Mummy
Dummy 5: Sideshow Operators
Other
mummies have been turned into regular sideshow attractions.
For example, a carnival operator named Frank
Hansen claimed to have the mummy of a Bigfoot-type
creature frozen in a block of ice. Hansen had exhibited the
creature in sideshows across the country, but in 1968 he seemed to
want respect from the scientific community. He invited two
zoologists to examine the block
of ice at his farm in Minnesota.
Authors
Russell
Ciochon,
John Olsen,
and Jamie James
describe what the zoologists saw:
Its
body was hairy and vaguely human, about six feet in height, with
long limbs and very large extremities, and it had a simian face
with a sloping forehead.
Were
they convinced that this was a mummy hoax? Not at all. In fact, they
were so certain the creature had once been alive that they asked a curator at
the Smithsonian Institution to examine it, but Hansen would not
allow this. He later made a plastic model of the mummy for future
exhibitions, and the mummy disappeared.
Many people doubt that it was real, but two respected zoologists
have publicly stated that it certainly looked real.
Were they mummy dummies, too?
If
you are tempted to think that this is an isolated case, consider the
following example. An Australian aborigine named Tambo Tambo was brought to America as a
circus performer more than one hundred years ago. On February 23, 1884, he died of
pneumonia at the age of twenty-one
while on tour with the circus. In 1993, 109 years later, his
mummified body was discovered in a Cleveland,
Ohio, funeral home. Why had his body been mummified?
Why had it been secretly kept? And how much money had been made exhibiting him?
