June 28, 2025 • 30 mins
When the city of Guanajuato instituted a grave tax, they included some harsh penalties for those who couldn't pay -- if you went more than three years without paying the tax on your loved one's resting place, the body would be disinterred and taken from its grave. As gravediggers began removing corpses, they discovered something bizarre: Many of the bodies had somehow naturally mummified. Word of the Mummies of Guanajuato quickly spread, and the gravediggers starting charging locals to take a quick peek at the remains. This was only the beginning. Join Ben and Noel as they explore the strange tale of the Mummies of Guanajuato.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, we're doing some uh, we're doing some cool stuff
with our classic episode this week, Noel, we're exploring mummies.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mmm, we are indeed that not mummies and Daddy's No.
Mummy's the embalman kind, the kind that potentially arise from
the dead and spook people out on Halloween. It's also
a fun lo fi costume. Just involve some toilet paper.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah. This is the story of a city called Guanayato,
and back in the day they instituted a grave tax,
which just feels terrible, like that's so petty and penny pinching.
You're going to tax people on the way out as well.
If you couldn't pay the grave tax, you would run
into some harsh penalties. Three, if you fall three years
(00:46):
behind on your loved ones resting place, they will dig
the body up and they will take it out.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of the grave. Yeah. And these bodies were not just
non into Egypt. They weren't like wrapped in linens and
mama in that classic fashion. They were somehow found to
have been naturally mummified, and words spread and it became
something of a sideshow attraction, which is pretty gross. Grave
diggers are trying to make a quick buck charging folks
(01:15):
to take a peek at these naturally mummified remain So
why don't we jump into the story and hear all
about the mummies of Guanayato.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, Casey. Could we
(01:55):
get a little bit of spooky music just for a
second in the background. Here is in fact October perfect.
Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. We are men of
our word. Earlier, we had floated the idea of finding
some more frightening, disturbing creepy tales as we get closer
(02:15):
to Halloween.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Ben, didn't we do a Pope based kind of spooky
creepy tale already? But that was pre October?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No, you're right, that was pre October, and we talked
about whether or not we should save that one.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
But that was just such a cool and strange story. Oh,
we were compelled. The power of Christ compelled us to
put that podcast out in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And the power of super producer Casey Pegram helped make
that reality. We're looking at a story today that is
equal parts ridiculous and I would say.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Tragic, yeah, I'd say mainly tragic mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And book yeah, and this is something that you had
you had a hip to me to Noel, which is
the story of mummies in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, pacifically, the Mexican town of Guanajuato, which was established
in the early sixteenth century and was something of a
boom town for silver mining. It became that in the
eighteenth century to the point where I believe it actually
kind of messed with the economy of silver because there
was just so much damn silver coming out of there
(03:21):
that it like jacked with the price of silver in
a way that caused some real economic problems in the region.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Absolutely. Yeah, for a time it was the third largest
silver mine on the planet in terms of production. They
still have traces of this mining industry, right, especially what
is it Boca del in Ferno.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Boca del in Ferno. It's a mine shaft that boca
meaning mouth, so that's that's the mouth of Hell, and
this is an attraction you can see there are also
it's known for its beautiful architecture, these brightly colored Baroque
buildings and there are these like narrow kind of alleys
between the buildings and it's a very walkable, picturesque little city.
(04:03):
But it also was an important stronghold during the Mexican
Revolution when Mexico was able to break free of Spanish control.
And that is when Father Miguel Hidalgo in eighteen ten,
who was the parish priest in Dolores, put out his
infamous Grito de la Dolores, which is the shout of Dolores,
(04:24):
and he assembled a mob of peasants brandishing machetes and clubs,
and they eventually made their way to Guandajuato because it
was the most prominent largest city in the area and
that became their stronghold and the site of the beginning
of the Mexican Revolution. So a lot of history in
this town. But today's episode it's not about any of
(04:46):
those things. Oh yes, yes, let me set this up.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We should say that the name Guanauato actually translates to
mountainous place of frogs. Love that and it's had several
different names throughout it time because it's a very old city.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So maybe an Aztec era where the name was, Yeah,
what was it. It was the land of straw, I believe,
and the word is beautiful where this is translated from
and it was an Aztec word paks Titlan you know,
that's that is a beautiful word. I personally, I also
liked Mooti the place of metals, Yeah, which is the older,
(05:23):
older name. It makes perfect sense. It was also the
place of a weird government sanctioned grave robbing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's right. Today's story involves grave robbing, and it involves
I'm just going to say it, a really terrible move
on the part of local government. So there's a big city,
a lot of people get buried. You know, life happens born,
you live, and you die. And there was a cholera
(05:51):
outbreak around the area of Guanuatu in the eighteen thirties,
around eighteen thirty three or so, and these people when
they expired, they were interned, they were buried. In some
cases they were embalmed. But a few years later the
local government puts attacks on graves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So the thing is like, you would rent this place,
like you didn't own it. Yeah, yeah, you would rent it.
And I think the initial rental period was about five years,
and then you had to re up your rental. Your
family had to you know, assuming you had any family
to speak of, and if you didn't pay this. This
is something that was instituted between eighteen sixty five to
(06:33):
nineteen fifty eight, by the way, very recently done away with.
And if you did not pay for three years in
a row, that's right, then your peeps would be uprooted,
literally dug up, not really dug up because they were
in these air tight mausoleum chambers. They would be removed
and evicted and they were either taken to a simple
(06:54):
pauper's grave outside of town. And this is the thing too,
is interesting about the story of this culture very much
reveres death. You know, you have like the Deos deos
Martos and all of these kind of death related rituals
and just deep veneration for one's ancestors and paying respects,
and you know, this very religious culture. The idea of
(07:18):
digging up these loved ones and like putting them in
a less desirable burial space had to have been very
painful for some of these families. But that wasn't even
the worst thing that could have happened, was it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, there are stranger things that happened because they would
be put in a pauper's grave, or they might be
placed in an osuary which was actually under the cemetery
grounds itself, waiting in case the relatives would come back,
cough up the money and have their loved ones reinterred
or reburied, which did happen in a couple of cases.
These people were taken out of the grave and then
(07:50):
put back in. But when they were taken out of
the grave, often they weren't decayed in the way that
you would expect a body to rot over time. They
were preserved. They were mummies. They were mummies. They had
become mummies naturally. They were mummified by the environment in
(08:11):
which they were interred. I believe the first one that
was found mummified was a man named doctor Remiguio Leroy
in eighteen sixty five, the.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Frenchman, right, or the French doctor, I think is what
he was known as. So we're sort of bearing the
lead here and we were getting there. But yes, Ben,
this is very important, the fact that they were naturally
mummified from lack of oxygen and just the very dry
climate that existed there as part of the world, and
so they would literally just dry out and their clothes
would rot quicker than their bodies would. And here's the thing,
(08:41):
these mummies when they found this Frenchman, the first guy
they found that had undergone this transformation. They were like,
this is pretty cool. And by day I mean, I
guess the city people that ran the mausoleum, what do
you think, like city officially this was a state run facility,
right right, Yeah, they were like, Okay, this is pretty cool.
We should hold onto this guy. And so they do that,
(09:04):
and they continue doing that for several years before they realize, hey,
I think we might have a little moneymaker on our hands.
So what happens then is the ones that the curators,
let's call them deem I guess fascinating. Enough specimens are
kept and in the fifties a museum is opened.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yes, it's true. This hearkens back to our earlier episode,
which seems so long ago.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
On corpses in a dior rama, do you remember that.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I very much do with the camel and the Arabic
gentleman with the human skull, I believe, right?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And when yes, and when we say thought to be fascinating,
what do we mean? This is pretty graphic stuff? Is
mean things like mummy that was pregnant, or people who
appear to have been buried alive, such as Ignacia Aguilar,
the people who were buried alive were almost certainly buried
(10:03):
by accident due to the extreme nature of the color outbreak.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And yeah, that's right. And a lot of these specimens
were found to have cholera or have suffered from smoke inhalation.
There's a really great, really short podcast from a show
called Mexico Unexplained. I think that's what it's. Yeah, and
it goes into some of these details, but really interesting
that they would have had smoke inhalation because it was
(10:29):
either from smoking cigarettes or any kind of tobacco, or
possibly from working in those minds under less than ideal conditions.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh yes, And before we get too far away from it,
I want to clarify because I remember it. I did
find the explanation of how this museum thing came about,
and it's kind of disappointing in what it says about
the human condition. Because once word of the Guanauatu mummies
started spreading around town, other people in town were apparently
(11:01):
sneaking over and paying people who worked at the cemeteries
just a couple of pesos to sneak in and take
a quick peek. So it was a the workers were
motivated by profit, and then they were incentivized, you know,
because this burial tax is still around to pull more
and more bodies out of the crypt and then find
more and more mummies and charge more and more people
(11:24):
to see them.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So where were they keeping them before the museum situation
took off?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Before the museum, they would eventually they would be kept
in that ossuary under the graveyard, just like for a
rainy day. And Kate, well, the official reason again is
just in case the families come back and say, we
do have the money to pay the burial tax.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
But why would they keep them versus burying them outside
of town? Like my understanding whether they kept these because
they were so crazy looking and they.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Like I think, I think it's a situation again where
there was an official reason and then there was a
real reason, got it.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So let's talk about this museum. When that started happening.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
El Museo de las Momias, which you know, the Museum
of the Mummies. It was the same place where the
cemetery workers were just charging people several pesos to enter
into the building and see the bones and the mummies,
with again doctor Leroy being the first one on display.
But when did it officially become a museum instead of
(12:26):
this underground display of death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, that's right. But like I said before, you know,
there was money to be made here and the government
wasn't getting those mausoleum lease rental fees, so they figured
they would capitalize in another way, and they opened this
to the public in the nineteen fifties and it was
actually voted Guanajuato's I believe number one tourist attraction. And
(12:52):
so for a nominal fee of two pesos you can
take a look at the more than one hundred, one
hundred and eight Yeah, one hundred and eight dried out
human mummies, natural mummies, and that this includes all different
types of situations in varying the stages of decay kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, and you can still see their facial expressions in
a lot of cases, which you know, we mentioned the
somewhat gruesome details that have allowed investigators to determine who
was buried alive and who was buried when they were
actually dead.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, the one you mentioned that was buried alive actually
still has her hands like trans like you know, like
covering her eyes, biting her arm. Yeah. And the thing
too is most of these these cadavers have these just
pained expressions, as though they're like shrieking in agony. And
it's because of what happens when the tongue dries out
(13:52):
during this rumification process and the jaw starts to slacken.
You start it kind of looks like the scream. You
know that that painting and this is pretty crazy. Ray
Bradberry actually wrote a short story about based on his
visit to this this museum when he was vacationing with
his wife in Guanajuato, and he wrote a story called
(14:15):
The Next in Line where he very vividly describes this.
So I'm gonna read a little bit of that for Casey.
Can we get that spooky music back for this? This
is I think this deserves it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They were screaming. They looked as if they had leaped
snapped upright in their graves, clutched hands over their shriveled
bosoms and screamed.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Jaws wide, tongues out, nostrils flared and been frozen that way.
All of them had open mouths. There was a perpetual screaming.
They were dead and they knew it. In every raw
fiber and evaporated organ, they knew it. She stood listening
to them scream. They say dogs here sounds. Humans never
(15:02):
hear sounds so many decibels higher than normal hearing that
they seem non existent. The corridor swarmed with screams, screams
poured from terror, yawned lips and dry tongues, screams you
couldn't hear because they were so Highho not cool, Ray Bradberry,
(15:23):
not cool? What do you think about that, Ben?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I've actually I've read this story. It's Ray Bradberry
is a fantastic writer and very appropriate for Halloween. The
Mummy Museum also inspired other works of fiction. In the
late nineteen seventies, Verner Herzog took a number of shots
of these various mummies for the title sequence of his
(15:45):
film Nosferatu the Vampire because he just wanted a morbid, eerie,
atmospheric opening sequence.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I remember that sequence, and I did not know that, Ben.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And one of the museum's other notable points of interest
is that it has the smallest mummy in the world.
It is a fetus from the pregnant woman that we
had mentioned earlier. It's a heartbreaking thing, and it's strange
to feel the turns of history so immediate and tactile,
(16:16):
you know, because so often we think of these horrific
or tragic events as an abstract thing from a history book,
but going and seeing these real people is a tremendously
profound and moving experience. One other work of fiction that
we absolutely have to mention is the film that incorporates
the mummies of Guanahata in a not accurate way, is
(16:41):
called Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanawato.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Santo being a very popular luchador. Luchador. These are these
wrestlers that wear this cool masks, and this guy was
like a real celebrity and it was almost sort of
like Abbot and Costello, you know, meets Frankenstein or whatever.
It was like a very well known national figure fighting
a very well known national monster.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, Rodolfo Guzman Herta, famous wrestler at the time. And
we found we found some various clips of this film,
you know again, made in nineteen seventy two, and I'm
all in, I want to check it out. I want
to watch the whole thing. I'll come back with a review.
If I'll come back with a review, if there's some interest.
(17:25):
What makes it relevant for our interest today is that
this film spread word of the mummies outside of Mexico
and people began to learn about this on an international level.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, I mean it started kind of became much more
of a fixture of popular culture at the time, and
it wasn't really replicated for many years, but it certainly
spread awareness and likely upped the value to the government
of this place, right.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Right, And this leads us to the ethical question that
we've run into before, you know, and that question is
is it right to display the bodies of these people? Certainly,
I mean it's certainly not with their consent, and we
don't know if their family members were asked or if
they're family members consented.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. There's actually a quote in this piece from the
Guardian that just talks about how there were no laws
broken in doing this, that the Mexican people have a
different attitude towards death that they don't I don't know,
and it's kind of counter to what I said at
the beginning of the show. I would assume that it
would be this would be very disrespectful, This would be
(18:35):
considered like heresy, kind of you know, to disinter the
people's loved ones. But you know, the guy that's in
charge of this place seems to think differently. Yeah, this guy,
Arturo Taberas, who is the head spokesman for the Guanajuato government,
said in this daily mail piece, I think I misattributed
to The Guardian earlier that quote the museum is an
(18:57):
important part of Guanajuato's tourist appeal. Okay, that's your first point.
The museum breaks no laws and displaying its exhibit to
visitors who are given fair warning of his graphic content.
Here's the important part. We have a different cultural approach
to death in Mexico. Here we celebrate the cycle of
life and accept death as inevitable. Ninety nine percent of
the visitors leave the experience pleased with what they saw.
(19:21):
But here's the thing. So many of these infants in
the museum, of which there are several, are often dressed
as saints. So there's one that goes by that they
call colloquially Little Saint Martin, who is it's basically a
skeleton of a tiny baby wearing the traditional garb of
Saint Martin, something called a cassock, and holding a broom
(19:44):
and holding rosary beads. And it is macabre, my friend,
So I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Glad that you mentioned the Guardian, because there's a Guardian
piece I remembered I wanted to bring up. It's called
Why Mexican Celebrate the Day of the Dead by Antonio
Wa and in there it has this just stunning octoviopause
quote about what he sees as the Mexican attitude with death.
He says, the Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it,
(20:14):
caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. True, there is
as much fear in his attitude as in that of others,
but at least death is not hidden away. He looks
at it face to face, within patience, disdain, or irony.
And I think that's you know, maybe that's it. Maybe
that's what makes it okay. Maybe this is an important
(20:37):
thing rather than an exploitative thing, you know what I mean,
Because they can't be making that much money, right, profit
can't be the sole motivation at this points.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
As four thousand visitors a week, I mean, that's a
decent amount of cash.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, I guess it does add up.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, sure, it's been open since the fifties. I mean,
you know, yeah, you're right, kind of a bit of
a cash cow when you say so myself. But I
guess what I'm getting out I'm struggling with is there
even so this this tax was relinquished right and at
the end of the fifties, but nineteen fifty eight, in
nineteen fifty eight, but there actually was a recent addition
(21:11):
to this collection was a baby that died in nineteen
ninety nine at six months old. So I want to
clear something up real quick. And we actually had a
little discussion off my The law that required the tax,
there was a grave tax went away in nineteen fifty eight,
but there was also like you still had to rent
these spaces. You still had the land, and like you
(21:31):
would up re up it for like twenty years or
something like that, Like it started like a five year
and then if you didn't come back, then they could
still remove your loved ones corpse. And that happened with
this baby. And the really heartbreaking thing is apparently the
baby is in the collection museum and the mother who's
still living pretty regularly comes in visits in child.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, and there's some the description of how this happens
sounds remarkably cold. So if the if the family, the
surviving relatives choose not to pay or re sign on
that lease. Then the body is removed and it goes
to the museum's curator, and the curator inspects the corpse
(22:16):
to see whether it's good enough to be added to
the collection. And I had earlier said the number was
one hundred and eight corpses in the display, but I
believe it's one hundred and eleven now because they have
added some.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I thought that wasn't too confusing with the difference between
the grave tax and the lease, because they were two
different things, and it threw me for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
But no, we got there.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I think we did. I think we did. So what's
what's next? Yeah, this sounds like a place that I
would be intrigued. I mean, I'm I'm into kind of
like this sort of dark type stuff. I went to
the Museum of Death in la and quite enjoyed that,
even though some of it was even a little little
much for me. A lot of like embalming videos and
you know, murder crimes, seen photographs and things like that.
(23:02):
But do you think this is right, Ben, Do you
think this is a value to society to be able
to experience death in such a raw, you know, kind
of detached way. It's interesting to me. I mean, that's
the question I asked earlier in the show. You know, ethically,
is this more useful to humanity as a memorial, as
(23:24):
a way of educating people, or is it exploitative. It
seems like the museum itself has a lot of support
from the local community, and it is of benefit to
science because we're able to research the process of natural mummification.
Texas State University had some great research on how this
(23:48):
stuff occurs and how the environment interacts with the corpse.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
But I would say it's similar to did you ever
see a body's exhibit?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
I never did, but I've seen photographs of it and
the perfectly preserved codaverage whether you see the muscles and
all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And it's fascinating. Yeah, where you see organs or the
circulatory system or nervous system taken out and kind of
plasticize to give you a better look at human anatomy.
But those people, when they were alive, didn't consent to that, right,
Surely not in every case, And we have to ask
ourselves at what point does the benefit to science or
(24:29):
the benefit to history outweigh the ethical pitfalls of displaying
someone's corpse after they die. I will say that if
I'm in that town, I will go visit just because
I think it's in a way it would feel more
like memorial or commemorating the deaths of those people. And
(24:50):
these were not These were not for the most part,
these were not well off folks. These were the point, right,
These were common people.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, I mean the idea they had to you know,
because I mean rich people would have been able to
buy a plot, right, and you certainly didn't have to lease.
That's not the law. It's just they couldn't afford to
buy a grave plot, so they were able to lease
it in one of these municipal cemeteries, mausoleums or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Right, absolutely, and I would air on the side of
scientific benefit and historical commemoration. Guanawato's mayor, doctor Eduardo Hicks
at the back, in two thousand and seven, initiated the
Guanawatu Mummy Research Project and invited several scientists to go
down and spend more than a year exploring the origin
(25:33):
and the development of the mummies. And it's also been
a subject of national geographic documentary series which I'm going
to tell you the name of it. I haven't seen
the series, but the name throws me off. You're ready,
I am the Mummy road Show. Nice, So it's sort
of like the Antiques Roadshow, but with mummies.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Mummies.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, I feel like, yeah, that's a little glib. But
in these recent years they've learned a lot about the people,
the individuals who were interred here and then later displayed
in this museum. It's an incredibly interesting article and if
you would like to read it, let me know on
Ridiculous Historians and we could just post it up there.
(26:14):
And if you are a person who does not want
to see any of the visuals of this stuff, we
completely understand. This particular article has no photographs.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh, I think that's a pretty good place to leave it.
There's certainly if you're into photographs, there's plenty of them
out there, and these are really pretty upsetting images, to
be honest, but it's also they're strangely beautiful, I want
to say, haunting, very haunting, as you may have gotten
from that Ray Bradbury passage, and it really apparently severely
affected him and that he felt the need to write
this piece to kind of exercise some of those demons
(26:47):
from himself. And I could see that. I wonder what
it smells like in there. Ben probably is kind of musty,
like an old library or something, because these corpses would
not have had a smell of putrification because everything was
just dried up.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The mummification happens so rapidly, like a lot of museums.
It probably just smells old in some inexplicable way. But
our senses are so vulnerable to our pre existing mental states, right,
so maybe we are mentally capturing the smell. You know what.
It Probably it probably smells like cleaning cleaning supplies because
(27:23):
there's a lot of glass, so I'm sure they have
to use a ton of windex. It probably smells faintly clean.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, may be a little bit of a chemical smell.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
And I have a question too. So so far we
have we have covered a very interesting specific type of
vampire native to the Philippines. We've looked at mummies, although
they were not monster mummies from an old universal horror
film or something. What particular monsters are historical cases of monstrosity?
(27:51):
Should we should we look at next? Should we look
at the trials of were wolves? That's always an interesting
strange path to go on.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
One of the things we did the other night when
we had a game night at the obviously played a
game called Werewolf, where I ended up falsely accusing several
of my closest friends and coworkers of being were wolves
and had them lynched. And they didn't deserve that, Ben.
They were village, they were townspeople the whole time, and
they were be able to forgive myself for that.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
They probably won't be able to forgive you either.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's okay, So I deserve it the end of it.
I deserve it. But in their memory, we should, in
fact research something about were wolves. I think that's smart.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, let us know if there's a werewolf's story that
particularly stands out to you. I'd love to. Ben. You
might be saying, but how on earth do I contact you? Guys, Well,
it's quite simple. We've got good news. If you are
on the internet, you can find us on Instagram, you
can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Facebook,
in particular, check us out on Ridiculous Historians our Facebook
(28:51):
community page, where you can talk with your fellow listeners,
all of whom I assure you are brilliant, wonderful people
with great taste and podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Right, that's pretty good. Yeah, I support that. Let's thank
our super producer Casey Pegram for you know, being super
as always. Thanks to our friend and colleague Alex Williams,
who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Coate, our research associates.
Thank you to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Quizzer, who's been
quiet lately.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, thank god.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Oh folks, I suspect Noel really no you like him?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Your friends? Sure? Whatever you say?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Man, oh man, Noory, Well, I will try to keep
the quiztor heat off of you.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Mike, I'm kidding. I welcome man. I need a little
little kick in the pants every now and then. Who
better to do it than that guy?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And most importantly, we're to thank you for bringing this
great story.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
To the show. Oh Man, no problem. It was a
lot of fun. That's That's not the right thing at all.
It wasn't really fun at all. It was kind of
disturbing and upsetting. But I'd rather there's no one I'd
rather be disturbed and upset with in this world, ben
than you, and you, folks, We'll see you next time.
(30:08):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, we're doing some uh, we're doing some cool stuff
with our classic episode this week, Noel, we're exploring mummies.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mmm, we are indeed that not mummies and Daddy's No.
Mummy's the embalman kind, the kind that potentially arise from
the dead and spook people out on Halloween. It's also
a fun lo fi costume. Just involve some toilet paper.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah. This is the story of a city called Guanayato,
and back in the day they instituted a grave tax,
which just feels terrible, like that's so petty and penny pinching.
You're going to tax people on the way out as well.
If you couldn't pay the grave tax, you would run
into some harsh penalties. Three, if you fall three years
(00:46):
behind on your loved ones resting place, they will dig
the body up and they will take it out.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of the grave. Yeah. And these bodies were not just
non into Egypt. They weren't like wrapped in linens and
mama in that classic fashion. They were somehow found to
have been naturally mummified, and words spread and it became
something of a sideshow attraction, which is pretty gross. Grave
diggers are trying to make a quick buck charging folks
(01:15):
to take a peek at these naturally mummified remain So
why don't we jump into the story and hear all
about the mummies of Guanayato.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, Casey. Could we
(01:55):
get a little bit of spooky music just for a
second in the background. Here is in fact October perfect.
Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. We are men of
our word. Earlier, we had floated the idea of finding
some more frightening, disturbing creepy tales as we get closer
(02:15):
to Halloween.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Ben, didn't we do a Pope based kind of spooky
creepy tale already? But that was pre October?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No, you're right, that was pre October, and we talked
about whether or not we should save that one.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
But that was just such a cool and strange story. Oh,
we were compelled. The power of Christ compelled us to
put that podcast out in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And the power of super producer Casey Pegram helped make
that reality. We're looking at a story today that is
equal parts ridiculous and I would say.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Tragic, yeah, I'd say mainly tragic mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And book yeah, and this is something that you had
you had a hip to me to Noel, which is
the story of mummies in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, pacifically, the Mexican town of Guanajuato, which was established
in the early sixteenth century and was something of a
boom town for silver mining. It became that in the
eighteenth century to the point where I believe it actually
kind of messed with the economy of silver because there
was just so much damn silver coming out of there
(03:21):
that it like jacked with the price of silver in
a way that caused some real economic problems in the region.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Absolutely. Yeah, for a time it was the third largest
silver mine on the planet in terms of production. They
still have traces of this mining industry, right, especially what
is it Boca del in Ferno.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Boca del in Ferno. It's a mine shaft that boca
meaning mouth, so that's that's the mouth of Hell, and
this is an attraction you can see there are also
it's known for its beautiful architecture, these brightly colored Baroque
buildings and there are these like narrow kind of alleys
between the buildings and it's a very walkable, picturesque little city.
(04:03):
But it also was an important stronghold during the Mexican
Revolution when Mexico was able to break free of Spanish control.
And that is when Father Miguel Hidalgo in eighteen ten,
who was the parish priest in Dolores, put out his
infamous Grito de la Dolores, which is the shout of Dolores,
(04:24):
and he assembled a mob of peasants brandishing machetes and clubs,
and they eventually made their way to Guandajuato because it
was the most prominent largest city in the area and
that became their stronghold and the site of the beginning
of the Mexican Revolution. So a lot of history in
this town. But today's episode it's not about any of
(04:46):
those things. Oh yes, yes, let me set this up.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We should say that the name Guanauato actually translates to
mountainous place of frogs. Love that and it's had several
different names throughout it time because it's a very old city.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So maybe an Aztec era where the name was, Yeah,
what was it. It was the land of straw, I believe,
and the word is beautiful where this is translated from
and it was an Aztec word paks Titlan you know,
that's that is a beautiful word. I personally, I also
liked Mooti the place of metals, Yeah, which is the older,
(05:23):
older name. It makes perfect sense. It was also the
place of a weird government sanctioned grave robbing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That's right. Today's story involves grave robbing, and it involves
I'm just going to say it, a really terrible move
on the part of local government. So there's a big city,
a lot of people get buried. You know, life happens born,
you live, and you die. And there was a cholera
(05:51):
outbreak around the area of Guanuatu in the eighteen thirties,
around eighteen thirty three or so, and these people when
they expired, they were interned, they were buried. In some
cases they were embalmed. But a few years later the
local government puts attacks on graves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So the thing is like, you would rent this place,
like you didn't own it. Yeah, yeah, you would rent it.
And I think the initial rental period was about five years,
and then you had to re up your rental. Your
family had to you know, assuming you had any family
to speak of, and if you didn't pay this. This
is something that was instituted between eighteen sixty five to
(06:33):
nineteen fifty eight, by the way, very recently done away with.
And if you did not pay for three years in
a row, that's right, then your peeps would be uprooted,
literally dug up, not really dug up because they were
in these air tight mausoleum chambers. They would be removed
and evicted and they were either taken to a simple
(06:54):
pauper's grave outside of town. And this is the thing too,
is interesting about the story of this culture very much
reveres death. You know, you have like the Deos deos
Martos and all of these kind of death related rituals
and just deep veneration for one's ancestors and paying respects,
and you know, this very religious culture. The idea of
(07:18):
digging up these loved ones and like putting them in
a less desirable burial space had to have been very
painful for some of these families. But that wasn't even
the worst thing that could have happened, was it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, there are stranger things that happened because they would
be put in a pauper's grave, or they might be
placed in an osuary which was actually under the cemetery
grounds itself, waiting in case the relatives would come back,
cough up the money and have their loved ones reinterred
or reburied, which did happen in a couple of cases.
These people were taken out of the grave and then
(07:50):
put back in. But when they were taken out of
the grave, often they weren't decayed in the way that
you would expect a body to rot over time. They
were preserved. They were mummies. They were mummies. They had
become mummies naturally. They were mummified by the environment in
(08:11):
which they were interred. I believe the first one that
was found mummified was a man named doctor Remiguio Leroy
in eighteen sixty five, the.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Frenchman, right, or the French doctor, I think is what
he was known as. So we're sort of bearing the
lead here and we were getting there. But yes, Ben,
this is very important, the fact that they were naturally
mummified from lack of oxygen and just the very dry
climate that existed there as part of the world, and
so they would literally just dry out and their clothes
would rot quicker than their bodies would. And here's the thing,
(08:41):
these mummies when they found this Frenchman, the first guy
they found that had undergone this transformation. They were like,
this is pretty cool. And by day I mean, I
guess the city people that ran the mausoleum, what do
you think, like city officially this was a state run facility,
right right, Yeah, they were like, Okay, this is pretty cool.
We should hold onto this guy. And so they do that,
(09:04):
and they continue doing that for several years before they realize, hey,
I think we might have a little moneymaker on our hands.
So what happens then is the ones that the curators,
let's call them deem I guess fascinating. Enough specimens are
kept and in the fifties a museum is opened.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yes, it's true. This hearkens back to our earlier episode,
which seems so long ago.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
On corpses in a dior rama, do you remember that.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I very much do with the camel and the Arabic
gentleman with the human skull, I believe, right?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And when yes, and when we say thought to be fascinating,
what do we mean? This is pretty graphic stuff? Is
mean things like mummy that was pregnant, or people who
appear to have been buried alive, such as Ignacia Aguilar,
the people who were buried alive were almost certainly buried
(10:03):
by accident due to the extreme nature of the color outbreak.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And yeah, that's right. And a lot of these specimens
were found to have cholera or have suffered from smoke inhalation.
There's a really great, really short podcast from a show
called Mexico Unexplained. I think that's what it's. Yeah, and
it goes into some of these details, but really interesting
that they would have had smoke inhalation because it was
(10:29):
either from smoking cigarettes or any kind of tobacco, or
possibly from working in those minds under less than ideal conditions.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh yes, And before we get too far away from it,
I want to clarify because I remember it. I did
find the explanation of how this museum thing came about,
and it's kind of disappointing in what it says about
the human condition. Because once word of the Guanauatu mummies
started spreading around town, other people in town were apparently
(11:01):
sneaking over and paying people who worked at the cemeteries
just a couple of pesos to sneak in and take
a quick peek. So it was a the workers were
motivated by profit, and then they were incentivized, you know,
because this burial tax is still around to pull more
and more bodies out of the crypt and then find
more and more mummies and charge more and more people
(11:24):
to see them.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So where were they keeping them before the museum situation
took off?
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Before the museum, they would eventually they would be kept
in that ossuary under the graveyard, just like for a
rainy day. And Kate, well, the official reason again is
just in case the families come back and say, we
do have the money to pay the burial tax.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
But why would they keep them versus burying them outside
of town? Like my understanding whether they kept these because
they were so crazy looking and they.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Like I think, I think it's a situation again where
there was an official reason and then there was a
real reason, got it.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So let's talk about this museum. When that started happening.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
El Museo de las Momias, which you know, the Museum
of the Mummies. It was the same place where the
cemetery workers were just charging people several pesos to enter
into the building and see the bones and the mummies,
with again doctor Leroy being the first one on display.
But when did it officially become a museum instead of
(12:26):
this underground display of death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, that's right. But like I said before, you know,
there was money to be made here and the government
wasn't getting those mausoleum lease rental fees, so they figured
they would capitalize in another way, and they opened this
to the public in the nineteen fifties and it was
actually voted Guanajuato's I believe number one tourist attraction. And
(12:52):
so for a nominal fee of two pesos you can
take a look at the more than one hundred, one
hundred and eight Yeah, one hundred and eight dried out
human mummies, natural mummies, and that this includes all different
types of situations in varying the stages of decay kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, and you can still see their facial expressions in
a lot of cases, which you know, we mentioned the
somewhat gruesome details that have allowed investigators to determine who
was buried alive and who was buried when they were
actually dead.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, the one you mentioned that was buried alive actually
still has her hands like trans like you know, like
covering her eyes, biting her arm. Yeah. And the thing
too is most of these these cadavers have these just
pained expressions, as though they're like shrieking in agony. And
it's because of what happens when the tongue dries out
(13:52):
during this rumification process and the jaw starts to slacken.
You start it kind of looks like the scream. You
know that that painting and this is pretty crazy. Ray
Bradberry actually wrote a short story about based on his
visit to this this museum when he was vacationing with
his wife in Guanajuato, and he wrote a story called
(14:15):
The Next in Line where he very vividly describes this.
So I'm gonna read a little bit of that for Casey.
Can we get that spooky music back for this? This
is I think this deserves it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
They were screaming. They looked as if they had leaped
snapped upright in their graves, clutched hands over their shriveled
bosoms and screamed.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Jaws wide, tongues out, nostrils flared and been frozen that way.
All of them had open mouths. There was a perpetual screaming.
They were dead and they knew it. In every raw
fiber and evaporated organ, they knew it. She stood listening
to them scream. They say dogs here sounds. Humans never
(15:02):
hear sounds so many decibels higher than normal hearing that
they seem non existent. The corridor swarmed with screams, screams
poured from terror, yawned lips and dry tongues, screams you
couldn't hear because they were so Highho not cool, Ray Bradberry,
(15:23):
not cool? What do you think about that, Ben?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, I've actually I've read this story. It's Ray Bradberry
is a fantastic writer and very appropriate for Halloween. The
Mummy Museum also inspired other works of fiction. In the
late nineteen seventies, Verner Herzog took a number of shots
of these various mummies for the title sequence of his
(15:45):
film Nosferatu the Vampire because he just wanted a morbid, eerie,
atmospheric opening sequence.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I remember that sequence, and I did not know that, Ben.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And one of the museum's other notable points of interest
is that it has the smallest mummy in the world.
It is a fetus from the pregnant woman that we
had mentioned earlier. It's a heartbreaking thing, and it's strange
to feel the turns of history so immediate and tactile,
(16:16):
you know, because so often we think of these horrific
or tragic events as an abstract thing from a history book,
but going and seeing these real people is a tremendously
profound and moving experience. One other work of fiction that
we absolutely have to mention is the film that incorporates
the mummies of Guanahata in a not accurate way, is
(16:41):
called Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanawato.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Santo being a very popular luchador. Luchador. These are these
wrestlers that wear this cool masks, and this guy was
like a real celebrity and it was almost sort of
like Abbot and Costello, you know, meets Frankenstein or whatever.
It was like a very well known national figure fighting
a very well known national monster.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, Rodolfo Guzman Herta, famous wrestler at the time. And
we found we found some various clips of this film,
you know again, made in nineteen seventy two, and I'm
all in, I want to check it out. I want
to watch the whole thing. I'll come back with a review.
If I'll come back with a review, if there's some interest.
(17:25):
What makes it relevant for our interest today is that
this film spread word of the mummies outside of Mexico
and people began to learn about this on an international level.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, I mean it started kind of became much more
of a fixture of popular culture at the time, and
it wasn't really replicated for many years, but it certainly
spread awareness and likely upped the value to the government
of this place, right.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Right, And this leads us to the ethical question that
we've run into before, you know, and that question is
is it right to display the bodies of these people? Certainly,
I mean it's certainly not with their consent, and we
don't know if their family members were asked or if
they're family members consented.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. There's actually a quote in this piece from the
Guardian that just talks about how there were no laws
broken in doing this, that the Mexican people have a
different attitude towards death that they don't I don't know,
and it's kind of counter to what I said at
the beginning of the show. I would assume that it
would be this would be very disrespectful, This would be
(18:35):
considered like heresy, kind of you know, to disinter the
people's loved ones. But you know, the guy that's in
charge of this place seems to think differently. Yeah, this guy,
Arturo Taberas, who is the head spokesman for the Guanajuato government,
said in this daily mail piece, I think I misattributed
to The Guardian earlier that quote the museum is an
(18:57):
important part of Guanajuato's tourist appeal. Okay, that's your first point.
The museum breaks no laws and displaying its exhibit to
visitors who are given fair warning of his graphic content.
Here's the important part. We have a different cultural approach
to death in Mexico. Here we celebrate the cycle of
life and accept death as inevitable. Ninety nine percent of
the visitors leave the experience pleased with what they saw.
(19:21):
But here's the thing. So many of these infants in
the museum, of which there are several, are often dressed
as saints. So there's one that goes by that they
call colloquially Little Saint Martin, who is it's basically a
skeleton of a tiny baby wearing the traditional garb of
Saint Martin, something called a cassock, and holding a broom
(19:44):
and holding rosary beads. And it is macabre, my friend,
So I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Glad that you mentioned the Guardian, because there's a Guardian
piece I remembered I wanted to bring up. It's called
Why Mexican Celebrate the Day of the Dead by Antonio
Wa and in there it has this just stunning octoviopause
quote about what he sees as the Mexican attitude with death.
He says, the Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it,
(20:14):
caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. True, there is
as much fear in his attitude as in that of others,
but at least death is not hidden away. He looks
at it face to face, within patience, disdain, or irony.
And I think that's you know, maybe that's it. Maybe
that's what makes it okay. Maybe this is an important
(20:37):
thing rather than an exploitative thing, you know what I mean,
Because they can't be making that much money, right, profit
can't be the sole motivation at this points.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
As four thousand visitors a week, I mean, that's a
decent amount of cash.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, I guess it does add up.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, sure, it's been open since the fifties. I mean,
you know, yeah, you're right, kind of a bit of
a cash cow when you say so myself. But I
guess what I'm getting out I'm struggling with is there
even so this this tax was relinquished right and at
the end of the fifties, but nineteen fifty eight, in
nineteen fifty eight, but there actually was a recent addition
(21:11):
to this collection was a baby that died in nineteen
ninety nine at six months old. So I want to
clear something up real quick. And we actually had a
little discussion off my The law that required the tax,
there was a grave tax went away in nineteen fifty eight,
but there was also like you still had to rent
these spaces. You still had the land, and like you
(21:31):
would up re up it for like twenty years or
something like that, Like it started like a five year
and then if you didn't come back, then they could
still remove your loved ones corpse. And that happened with
this baby. And the really heartbreaking thing is apparently the
baby is in the collection museum and the mother who's
still living pretty regularly comes in visits in child.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, and there's some the description of how this happens
sounds remarkably cold. So if the if the family, the
surviving relatives choose not to pay or re sign on
that lease. Then the body is removed and it goes
to the museum's curator, and the curator inspects the corpse
(22:16):
to see whether it's good enough to be added to
the collection. And I had earlier said the number was
one hundred and eight corpses in the display, but I
believe it's one hundred and eleven now because they have
added some.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I thought that wasn't too confusing with the difference between
the grave tax and the lease, because they were two
different things, and it threw me for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
But no, we got there.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I think we did. I think we did. So what's
what's next? Yeah, this sounds like a place that I
would be intrigued. I mean, I'm I'm into kind of
like this sort of dark type stuff. I went to
the Museum of Death in la and quite enjoyed that,
even though some of it was even a little little
much for me. A lot of like embalming videos and
you know, murder crimes, seen photographs and things like that.
(23:02):
But do you think this is right, Ben, Do you
think this is a value to society to be able
to experience death in such a raw, you know, kind
of detached way. It's interesting to me. I mean, that's
the question I asked earlier in the show. You know, ethically,
is this more useful to humanity as a memorial, as
(23:24):
a way of educating people, or is it exploitative. It
seems like the museum itself has a lot of support
from the local community, and it is of benefit to
science because we're able to research the process of natural mummification.
Texas State University had some great research on how this
(23:48):
stuff occurs and how the environment interacts with the corpse.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
But I would say it's similar to did you ever
see a body's exhibit?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
I never did, but I've seen photographs of it and
the perfectly preserved codaverage whether you see the muscles and
all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And it's fascinating. Yeah, where you see organs or the
circulatory system or nervous system taken out and kind of
plasticize to give you a better look at human anatomy.
But those people, when they were alive, didn't consent to that, right,
Surely not in every case, And we have to ask
ourselves at what point does the benefit to science or
(24:29):
the benefit to history outweigh the ethical pitfalls of displaying
someone's corpse after they die. I will say that if
I'm in that town, I will go visit just because
I think it's in a way it would feel more
like memorial or commemorating the deaths of those people. And
(24:50):
these were not These were not for the most part,
these were not well off folks. These were the point, right,
These were common people.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, I mean the idea they had to you know,
because I mean rich people would have been able to
buy a plot, right, and you certainly didn't have to lease.
That's not the law. It's just they couldn't afford to
buy a grave plot, so they were able to lease
it in one of these municipal cemeteries, mausoleums or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Right, absolutely, and I would air on the side of
scientific benefit and historical commemoration. Guanawato's mayor, doctor Eduardo Hicks
at the back, in two thousand and seven, initiated the
Guanawatu Mummy Research Project and invited several scientists to go
down and spend more than a year exploring the origin
(25:33):
and the development of the mummies. And it's also been
a subject of national geographic documentary series which I'm going
to tell you the name of it. I haven't seen
the series, but the name throws me off. You're ready,
I am the Mummy road Show. Nice, So it's sort
of like the Antiques Roadshow, but with mummies.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Mummies.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, I feel like, yeah, that's a little glib. But
in these recent years they've learned a lot about the people,
the individuals who were interred here and then later displayed
in this museum. It's an incredibly interesting article and if
you would like to read it, let me know on
Ridiculous Historians and we could just post it up there.
(26:14):
And if you are a person who does not want
to see any of the visuals of this stuff, we
completely understand. This particular article has no photographs.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh, I think that's a pretty good place to leave it.
There's certainly if you're into photographs, there's plenty of them
out there, and these are really pretty upsetting images, to
be honest, but it's also they're strangely beautiful, I want
to say, haunting, very haunting, as you may have gotten
from that Ray Bradbury passage, and it really apparently severely
affected him and that he felt the need to write
this piece to kind of exercise some of those demons
(26:47):
from himself. And I could see that. I wonder what
it smells like in there. Ben probably is kind of musty,
like an old library or something, because these corpses would
not have had a smell of putrification because everything was
just dried up.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The mummification happens so rapidly, like a lot of museums.
It probably just smells old in some inexplicable way. But
our senses are so vulnerable to our pre existing mental states, right,
so maybe we are mentally capturing the smell. You know what.
It Probably it probably smells like cleaning cleaning supplies because
(27:23):
there's a lot of glass, so I'm sure they have
to use a ton of windex. It probably smells faintly clean.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, may be a little bit of a chemical smell.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
And I have a question too. So so far we
have we have covered a very interesting specific type of
vampire native to the Philippines. We've looked at mummies, although
they were not monster mummies from an old universal horror
film or something. What particular monsters are historical cases of monstrosity?
(27:51):
Should we should we look at next? Should we look
at the trials of were wolves? That's always an interesting
strange path to go on.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
One of the things we did the other night when
we had a game night at the obviously played a
game called Werewolf, where I ended up falsely accusing several
of my closest friends and coworkers of being were wolves
and had them lynched. And they didn't deserve that, Ben.
They were village, they were townspeople the whole time, and
they were be able to forgive myself for that.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
They probably won't be able to forgive you either.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That's okay, So I deserve it the end of it.
I deserve it. But in their memory, we should, in
fact research something about were wolves. I think that's smart.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, let us know if there's a werewolf's story that
particularly stands out to you. I'd love to. Ben. You
might be saying, but how on earth do I contact you? Guys, Well,
it's quite simple. We've got good news. If you are
on the internet, you can find us on Instagram, you
can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Facebook,
in particular, check us out on Ridiculous Historians our Facebook
(28:51):
community page, where you can talk with your fellow listeners,
all of whom I assure you are brilliant, wonderful people
with great taste and podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Right, that's pretty good. Yeah, I support that. Let's thank
our super producer Casey Pegram for you know, being super
as always. Thanks to our friend and colleague Alex Williams,
who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Coate, our research associates.
Thank you to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Quizzer, who's been
quiet lately.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, thank god.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Oh folks, I suspect Noel really no you like him?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Your friends? Sure? Whatever you say?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Man, oh man, Noory, Well, I will try to keep
the quiztor heat off of you.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Mike, I'm kidding. I welcome man. I need a little
little kick in the pants every now and then. Who
better to do it than that guy?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And most importantly, we're to thank you for bringing this
great story.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
To the show. Oh Man, no problem. It was a
lot of fun. That's That's not the right thing at all.
It wasn't really fun at all. It was kind of
disturbing and upsetting. But I'd rather there's no one I'd
rather be disturbed and upset with in this world, ben
than you, and you, folks, We'll see you next time.
(30:08):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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