Mummies of the Insane

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.