Museums are sharing their creepiest objects in apparent attempt to digitize ancient curses
Some museums, zoos, and aquariums have responded to the coronavirus quarantine by sharing videos of their cutest residents waddling around the building or offering virtual tours of their facilities for those stuck inside without a way to visit in-person. Through their efforts, anyone with an internet connection has been able to enjoy positive educational opportunities without leaving the house.
Yorkshire Museum has chosen a different path to digital curation, tweeting out an image of the creepiest item in its collection—a “3rd/4th century hair bun from the burial of a Roman lady”—and asking other museums to play along by sharing their own terrifying artifacts with the world.
Eager to pass along the curse by sharing it with hapless social media users, The National Museum Of Scotland chipped in with one of their prized possessions: A taxidermy “mermaid” with the face and arms of a fucked-up child and the body of a fish.
Refusing to pass up an opportunity to share knowledge (or try to unburden their halls of a few more of the demonic spirits clinging to their collections), the NMS went on to show off another type of weird old mermaid statue they have, prompting others to join in with their own examples. Each of these images, we must assume, transfers time-worn hell energy from the museums to the homes of all those who gaze upon them.
Of course, the past has given us much more than just all sorts of corpse-fish idols. It’s also provided stuff like “a taxidermy fox with a wax death mask,” a lovely pincushion filled with tiny child heads, the requisite creepy dolls and plague masks, dried out vampire noggins, and the leathery remains of a ritualistically sacrificed guy from ancient Ireland.
Oh, and hey, just in case you thought it was just the objects of the past that were so creepy, let’s end off with a reminder, courtesy of the Red Lake Regional Heritage Centre’s Jenna Locke, that none of these things would exist without the people of long gone times being scary to our modern eyes, too.
[via Mental Floss]
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