Museo de las Momias — the screaming mummies of Guanajuato's famous museum

The Museo de las Momias (House of Mummies) in Guanajuato displays naturally mummified bodies exhumed from the Santa Paula cemetery, where the unique mineral composition of the soil and the dry climate preserved the dead in remarkable detail. Over 100 mummies are on display, many with their mouths open in what appear to be screams — likely the result of post-mortem jaw relaxation, but the visual effect is profoundly unsettling. The museum, one of Guanajuato's most popular tourist attractions, has been associated with full apparition sightings. Visitors and staff describe seeing figures among the display cases that are not reflections and do not correspond to any living person in the room. Some visitors report hearing a low moaning sound that seems to emanate from the mummies themselves, and others describe feeling touched or grabbed when standing near specific display cases. The practice of exhuming and displaying the dead, while shocking to many foreign visitors, is consistent with Mexican cultural attitudes toward death — in a country that celebrates Día de los Muertos with skull-shaped candies and decorative skeletons, displaying actual human mummies is a natural extension of the tradition of looking death in the face.