out that eighty percent of the town that had died, died of tuberculosis. So what they referred to as the white plague is what we know as tuberculosis. So what they started to do was, again, they started going back.
So how exactly did tuberculosis get to Hungary? This little bitty town in Hungary. Because back in the day, it's not like people were hopping on an airplane from one one place to the next. So I don't think they still have it all mapped out, but they certainly have different thoughts and ideas of how it got there. Little Johnny, you know, here's this poor little two year old that that died, but he's like the cutest thing ever.
And if you could see him, they're in replicas of the clothes that they were actually buried in. So with little Johnny, he's got his little dress on. So when we're placing them in the cage or play it down, everything, he has the chubbiest little thighs. Like, you just wanna just take them and just squeeze them. You know how you do with the baby just like Aw.
That you can see the the chubby thighs.
Yeah.
Just the I mean, just so, like, so cute. Like, it's got his little bonnet on him. I just think, you know, here are these poor people that had such a hard life. She had lost her children.
She had been married before. She had lost her husband. She And now they're I don't know if it's true. I like to believe that they know where they are and what's going on, that they get to travel and see the world together. Like, I'm sure that ever in their wildest dreams when they were sitting and having dinner, did they say, you know, when we're no longer here, I bet you we're gonna be off flipping around, going here, going there, telling the story to millions of people.
It's kind of like looking at those videos online where someone had a camera in like 1896 in New York City, and they're just recording people walking down the streets and you see people's reaction as they're looking at I can imagine how massive it was and they're like looking and I always think, my gosh, I'm sure they never thought like over a hundred years later we would be like watching them walking down the street. I agree. That is really cool. Missy, you had written down a question and going back to the Egyptian mummies, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and its significance to the afterlife.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
So the book of the dead is interesting. Egyptians believed that, like, there was all this magic and all of this stuff going on. And the one thing I think that's interesting about the Egyptians, when the bodies were mummified, they removed the brain. They removed all of the organs. The only organ they did not remove was the heart.
The Egyptians fully believed that the heart controlled everything. So I kinda like to believe that. So like all these people who are like, shouldn't lead with your heart. You shouldn't. And I'm thinking probably was so much better back then when everybody was leading with their heart of all this craziness.
So the book of the dead was written to help them get through the afterlife. So one of the very first tests that allegedly happened when you were moving on was they would take your heart and they would take a feather and they would weigh them because the feather represented truth and justice. Right? So it was the same as like sin and evil. And if your heart is heavier than the feather, then they believed that the devourer of the soul would eat your heart.
End of story. You're not making it into the afterlife. So that the book of the dead was written to help you kind of maneuver so you didn't fall into any of these pitfalls and not make it into the afterlife.
So is the book of the dead, is it something that they're buried buried with?
It's so different passages of it are written, like, on the walls where they're buried.
Okay.
So when they're buried, they're buried not like we would think. Right. So if you're really high status, I mean, you're buried like in a room and they bury you with food. They bury you with things that you need in the afterlife. So there are all of these different amulets that they place on the bodies under the linen when you're dead.
So those are kinda like the more you have, the higher your status. So I always said when I died, I would want them all because I need somebody to clean my house. I need somebody to do my laundry. I need somebody to cook. All these things I didn't have when I was here, I want it all when I'm gone.
So they would have the writings and the hieroglyphics on there. So it would be just like, you know, this is my living room, and this is all of the things that people have brought me. South Americans were actually the first, like the Peruvians. They were actually the first to start mummifying their people. Actually, there might have been somebody before them, and we have, like, two bundle mummies.
They would also place things in the bundle that they would need in the afterlife. So they would take their loved ones, and they would be put kind of in a fetal position. Their knees would be up, and they would be in this woven basket that they would put them in. And then they would either take them up on the mountain or they would find a cave and put them in the cave, and they would be looking down on the village. And when there would be a big occasion, a wedding, a birth, or whatever, they would actually go and get them.
They would bring them down. They would have a place at the table, let them partake in the festivities, and then they would take them back to the resting place. So there's a lot of people that think that even though they're gone, they're still here. And I always tell people because they're like, that's like, who could do that? That's so strange.
But I tell people, I go, listen. People in other cultures, the way they bury their loved ones, they look at us and they go, why do these people have public viewings? Like, who wants to go and look at their loved ones and walk through this line? Like, they think we're just as wacky as we think they are. But somewhere, somehow, somebody thought it was a good idea. I don't know how it started. Back in the day, before there were funeral homes, there were home embalming kits that people would use.
Wow.
And then they would have weights at their house. They would lay them out on the dining room table. Yeah. Now who are we to talk?
I wanted to go back on the a little bit on the heart versus the feather. Wouldn't the heart naturally be heavier than the feather? I thought that was interesting.
No. Well, why not? Not if you're Egyptian and not if you believe in their beliefs. No, it should not be.
Got it. Interesting. What's the funniest or the most unexpected thing that has happened during your career working with the Mummies?
So I think the funniest is, and we get this all the time and not that we don't tell them, we do. I guess they just don't necessarily always tell their drivers. So when the drivers, you know, when the drivers show up to, you know, pick up the exhibit. Right? The guy that's got the temperature and humidity controlled truck.
So he pulls up, see everybody's standing around and talking. And so what am I hauling today? You have mummies. The look on their face. I mean, nine times out of 10, they go, no. Really. You're kidding. What am I hauling? No. Really. You're all the mummies. Like, dead people mummies? Only kind I know. Because they're like, well, has anybody ever heard anything from them? I was like, nope.
I can honestly tell you nobody's ever dropped their trailer on the side of the road somewhere and said, listen. You need to come pick this up because they're having a party in the back. I said, I'm pretty sure you're okay. So just kind of the look on their faces because I'm sure, you know, listen. It's not every day, right, that they're hauling mummies from one point to another.
Right. What's the biggest lesson these mummies have really taught you?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's just the fact like their lives in some way are so similar to ours. They had friends, they had families, They worked a job, all the things that we do. And I don't think that we always think of it that way. And I think it just gave me, like, a greater appreciation of all of the things that we have and more importantly, the things that they didn't have, but how they ended up having these happy, fruitful lives, you know, despite the fact that, you know, they don't have all the luxuries that we have.
Yeah. So I want to get to the paranormal side.
Okay.
This is what really got me. One day we were doing a reading and I don't know how it came up and she said, yeah, you know, I sent them recently to an exhibit and the people weren't very kind to them. And I got a call and I said, what do mean you got a call? Well, they're complaining that the Mummies are complaining. And I was like, well, what?
So can you share a little bit about the paranormal side? Yeah. So we always tell people their rules. It's really hard with social media and everybody's got a camera on their phone and the whole thing. When I used to say to people, imagine if this was your sister, this was your grandmother, this was your mother. Like, you don't need to be taking selfies with them. But then, you know, I would see things and I was like, oh my god.
There are people out there taking selfies at funerals with their sisters and their grandmothers in there. So, obviously, that logic doesn't really work with them. So, I don't know how else to say it. You can't really ban cell phones, but I tried to say you need to be respectful. It has not happened often, but we did have one museum, which I will not mention, where they were just like the selfie museum of the world.
Right? And all of this stuff's popping up on social media. And we give them photo ops before you go in, and it's not like they don't have photo ops. Right. But anyway, so we'd see this stuff popping up.
One of the managers at the that kind of had to do with, like, the maintenance stuff and all the rest of it. So he calls me one day and he's like, Donna. And we always leave them with extra supplies. So lighting and cleaning supplies and batteries and just, you know, things that they need to run the exhibit. So he called me up and he's like, I've got two issues. Okay. What I need some more lights. We haven't even been there ninety days. Like, are you kidding me right now? You need more lights?
What's going on? I don't know, Donna. They just keep popping. They just keep popping. And I was like, and he goes, and the second thing is we can't control the visitors and the selfies and, you know, they're just kind of acting like hoodlums. And I said, well, guess what? I think the mummies are kinda acting like hoodlums too. So they're probably not very happy with your guests right now, I said, because I've never had this problem where, like, the lights are just popping for no reason.
Mhmm.
He's like, we turn them on in the morning and it just like, they'd start going out. So they ended up putting a big sign in. They ended up staffing it up more. So there were like more people roaming inside the exhibit when it was opened and it solved the problem. I don't even know how you can tell, but I could tell when we went to get them that I just almost felt like when we opened the cases and we were getting them ready to put them in their travel case, like, this big sigh.
Like, thank God this is over. Like Not at all. You know? And we were like, listen. Promise you, you're gonna be happy where we're going next. They're really nice people. The climate's good. It's gonna be, they've got these big windows. You're gonna be able to see out. Like great. It's a great place.
And did these locations realize that, wow, the minute we respect them more, things had died down. Like did they acknowledge that this might have been like a supernatural paranormal type thing going on?
They did. They did.
Yeah. Yeah. Is that the only example?
We've had, like, some places that, like, maybe one of their crews due to their religion wouldn't even go into the exhibit. If it was the cleaning crew, they were like, you gotta find somebody else. Our people aren't Going in there. It's just, you know, taboo, which we totally get.
I always tell everybody, like, the curators and stuff, when you're opening the exhibit in the morning because they have to be at a certain temperature and humidity. So we have little readers in all the cases. So, like, every day, they have to give us the report, like, weekly. I'm like, listen. When you go to the case to get the reading, could you just say good morning to them? Like, hey, Baron. Hey, Baroness. What's happening today? Yeah. Just a little acknowledgment.
Move on to the next. Don't have to have a, you know, full blown conversation or anything, but just a little good morning would be nice. I think they do. I think the curators do. I think the people that actually deal in the science, and this is their interest, these artifacts and stuff, because I think they get it.
Yeah. Now do I think the guy changing the light bulbs? He may have after it calmed down. He may have said, hey, guys, thanks a lot because you were really killing me. So he may have later.
Right.
But I think the curators do. I think the little good morning goes a long way with them. They just need a little love every now and then.
Yeah. Oh, and so California is their final stop.
California is their final stop. So everybody was going home. I'm sure, like all of us, I'm sure it'll be nice for them to get home, but I'd like to think just a little bit they're gonna miss us. But, you know, maybe yes, maybe no.
And then what happens, after for you?
You know, I'm not sure. I'm at that age where maybe I just call it a day and maybe not. I think the company I work for has other exhibits. I don't know if I'm really interested in doing that because I think the other exhibits, they're just artifacts. You know what I mean? They're not people. And we've kept our same crew together this entire time. So we're really like family. Yeah. So I don't know if you I could ever get that again.
And if I didn't have that, I think I would always feel like this isn't the same. And I know not everything can be the same all the time.
Right.
But I just I think that this has been so special that I don't think just going to another exhibit would be the answer for me.
Yeah.
But I don't know. I take some time. Go to Germany. The Baron and Baroness.
Visit for sure. I think if you have that opportunity, I would definitely take it. Do you know what I mean? I definitely would. Have you thought about writing a book about your experience or now that you'll have the time to sit and think about what you've done, what you've experienced, how it's been moving to city to city, how you ended up working with the mummies. And I guess my other question beside, have you thought about writing a book is have you thought about you yourself being mummified?
So I don't think I would ever write a book. I love to read, but I mean, that's like, to me, that seems like a lot of work. I don't think I'm up for that. I don't think I would wanna be intentionally mummified because it's just not my beliefs. So if I really believe that I was gonna have all these little worker bees doing my laundry and cooking my meals and, you know, I'd be living the grand life in the afterlife.
Maybe. But that's not where my head goes. Listen. If it happened unintentionally by virtue of, you know, they screwed up when they buried me, if I decided to be buried, I wouldn't be mad about it, but yeah.
I don't think I would want to be mummified either. Yeah, just lay me to rest. Okay. That's kind of how I feel. Yeah. Lay me to rest. What about you, Missy?
Yeah. Just, yeah, I guess I want to go with all my parts.
But when they put the food with them, so like the food rods, I guess, and insects eat them. Like, what did it look like when they opened it?
Well, so the food that they're putting in there isn't like you know, they're not getting steak and baked potato. Right. They were typically putting in corn or they I mean, like,
kind of Like on hearty grains?
Exactly.
Got it.
Exactly. Okay. So it wasn't it's not like it was filled with fruit flies and maggots and things like that. But listen, I'm sure you've all seen I mean, there's, you know, of course, there's Tut, right, with all the gold and the you know? So the higher up you are, the more of that that you're gonna see.
And priests weren't high enough or or close to royalty?
They were high, and they had a fair amount of amulets on them.
Okay.
This is the problem, is back in the day so, like, Buffalo. We were talking about Buffalo, New York. How did Buffalo end up with these two mummies? Right? Well, they were obviously donated by a donor. So back in the day, the very wealthy would go over, you know, to Egypt. I think one of the things that people don't realize is how misused and abused mummies were back in the day. So people would go and they would dig all of these mummies up. Right? And they would sell them as souvenirs.
So lots of times they would chop them up. So they would sell like maybe a hand and it had a ring on it or they would sell a foot. They would unwrap the mummies and they would use the linen to make paper. They would burn the mummies as fuel for trains.
What?
Yeah. It was like crazy. But these people used to bring back whole mummies, the very wealthy, and they would have what they called unwrapping parties. So you would go to these people's house for dinner. And then at the end of the night, they would pull this mummy out and everybody would pull on the linens and unwrap them.
So whatever amulet you found or under there, that was kind of like your party gift. In addition to that, people thought that mummies held special powers. So they would grind up the mummies and they would make medicine.
No.
So I wanna say and you guys can Google it because I always get the year wrong. It's either 1927 or 1937 was the last time you could find Mummies powder in the Merck Medical. You know Merck. We all know Merck. Right? Huge company. They sold Mummies powder and other medicines made by mummy. They also used mummy to make paint and they call it mummy brown. That's the color of the paint, mummy brown. A lot of these mummies went away just because people are crazy. Like who burns bodies to run trains?
Right. Like what's the difference between getting a body in a cemetery versus getting a mummy? Like it's the same thing. It did that's unbelievable that they didn't respect. Just, I don't know. I guess I find it appalling. More excited. Just can't even imagine that that, I can't imagine pulling on some sort of linen and using it for paper and my party favor being some amulet that fell out from this person that you're completely disrespecting. And I'm just, that's very mind blowing to me.
To hear how respectful you've been and your crew has been to this exhibition over the total number of years, how long you've been doing this. Thank you so much for the respect that you've shown them. That just kind of turns my stomach. Yeah. Yeah.
And then after after they would get down with them at the party, I mean, they would just literally throw them out just like trash. Like, it's crazy. Just it's nuts, but, you know, people brought them back as souvenirs. I mean, that was the thing to do.
You know, I remember watching an episode of Boardwalk Empire where one of the gangsters threw a party and it was Egyptian themed. And now I wanna kinda go back because I remember at the end of the party, they opened up a trunk and there were all these amulets and diamonds and people were grabbing. I mean, it was like so reckless because everything was real. But I wanna go back and look to see if maybe they had mummies. I can't remember.
But to hear that they were doing that in the twenties and the thirties so comfortably, that is so incredibly jarring to me.
It says, excuse me. I thought I would just clarify what you had mentioned about Merck. It says Merck sold mummia vera aegyptiaca. It's a medicinal substance made from ground Egyptian mummies, and it was treated as a legitimate pharmaceutical ingredient for centuries. So their corporate archive states mummies parts were regarded as medicine well into the twentieth century.
So it likely ended in the early 1900s. The archive had discovered the remaining specimens in 1999. They were long retired from any use and kept only as historical artifacts. Wow. And it says use of mummy powder in Europe declined sharply in the late 1800s. So we were still using it here. Yep. So
yeah. Yeah. Wow. People used it, they said for headaches. And I mean, I'm talking about every day. I'm not talking about complicated. I mean, it was common, like taking an aspirin to us or Tylenol. It was really common. And then I think, Missy, if you look up Merck catalog so it was probably based on what you said. It was probably like the 1927 catalog was the last one where you could still order.
Yeah. Yeah. This information talked about kind of it's in their archives, so you could go back into their archives and get the information. In terms of still using stopped in the early, 1900s. So I think your 1927 is probably closer, you know?
Yeah.
I wonder if it was a placebo effect or there are real people that were like, it actually worked. Like, that would be interesting to me too, but that's just, it's
would say people thought where it did actually work or they wouldn't have made it for as long as they did in as many places as they did. Yeah.
That's interesting. There anything you wish more people understood about mummies or the people that they once were?
I think people have this thought of what mummies are based on Hollywood, what they've seen, you know, movie wise. I think, really, the thing to remember is that they were real people. They were somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's father, not as some kind of a monster, which is what I think a lot of people, a lot of people think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So one of the other collections that we have in the exhibition is called the Burns Collection. And it was actually owned by Alan Burns who was from Scotland. And he did this procedure where he mummified these bodies. No one knows how he did it. We've had people look at it.
Nobody can figure it out. And he did have a protege, but he didn't share with him either. But they were actually medical teaching mummies because back in the day, people were donating their bodies to science, you know, for medical students to use, to learn how to perform surgeries or whatever. So the way he got these bodies, he was a grave robber. And I know you had mentioned that before.
That's what made me think of it. So he was actually robbing graves to create these mummies so they could be used for teaching. I wanna say it was 1991. There's so many different dates in the in the exhibition, and they just kinda all run together. I wanna say it was, like, 1981.
One of the mummies, it was baby mummy, went missing from the exhibit, not from our exhibit, but where they had it at the University of Maryland. And it's missing for, like, five years. And one day, somebody that was associated with the University of Maryland saw on eBay that the baby mummy was for sale in Michigan of all places. So they called the police. Imagine giving that report.
Right? So they called the police and the police were like, what? Somebody finally flew up there, you know, with the paperwork and everything. It took them seven years to actually get the mummy back from this woman. The hoops they had to jump through to prove that they actually owned this mummy.
What?
Yeah. It was nuts. Anyway, we call it the eBay mummy because it's like.
The eBay, mummy. That is so insane.
Yeah. So, like, in the nineties, people were still doing this crazy stuff. How did she not go jail, though? She didn't go to jail for that?
Yeah. Like, how did she even end up with its possession?
Like She never gave it up. We never found out. They never found out.
Wow.
But, you know, to this day, you can probably go on websites and find people who have mummies for sale. There are still people that have collections of mummies in their homes No. That they've had them for ever how many years even though it's, you know, against the law theoretically. There's still people out there that buy and sell them. Why? I have no clue.
Sick and twisted. Our government needs to look at it as robbing graves. If somebody was digging up a cemetery right now, this guy would be in handcuffs. Right?
Right. And the and the and the funny thing is is that, you know, one of the other things that's going on with the exhibit is that it's kind of been the political climate now. It's not really socially acceptable anymore to display human remains. We have a lot of museums that are like, yeah, we won't take the exhibit because even though we tell them, listen, it's, you know, it's science. It's this.
Five years ago, they would have done it. It wouldn't have been an issue. It's an issue now. Funding's being taken away from museums if they don't pull certain parts of their permanent exhibitions because it doesn't agree with the powers right now
Right.
Of, you know, what should be displayed and what shouldn't. So a lot of museums that have human remains, they're repraising name back to their countries, which, you know, I totally get. But, you know, we've had people tell us on the QT, listen, we've reached out to this government or we reached out to that government and they go, we have so many mummies that are still here. Like, seriously, what are we gonna do with it? We can't treat them the way that they need to be treated.
So for all these years, you've had them, and now they're, like, sitting in basements of museums because their countries don't want them back, and we can't display them anymore.
Yeah. God, I don't wanna go too political, but our museum I don't either. Yeah. Our museums are under attack. We know that more than just the Mummies. That is so sad, and I'm hoping that things will change soon. I really do. So it's gonna be in California. You said you're not quite sure when the exhibit ends, but can you give us a little bit more information for the listeners who may wanna go there
So it's the California Science Center. You can go on to their website and you can purchase tickets or you can just go in during their normal business hours. I believe they're also playing a movie in conjunction with the exhibition. But if you haven't been to that facility, it's awesome. It really is one of the premier science centers in the country.
So all that information is listed on their website. And then if you wanna check out the stories of any of the mummies, I mean, you can just Google Mummies of the World, the exhibition. A ton of stuff will come up. There's a ton of stuff on YouTube, so you can pretty much find anything that you want on there.
That's awesome. Missy, do you have any other questions?
I don't think so. This has been so fascinating and I've learned so much. Super appreciate you being here and sharing your amazing story and your love for working with the Mummies, the amazing people and in still respecting them and holding the exhibit in its highest regard. So thank you so much for the work that you've done and continue to do until it decides to close. Just thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.
And by the way, how did Don King take it that you were leaving to go work with Mummies?
The the Mummies didn't come right after Don King. Okay. So yeah. So there was a there was a period in between when I left Don King Productions. I was working for some other like, I worked for Roy Jones Junior to famous boxer, had his own promotional company. Got it. So spent a lot of time in Pensacola. The so I did work for, you know, some other promoters and then this opportunity came up. Like I said, the person who had it actually was within my boxing realm. Yeah.
Did he ever tell you how he even ended up all of a sudden one day going, I think I'm gonna buy a Mummies exhibition just really quickly? How did he even get there?
So he is he's this entrepreneur. He's like one of those people, you know, he comes up with these bizarre ideas. Right? So he had talked before. Like I said, he had done the bodies exhibit.
So that was kind of his first forte into the museum world because he didn't know anything about this business either and figured he would just learn as he goes. So somebody came to him and had part of the deal done, but not like the whole thing quite there. So he took it over, started doing research, like, you know, where are there mummies? Well, there really aren't any mummies in The States per se. So at the time, Germany was actually a hotbed for mummies, which not really sure how that happened.
But the museums in Germany had a lot of mummies from all over the world. So he met up with this person who had access to the museums over Germany and told him what he wanted to do. So they just went over there and spent, I forget how long, and basically went mummy shopping and said, well, this would be great. So like I said, we're actually on the third version of the exhibit right now.
Okay.
Because they have to go off the road and things come up, then all the rest of it. But yeah. So that's how it was. Wasn't something that was particularly on his radar right then. But yeah. Yeah.
He was an opportunist for sure. Yeah.
How many, how many total mummies in the exhibit?
Oh, I, so I think we're sitting at, I wanna say there's 42
Whoa, That's a lot.
Actual, you know, human and animal mummies.
So cool.
And artifacts. You know, we've got the artifacts that go with them. So yeah.
I'm in my head counting baroness, baron, the mother, the the child, the not did not expect 42. That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
And like I said, we have their little artifacts that go with them because the mummies don't tell the whole story. Right? Right. I mean, they all have their little things that go with them. We have a lot of like, we have some masks. One of the helmet masks that we have, the Egyptian mummies, they would put, like, some kind of mask over them. Sometimes it was painted to look like what their face was and then sometimes not. So we do have a mask. It's so funny because I swear it looks like Obama.
Completely.
So every time we go in, we're always like, listen. You know, we really miss you. Like, we really miss you.
Love it. And what animals? I'm curious. Can you just give us a couple of the animals?
So we have the snow hare that we talked about. We have a falcon. The Egyptians, when they would die, they would mummify their cats. So it was kinda too bad, too sad. But when you went, your pet was going with them. Wow.
So oh, they would, oh, wow. Okay. Like, come on, fluffy. Your grandma died. Let's go fluffy your next.
Yeah. So a lot of times they would put them in these. They were like, they were woven and, like, the top of their head, the cat's head would kinda be left out, but it would have the linen over them and they would, like, paint on a face. So we have a couple cats. Falcons were another big one that they mummified. We have a weasel. We have a boxfish, which to me looks like a puffer fish. That's what we call him, the little puffer fish. Yeah. So there's there's a lot of different listen.
We've got all of the jewelry, the Egyptian jewelry, the beads, and, you know, different amulets and things like that that they use that are, you know, actual Egyptian artifacts that were found with the mummies. So
I hope that, it will be around until, May because my daughter goes to school right over there. So, hopefully, I can run up there when she's getting ready to end her semester, and then we can go.
It will definitely be there in May.
I would love okay. Okay. Alright. Missy, road trip? You coming with me, Missy?
Could be. We could be talking road trip. Can because I'm only I'm in, Sedona, Arizona, so I'm only, you know, six hours from there. Oh, I
was gonna say that's a hop, skip, and a drop for a you.
Quick drive.
Yeah. So you guys can go. You can tell them that I sent you. Hopefully, you'll get a warm welcoming knowing that I sent you.
Yeah. The Baron and the Baroness sent us.
So, hey.
We are on their invite list.
Exactly. Exactly.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Oh, you guys, thank you for having me and letting me talk about my my peeps.
And I gotta tell you, you're our first guest. I'm gonna put your picture up in my office somewhere. It's our first guest speaker on the Woo Woo Channeling crew.
Yeah. After what did what did the podcast people get? What awards? Like, you know, like the Emmy, the Oscars.
That's right. We send you a gold microphone. I
will have an award ceremony at the end of the year.
There
you You awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.
Oh, thank you guys so much.
Alright, Alright. So that's the end of our show. We hope you learned a tremendous amount today. Just really quickly, if you're interested in getting a reading from Missy, Missy, it can be found at thirdeyeopen.com or Missy Taylor medium. She's gonna pop up immediately.
To get my information, I am at divine guidance 944, Denise Powell 944, and Missy and I both do Zoom and over the phone, and she is also located at the Center of the New Age in Sedona, Arizona. Thank you. Guys, don't forget to please subscribe. Subscribe, follow, like. We have an Instagram Woo Woo Channeling crew. We just popped that up recently. So, Missy, can you tell them your Instagram name?
I'm really just getting started, but it is third eye is open with the number 11 afterwards. And even if you go to Denise's page, you can get over to my page.
There you go. And I am at, denise Powell nine four four. We're getting used to this whole social media thing, so bear with us. And we're gonna have a team working on that for us so that we don't have to worry about it. But again, Donna, thank you so much. Donna Westrich, everyone. Can we get a round of applause for Donna Westri Alrchight. Donna, thank you again for joining us.
Thank you, guys.
Alright.
Until next time. We love you. Bye bye.
Bye.