Philippi: At
last report (August, 1994), the Barbour County Historical Museum
displays two mummies made in the
1880s by a farmer named Graham Hamrick. Hamrick decided that he could
make human mummies as well as the Egyptians had [after all, he told
people that he had read up on mummification techniques in the Bible and had even practiced on dead animals], so he asked officials at
the county insane asylum for a body or two. They complied
with his request and provided at least two bodies. Hamrick mummified
them and took them to the Smithsonian Institution where, according to
one source, the bodies would not be accepted unless he told his
mummification secrets. Needless to say, Hamrick told
nothing and brought the mummies home. After his death, they
toured with a European circus. Eventually, they were kept in storage
in Philippi, until they were rescued from a flooded house in 1985 and
put on display in the Barbour County Museum.
