• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Moving Statues?

T

TVgeek

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
May 15, 2002
Messages
750
Egyptian Relics Moving By Themselves In Museums

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=693418

--------------------------------------------------------------
Spooky mystery at Bergen Museum

Ancient Egyptian shabti - funerary figures that represent servants in the afterlife - are causing unease for those working at Bergen Museum. Professor Henrik von Achen says colleagues don't like working there at night, and the figures appear to be moving in their glass cases, newspaper Bergens Tidende reports.

BT reporters toured the museum one dark evening and found the Egyptian exhibit disguised a few creepy tales.

"They have behaved strangely since we took them up out of the cellar in 2001," said museum guard Richard Saure. He was the first to notice that small stone figurines, whose job was to work for the dead, were not like other relics.

"They were neatly packed in a case when we brought them up. When we came to work the day after, they were lying all over the place, except for two - two false shabtis," Saure said.

"The exhibition opened in May 2001. Since then these small figurines have moved. Some of them have turned 90 degrees. They stand in glass cases that are sealed and locked but you can see it in the trails in the dust," Saure said.

"I'm a skeptic, but I have to believe what I see. I don't understand this. If it is because of vibrations in the floor, like some claim, why don't other objects move?" the guard wondered.

Professor von Achen has nothing to add to dampen the mystery.

"Someone has made them and laid them in a grave. Now they are out of the grave's darkness. What do they bring? If we ask, maybe they answer, that is the magic of the museum," von Achen said.
-------------------------------------------------------

Cool! :)
TVgeek
 
Aren't i always saying there's no such thing as an inanimate object?!?! Well maybe not out loud, but I do say it quite often. Once.


didn't a similar thing happen with those Chinese Terracotta soldier statues?
 
LobeliaOverhill said:
didn't a similar thing happen with those Chinese Terracotta soldier statues?
Click to expand...

Geez, I just recently saw the German silent film "The Golem"...
what a creepy idea! A whole army of them! *shiver*

TVgeek
 
This reminds me of tales of waxworks being animated by some unknown force, I remember seeing, on fortean TV ( a british TV program on the paranormal), about the hair of Adolf Hitler's waxwork at the London Madame Tussauds growing so frequently that it would sometimes require hair cuts:

(this is the only news story I can find with even the slightest reference to it (it's the bit in bold))

Wax Hitler back in the open

A waxwork of Adolf Hitler has been brought out from behind a glass case to face the public for the first time in 60 years.
The Madame Tussaud's model was put behind glass in 1942 to protect it from attacks from members of the public.

The waxwork has been reinstated in the Grand Hall next to a model of Winston Churchill at the London tourist attraction.

The decision was taken to put it back in the open, despite visitors to the museum still regularly spitting at it.

The model was first placed in the Grand Hall in 1933 when Hitler became the German head of state.

It became a target for hate attacks ranging from spitting, egg-throwing and physical damage.

On one occasion it was daubed with paint and a label was hung around its neck, proclaiming Hitler a mass murderer.

It was put behind glass after workers found that someone had stabbed it with pins, leaving a series of pin-marks around its heart.

A spokeswoman for Madame Tussaud's said no other waxwork had ever attracted the level of hatred and abuse the Hitler model had endured.

Diane Moon added: "Someone tried to push over Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War and there was an outcry when he was first unveiled, but no other waxwork has been attacked like Hitler.

"We constantly had to wipe spit off the front of the glass case."

The model was put in the Grand Hall on Wednesday and survived its first day intact, but faces the half-term holiday next week.

Strangely, the waxwork was one of the few figures which survived the German bombings in the Blitz.

In 1996 a worker reported that its hair appeared to be growing.

Emotional attraction

Ms Moon said the decision to move the waxwork next to the model of Churchill was part of a package of planned improvements.

"Madame Tussaud's is about much more than the people featured in the attraction, it's about the emotions that those people provoke," she said.

"The way people have reacted to Hitler in the past is an extreme example of that.

"At the time guests' passions were so inflamed that the damage inflicted made it impractical for us to leave the figure out in the open.

"Now it's time to remove the glass and place Hitler back in context - going head-to-head with the leader who stood fast against him against all the odds, Winston Churchill."
Click to expand...

Sourse: BBC news feb 07 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1806104.stm
 
Waxwork's are scary. Some of the older ones in MTSD's are a bit lame but the newer ones are uncanny. The idea of the olden day people ones coming to life creeps me out.

The wax-faced Sadako thing in the well at the end of Ring 2 is also pretty freaky.

Wax work of a clown playing a ventriliquists dummy which is holding a bag of spiders. Worst image ever!
 
Dust, in the cases? Seems pretty lax to me.

Perhaps the cases are acting as some sort of battery, -when the static charge gets too high, items will move around.

My guess is that some crooked member of staff is moving them, frighten off the night security in preperation for a heist. When museums get burgled, its often staff behind it.

(goes back to her moibus Scooby Doo...)
 
I was wondering about something
magnetic in the cases, too...
even a small force could make
things move over time.

As for the dust in the cases -- I assumed they
were displayed in sand of some kind. Aren't
displays sealed against dust infiltration? (As well
as infrared, humidity, etc...)

If it is indeed a sand-type base, vibrations would
also create patterns in the sand... that would really
freak out the staff!

TVgeek
 
Ooh, I think that's where a friend of mine works. I'll ask him.
 
Got my friend's reply:
Good to here from you no matter what the motive, funny that you mention Bergen Museum cause I've just finished a job for them, but I heard no mention of 'mummy movements'.
I'm not surprised if there are dust trails somewhere the old building is a rambling establishment, but not around the Egyptian exhibit, that's fairly new 2 or 3 years old, mind you I didn't do the white glove finger test.
Click to expand...
So there. ;)
 
McAvennie said:
Wax work of a clown playing a ventriliquists dummy which is holding a bag of spiders. Worst image ever!
Click to expand...

Substitute butterflies for spiders and I'm with you there, McAvennie! :eek!!!!:

I always thing the Ancient Egyptians knew a lot more about certain matters than we credit them with and would like to think this is the case here with these ushabtis. However, the Fortean side of me insists there must be a rational explanation.

Could the movement be caused by vibration (due to traffic for example)?

Carole
 
The Warders at the British Museum didn't like the Egyptian Galleries either
 
Wasn't there a mummy of an Egyptian priestess which caused them particular trouble?

Carole
 
Ginger; who was, IIRC, eventually found to be a woman
 
'Ginger' was a predynastic mummy, caused by burial in the dry desert sand, Intaglio. The one I'm thinking of came from dynastic times and some of the museum keepers were pretty spooked out by her. I'll see if I can find out more.

Carole
 
What I dont get is why security staff dont like these things...they KNEW there were suspicious exibits in the museums before they took the job on. They are PAID to watch out for odd goings on. They shouldnt be spooked by something as UNTHREATENING as moving ushabtis....(lets face it, ushabtis are `meant` to move, why fuss when one does?)

When has a member of staff been ever harmed by an exibit?

If I was on a museum commitee, I sure would make sure that any security staff employed were unflappable.

(Having said all that, I would take good care to employ staff who `do` believe in the supernatural...Its often the skeptics who get scared `should` something odd really happen....)
 
Homo Aves said:
... When has a member of staff been ever harmed by an exibit? ...
Click to expand...
There was the Manuscript that crushed one persons toe. But is was one of the big ones from the Royal collection 1m high 70cm wide and 150 cm thick. There was also the case that ate staff (Bronze framed and a habit of coming down on your fingers); we were instructed never to bleed on the Mss after one rather messy occassion.
 
Hmm. This reminds me of some of the things that happened in the Egyptological collection in my university (first held in my old academic department; now held at Swansea Egypt Centre, sixth biggest collection in the country :) ).

The public museum was only opened about six years ago - I worked there on and off for the first four years, in fact, and was one of the original group who worked there for the six months before it opened. I heard some interesting stories. One of them - small world, this - also involved a mate of mine who was otherwise completely unconnected with the uni or the Classics dept where the collection were originally held. Any, three stories, corroborated by a number of witnesses known to me.

1. Moving Body Parts
For the twenty-five years or so before the museum was funded and opened, the collection was under the care of an elderly lady who was a Venerable Egyptologist. Anyway, according to my old Academic Supervisor (I was in university so long, he's now a drinking mate), in the late 70s and early 80s she kept many of the objects in cupboards in the department, and because room was scarce, at least one object category was kept in a cabinet in the Departmental corridor.

Anyway, either because she was from an age where Students Behaved Themselves or because she was really absent-minded, she often didn't bother to lock the cabinets.

Now while the collection includes a sarcophagus, and two complete mummified babies (one with wrappings, one without, which is a truly horrid object), what it doesn't have is a full adult mummy. However, it does have several arms, legs, and a head. These were kept in one of the easily accessible corridors.

Now this is entirely explicable, but would you be surprised to know that several of the arms, hands and feet went *ahem* walkablout? They were recovered, but they turned up in the oddest places. In lecturers' desks. Sitting on top of tables in lecture rooms. You get the idea.

Does that count as Fortean? Probably not. But this is:

2. Mystery Arm
This story was corroborated both by the staff at the museum, who have a documentary record of this, and by my friend (now a bus driver who has been given the sobriquet "Speedy" by his colleagues :D ). It appeared over the space of a week in the Swansea local paper, the South Wales Evening Post. I've seen documents in the museum, and some of the press cuttings. I've also held the object in question.

So, back in about 92 or 93, Speedy, having graduated and entered the realm of the unemployed, had been growing vegetables in the back garden of his rented house. Anyway, one summer day he's digging the back garden, and he finds something in a carrier bag. Something squishy.

He opens it, and inside is a human arm!

After wetting himself, he calls the police who tell him Not. To. Go. Anywhere. He calls the Job Centre.

"I can't sign on today," he says. "I've found human remains in the garden and the police won't let me come and sign on."

"Yeah, right," they say. Speedy later learns that his benefit would have been cut if he hadn't been on the front of the evening paper that day.

Anyway, the police, not entirely satisfied of his innocence, take the arm away and examine it; the first doctor who looks at it says it's about, oh, three weeks dead. Now Speeds has got a rather Dodgy Bloke living in his house and it transpires that no one's seen his girlfriend for months. Quicker than you can say "It wasn't me, Guv" they've swooped in and arrested him.

And then Dodgy Bloke's now ex-girlfriend turns up, alive and well and living in England somewhere. So, um, there's no one missing.

So who's this then? They get the forensics boys on it, who discover resin and other odd things in the arm, at which point they realise that the arm is in fact from a three thousand year old mummified Egyptian; it looked like it was three weeks dead because it had absorbed moisture from the surrounding earth where it had been buried.

But where has it come from?

They pull in Dodgy Bloke again, and he says that he found it "lying on the beach in Swansea bay", took it home, realised that he had no idea what to do with it, and buried it in the back garden. Since Dodgy Bloke has now confessed that he's buried the arm, Speeds is now cleared of all suspicion and allowed to sign on. Which is a relief.

The police don't believe a word of Dodgy Bloke's story, so they ring up Venerable Egyptologist, who, notwithstanding small lapses of memory involving cupboards, is remarkably anal about cataloguing stuff, and is able to say that it's not one of hers.

And this is the weird part - it doesn't belong to any other Egyptological collection in the country. No one ever finds out where it came from, so it ends up in the Swansea collection after all, where it is today.


3. Cursed!
This is actually a non-story. About three or four years back, a local newspaper reporter asked about rumours he'd heard that the centre was cursed. The assistant curator, bless her, had had it up to here with an unfeasibly large number of people asking that day about aliens and Atlanteans and replied with bitter, biting sarcasm, which the newspaper then printed word for word. On the front page. As an affirmation.

Bastards.

It wouldn't have been quite so bad if the story hadn't appeared in the Guardian the following Wednesday. Oops.

Anyway, just to say: Swansea Egypt Centre is Not cursed, and while there have been weird occurrences, there are no supernatural ones, notwithstanding the store room where the body parts and the baby are kept being really, really creepy.

I thank you.
 
This may not be very fortean, but ever since I was a child I've been afraid of statues. Not all of them certainly but the more lifelike ones, the scary stone or bronze ones and those larger in dimension give me a chill. I often feel I can sense a consciousness inside, just waiting to animate them as soon as I get close enough. Consequently, I usually give them wide berth.
I've read about cases of statues "crying" tears of blood and the like, I'm not sure how credible those are. What I'm curious to know is, have there ever been any stories of statues appearing to move on their own?
 
Alledgedly A Giant Jesus statues head moved back and forth like it was surveying everything. At a public place people go.
 
We have an number of threads on this:

Weeping bleeding statues:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14387

BVM which includes her moving statues:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12756

but it is likely that they are either natural occurences, fakes or they are due to issues related to perception/collective 'hallucinations' so there probably isn't anything to be too scared of ;)

I actually find these statues scary - if they moved well.......

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3015
 
Don't go there, Dana M8! :eek!!!!:
 
for some reason. i allways thought that statues in meusems came "alive" after closing time :eek!!!!:
 
They do, and they go to Dana's house.
 
When I was a child my mother had an ornament of a 'tramp'. I was a bit like a toby jug, his crumpled top hat came off and he was hollow inside. He was just a head and sholders. He was on the mantle in the front room.
One day I walked into the front room and he winked at me. No he really did. Honest
 
When I was 5 yrs ols, I once stayed with my friend at her Nan's house. We got to sleep in a double bed above which there were two religious reliefs. One of Mary and the other of jesus I think. Anyway, Mary was right above me and seemed to look menacingly down at me with her empty eyes. This gave me the willies so much that I started crying and eventually the Nan took both off so I could sleep.

Phew...
 
Tales of moving VM statue on Wogan's programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Episode_1/

Terry's travelling round Ireland looking up old haunts and doing quirky things. He gets to Ballinspittle in Cork and visits the statue of the virgin mary that caused great excitement in 1985 for moving. Repeatedly. Apparently. Even in front of policemen, and they are infallible in their witness of course. It's about 20 minutes into the programme.

There's an interesting explanation that follows, which puts the phenomenon* down to the political and social situation in Ireland at the time, that people needed a bit of boost from religion, because everything else was crap. *I can't remember exactly, but I think couched in such a way so it could be an explanation for The Genuine Movement or in fact just for the gathering of the slightly hysterical crowds (so as not to offend policemen and others who believe). You get an interview with the policeman by the way.
 
I saw that, it did seem a bit wooly but i guess they did present both views to a degree, and leave people to make their own minds up.

Didn't one of the guys say that he thought he saw it move, but that he also thought he saw most things move if he looked at them for long enough?
 
Back in the days of the moving statues I drank too much. One evening in a pub a guy said hello to me. As far as I was concerned I'd never met him before. He told me that the week before I'd given him the materialist perspective on moving statues. I knew it was time to cut down.
 
Interesting but unlikely to be surpernatural.

It only moves when the lights are out. While it could be photo-sensitive in some way, one is more tempted to conside expansion and contraction due to the heat of lights. If the statue is not of uniform composition (the artists employed mixed-material) - as is distinctly possible - it could expand and contract at different points causing a rotation - but surely no curator in their right mind would have ancient exhibits in highly variable environment? It also begins movement very quickly after the lights come on (although a good amount of the lighting from that cabinet seems like it's natural from a window out of shot, which would cast doubt on the idea of it heating up (this is April in the UK! Surise times also seem to match: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/a ... =-12&day=1). For that reason, I'm inclinced to believe we have vibration from lighting or air-conditioning systems that are only turned on during opening hours - perhaps on a timer. Even subsound from a fan could very easily turn the statue, and as a standing piece, it would have a higher center of gravity than the stockier surrounding pieces that remain stationery. Given the smooth movement, I'd postulate a constant sound as opposed to traffic (there is a major road nearby) or the variable noise of visitors.

That aside, I'm not particularly concerned with the 'exactly 180 degrees' claim. Given that nobody is likely to have precisely measured its initial position, we certainly can't be sure about how 'exactly' it has turned. Also, any inconsistency in the shape of the base could easily allow of movement in only one direction and impede movement beyond a certain point.

The obvious thing to do would be to replace the statue and measure any change in position precisely. If the phenomenon is repeated, it ought then be placed it in another spot entirely to gauge whether the movement is due to environmental factors.

Nobody will do this as the museum will lose the good publicity. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top