This Paranormal Life - #251 Is the British Museum Haunted?

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Everyone knows that a stolen artefact is going to carry with it some bad paranormal juju, so what happens when you're the establishment with the most stolen artefacts in THE WORLD? This week, Rory and Kit seek an answer to the age-old question...  is the British Museum haunted?Buy Official TPL Merch! -  thisparanormallife.com/storeSupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to bonus episodes!Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmEdited by Kami TomanResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Could I travel back in time to prevent my own birth? If vampires have no reflection, how do they get ready in the morning? All of these questions you can find the answers to on This Paranormal Life! Hello and welcome to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate a brand new paranormal tale, case, claim, beast, and come to a conclusion at the end of the show as to whether or not it truly is paranormal. As you know, every episode we are trying to get that oh-so-elusive yes and come down on the fact that it is paranormal. But, um, you know, to be honest, it's very often a no. A yes. It is our white whale. It is our red herring. It is our wild goose chase, you know, to be honest, it's very often a no. Yes, it is our white whale.

It is our red herring. It is our wild goose chase, you might argue. Yeah. Are you feeling optimistic today, Kit? I am not. Oh, okay. Do you want to... We could not do it today then if it's...

If you're not thinking that it's going to be a yes. We could wait till there's like a different time. We could wait till midnight, light some candles. Keep it real with you. We've been doing this show for a few years now. I always, when you're not looking

and you go to the bathroom right before we record, I look through your notes. Wow, that's intrusive. And sometimes other things on your iPad. Okay. That's more than intrusive.

That's borderline illegal, I think. It started with just a passing interest as to what the name of the case might be. Okay. And suddenly, I was more interested in what the story itself was. And then I wanted to know how it ended. And then I got a little kick out of the rush

of stealing information from you. Don't... Okay, I'm going to get ahead of this right now before Kit leaks it on the internet. I do have a drive on Google called Sexy... Whoa. I didn't it on the internet i do have a drive on google called sexy whoa i didn't look on the drive you didn't know about the about what was that sexy yeah and it's um i think it's you know i think it's actually best we just get on the show i think it's a good idea to push on with today's episode your reputation with the nation um you know i'll admit you know if you're investigating the paranormal you want to clear your reputation with the nation.

You know, I'll admit, you know, if you're investigating the paranormal, you want to be in a spooky mood. You want to be swept away with the world of the supernatural, not the world of the normal and the world of the nitty gritty. And this week I had to pay my taxes. And let me tell you, the real world doesn't hit harder than having to pay your taxes you're dragged down from cloud nine and f***ed by the man all right so i'm not feeling very spooky right now this is very dramatic you surely you encounter this problem every year when you pay your taxes does it count if it feels like a ghost's hand is in your pocket every time you put away 10 bucks, they take five? You use so many public services,

you should arguably be paying more taxes than anyone else. You prank phone call your doctor, for one, which is very immoral. This is a good time to point out that this paranormal life is actually registered as a charity. So we should be keeping most of the money. Look, that's enough rambling. I think at the start of the podcast, you know that we love to dive straight into it. So let's hop into today's case. Let's go. Today's episode was actually recommended by one of our wonderful listeners.

Lola Day Badebo. She emailed to say that she studied art history extensively and has herself encountered a ghost in a museum basement. Interesting. Off of her email, I thought it would be a great idea to investigate a place where, surely, if there is any location ghosts would be drawn to, it would be museums. Filled with history. Thousands of years of history. Precisely. Kit, have you ever been to a museum? I have not. What is a museum? A museum is like a big warehouse full of history. It's like a giant supermarket. The stuff is old, but you can't buy any of it.

Very like a supermarket indeed. We're going to focus our story today on one museum in particular, right here at home. The British Museum. Oh, a museum. Yeah, I've been there. Home to hundreds and thousands of artifacts shamelessly stolen from all over the world. That's going to stir up some spirits. Phil Heery had been working as a security guard at the museum for the last 30 years. He dedicated his whole career to protecting the establishment's 94 galleries packed to the rafters with its valuable treasures

ganked from all over the world. Okay, we're focusing a lot on the ganking. Well, it's a big part of the museum. I feel like you have an agenda in this story. It is true. A large portion. This is me as the CEO of the museum. It could be said a large portion,

a significant portion portion if you will of the museum has been pilfered just for safekeeping but hey it doesn't stop it from being a swell day out this is the sad reality of it I've had the pleasure of enjoying

the British Museum and the artifacts within despite the dark history behind how a lot of them are there. There's one wing of the museum that's never felt quite right to fill. The Egyptian Gallery. One night, while patrolling the upper floor of the wing, he started to feel the temperature drop. Was it the AC? A draft?

He searched and searched but couldn't find any explanation. This is already a bit of a red flag. I feel like if there's one part of the British Museum that I would say is haunted or cursed, it's going to be the ancient Egyptian section. They're pretty known in pop culture for inflicting curses upon those who disturb the graves and tombs of the people buried in Egypt. Yeah, most people throughout history were happy to go quietly. Not the ancient Egyptians.

Sure. It's pretty in your right to say you don't want to be dug up and have your remains put in a display case for people to gawk at for hundreds of years. That's fair, right? It's actually pretty baller when you think about it that you're so iced out you're buried with so much drip that you have to place paranormal curses to stop people from raiding you the moment you're in the earth that's how i want to go in the modern way of course buried in head to toe yeezy collection just Just wait, when you die, you're going to be dug up, dragged to a museum, and your spirit floating above the coffin is going to be like,

all right, here we go, man. These guys are going to be worshipping me like a god of old. And the guy at the museum is, here we have what can only be described as a Neanderthal. The pea-sized brain means the human- No, no, I'm a god once man. Had basically the intelligence of a mushroom you shut up you shut up you interesting to note the tiny penis that you can see here

it's cold it's cold in the museum the ventilation is broken no turguide should be going as you can see by the size of the penis on this thing. Bad tour guide. Not family friendly at all. The cold spot remained the same for a long time, but it wasn't until a bizarre occurrence in the 1990s that this particular spot felt truly paranormal. In the early 90s, Prince Charles and the former president of Egypt were set to visit the museum in London. Phil was charged with the task of preparing the Egyptian gallery before their arrival. He let himself in like normal and began checking the exhibits, making sure everything was in tip top shape. Like always, he passed through the cold spot, but this time was different.

He felt the familiar temperature drop so intensely that it felt like he was standing in a walk-in freezer. Good lord, man. It was so cold he could see his own breath. And what's more, the entire gallery was suddenly filled with a stench so foul he found his stomach churning. Phil felt nauseous. Just as he thought he was going to be sick, one of his colleagues approached him. You alright, Phil? You're looking a bit peaky. Suddenly, the smell was gone and the temperature returned to normal.

Not wanting to look like a weirdo, Phil brushed it off and went back to work. But he never forgot that moment. Not even today. Now that is pure british behavior you have the strangest most paranormal experience of your life and instead of appearing slightly weird by telling one person about it when they ask you how you are you go yeah absolutely fine governor anyway off to have some tea in bickies i think i need a tea break yeah he is lime green sweating bullets shivering cold he'll never forget that moment for the rest of his life and uh he just tipped his cap and and he vacated to the restroom stiff upper lip chap i i guess um you know even though i would say this definitely falls into the realms of the paranormal, there's not, it's on the line, you know. If you retold that story, there's a version of it where

someone goes, so you were a bit cold and you felt sick and you think that was an Egyptian curse being afflicted upon you. I can see how people would justify that as being not that weird at all. It's contextual. I hear what you're saying. Yeah. Because it happened in the ancient Egyptian wing of the British Museum seems a bit mad. If you tell the same story that you were in some public toilets in New Cross, not as weird. Yeah.

But luckily, that story isn't the only one that we have today to help us prove that possibly the British Museum is haunted. Now, when we think about haunted locations, the ones that pop into mind are what we see in pop culture. Old houses, graveyards, theme parks from Scooby-Doo. But when you think about it, as we said at the start of the show, nowhere makes more sense to be haunted than a museum. nowhere makes more sense to be haunted than a museum. The British Museum houses more than 6,000 sets of human remains.

Wow. Along with weapons used in battles, statues of demons and deities, mummified bodies. That's a dangerous cocktail, I will say, because at least in, say, a medieval battlefield where thousands died, if those ghosts come to life at night they at least get why they're there and they're surrounded by people from their time also in ghost form sure if you awake as a ghost in the british museum you are interacting going to battle with thousands of other men women and children from all over the world, from all different time periods. That's a very confusing place to be.

It would be incredibly confusing. You exit your sarcophagus, turn a corner, and you're face-to-face with a Viking who's just as pissed as you are because he doesn't know why he's here. It's paranormal squid game. You've brought all these contenders together to fight each other in the afterlife. Not to mention that a lot of this stuff didn't get to the museum through diplomatic means, if you know what I mean, Kit. I see what you're saying.

They might not be too happy about where they've ended up. We have a Tokugawa era samurai waking up as a ghost for the first time going damn i guess i was slain in battle after all but at least i can fulfill my true destiny of dying in my home country and then a little shit school boy licking a giant lollipop from us from london walks by and goes, I want that one, daddy. I want his armor. Buy me his armor, daddy. Yeah. There's a cruel irony in the people who deserve to have their death and their bodies remain undisturbed are the sweetest ganks of all time. You know know it's like these incredibly royal jewel dripping leaders of ancient civilizations right that were given giant tombs to protect them from grave robbers and because of that they're the sweetest catch of all those are the ones that you want to take back i

mean ironically it would have been pretty sweet to just be a little dirty peasant because no one they're not hanging up your loincloth in the British Museum and say this shit eater used to farm pigs. They don't care. But if you are a royal if you are even a

court jester to a medieval king, they are dragging you by your clown shoes to the British Museum and slapping you in a case basically like the toy collector from toy story 2 shining you up and putting you on display to the world there's an immense irony absolutely i do love the idea of them putting peasant rags in the museum that in the year 3000 my shit stained pair of ripped calvin klein boxer shorts will be on display in a museum somewhere and as you can see this 21st century peasant uh

appears to judging from dna analysis have shit himself from eating too many hot pockets on a night of gaming playing playing Call of Duty Warzone. It really gives us an insight into the life of people 900 years ago. My anime hoodie's on display in the museum. We can learn a lot from this hoodie about the virgins of the 21st century. All right, my ghost is just behind him. All right, I know you can't hear me, but that's enough. I will haunt your children's nightmares.

And as part of this multimedia exhibit, we actually have the Google search history of this particular individual. Oh no! No, no, no! How did you get that? Blow up sex doll UK. Blow up sex doll next day delivery. You're like, no! Shut it down! That was for a book. I was researching

for a book. If I could direct your attention again to the size of the penis... Okay! I absolutely draw the line! How does he still work here? And if all of that wasn't bad enough, in the past, the museum has actually been treated as a dumping ground for cursed historical objects. What?

On one occasion, museum staff found a mummy's hand that had been left behind with a note from the owner attached to it, saying that it had been discovered in their grandfather's possessions after he died, and it had brought them nothing but bad luck, so they wanted rid of it. Interesting. So you're saying the British Museum has such a reputation for being home to cursed and strange ancient artifacts that people are actually just dumping their cursed items there. I guess it makes sense. You know, we've debated before in the past, what's the best way to dispose of a cursed object short of passing it on to someone else. There's no guarantee that even burying it or chucking it off a cliff is going to break the curse from you. So if you do have to pass it on to someone,

you might as well pass it on to the people who can at least understand it and hopefully give it the attention that it wants in the right way, you know? I think of cursed objects as like little whiny children. And it's like, alright, we'll drop them off at the daycare that actually knows how to look after kids here you go here's the mummy hand it'll stop f***ing with me now yeah and there's probably something to the idea of giving it to an institution rather than a individual sure it's like this British Museum if it ain't cursed enough already like this little tiny hand curse isn't going to make a dent.

Right. Yeah. Short of flying it back to Egypt. This is a good second option, I guess. Maybe ask a larger question. Why did your grandfather have a mummy's hand in his possession? I just thought it was cool. The building itself has also been standing since 1759, which is plenty of time for the building itself to just pick up a ghost or two. Now, it's worth saying that to this day, the museum officially deny they have any kind of ghost problem. Exactly what they would say. You're not exactly allowed to host school trips and family days out if you also claim that you have a ghost problem. Yeah, you only get to choose one side. Do you want to be a historically accurate museum?

Or do you want to say that at night, the mummy's hand opens the exhibit and walks around like the hand from the f***ing Addams family? But it'd be interesting to know if they do anything around Halloween. Maybe they even have a tour of some of their spookiest objects, not necessarily cursed. But even if they deny that the museum itself is haunted, some of the stories today might change your mind. Now we told Phil's story at the start of the podcast, but he isn't the only one to encounter strange occurrences at the museum. Doors open

and close spontaneously. Ghostly orbs of light float through the hallways. Ancient music plays, seemingly from nowhere. This place is dripping with the paranormal. Ancient music? Yeah. That's disturbing. Another bizarre story comes from one of the security guards who, similar to Phil, was hired to patrol the galleries overnight. The longer he worked there, the more he began to know the halls, exhibits, and artifacts in them. But there was one object in particular that stood out against the rest. It was a small, creepy, wooden, two-headed dog carving with rusty iron nails and spikes hammered into it. To give you an idea of just how truly terrifying this object is, I've got a picture of it right here.

Yes, please. Whoa! Very interesting. It's a lot more chaotic looking than you're probably imagining, ladies and gentlemen. You might think like, oh, nails and spikes hammered in, almost like pinhead, almost in a square formation, very structured. No, this is what I imagine guards the gates of hell. Yeah, this is Cerberus.

It is a dog's head on one side, and instead of a dog's asshole is a second head. Similar to the popular cartoon series Cat Dog. Very similar. It's series Cat Dog. Very similar. It's ancient Cat Dog. What started off as a fascination soon became an obsession. He claimed that he could feel some sort of power emanating from it.

One night, while passing by the object, the guard was once again drawn towards it. But when he lifted his arm out and motioned towards the sculpture, every alarm in the gallery suddenly went off, snapping him out of his trance. The next day, the guard told his brother about what happened, and he obviously didn't believe him. So two days later, the two men went back to the museum during normal hours to go and see the dog again. See, Harold? It's just a normal, terrifying little dog.

You don't feel anything? I feel like my brother's f***ing nuts. I swear, I just walked up to the thing, stuck my hand out like this, and then... The alarms went off again! Is it paranormal? Or was he too close to the sculpture?

Something to consider maybe the second one normally when uh either you or i are trying to pull the wool over one one another's eyes we don't say the second one sure yeah um i'd like to say on the record in the story he's described as simply gesturing towards the dog and the alarms are set even if you focus in on it not that he had his hands inside the glass fondling its head i mean mean, the initial story, the first encounter, the paranormal bit almost sounded as if it had possessed him into trying to steal it. Almost freeing it, yeah. He went into a trance, because otherwise,

why would he possibly get that close? Which is pretty f***ing cool, isn't it? To have an artifact in your museum that it's so Jumanji, isn't it? You lock eyes with this two-headed dog and you hear the drums beating and all of a sudden you don't even realise you're walking towards it

and it's like, free me, free me, free me. And then someone's like, Phil, are you okay? Oh God, yeah, I didn't even realise. Where am I? Snap out of the trance. Don't listen to him, he's a loser.

Free me. We'll take over out of the trance. Don't listen to him. He's a loser. Free me. We'll take over all of London, Phil. I know the top five kebab spots in all of Greater London. We'll eat them all, Phil. I got two heads. Do you know how much I can drink with that? I will say, claiming that the object is haunted is also a good excuse if you get caught trying to steal an object from the museum.

Very, very accurate. It's like if someone barges in and you've got King Arthur's jewel-encrusted crown on your head and the alarms are ringing and you're like, Oh, the trance is broken. Oh, out you damned object. You almost had me. It's like, okay, are you going to try and tell us you were tranced into stealing this crown? Also, what a comedically bad security guard.

By all accounts, you have one job on earth and it's don't set off the alarms at the british museum which he's done twice now it's hard to kind of prepare a guard for that right i mean i'm sorry i i assumed that the the telepathic communication never happened um he was just in his own head fair enough if if if the object if the object possessed you and you blacked out sure i'll forgive you but if you didn't right and you just stuck your hand trying to touch the exhibit i got in trouble um for trying to touch um a painting in the picasso museum um the last time well the second last time i was in barcelona and alarms didn't go off i got

yelled at by a woman but uh surprisingly there weren't any alarms there so i guess maybe the british museum is different having worked in a art gallery slash museum i don't think anything was alarms yeah alarmed if it should alarm would go off you lifted the painting off the wall right but not if you touched it um but yeah i would imagine in a british museum quite different because these items would be all they're so old they're extremely fragile yeah so even touching them would a lot of them would just crumble to dust yeah i mean you worked at the uh the tate modern art museum in london for uh quite a while i know it's not exactly the same, but did you ever feel

entranced by any of the pieces that were on display? Because I would say that I've had that more with art than history. You know, I've definitely like seen a piece of artwork that I'm like, damn, you know, it invokes something, whether that's like an emotional response or, you know, something that that feels a little magic inside of you i can't say i've had that with a historical object really before yeah i feel like i definitely experience both sometimes thinking about working in the tate britain and the tate modern in london um for those who don't know tate modern it's all like modern art that's the one everyone knows tate britain is all like british art but all the way through history yeah um when i started working there i didn't actually know a lot about art history um everyone i worked with

they were all art graduates like our our listener who wrote in and suggested this case um but i wasn't i didn't have that background so i didn't really know much but they were like um you guys have been hired because you know you studied art at university. You have a historical background and you can lead the guides. Kit, some of the paintings have come alive at night and have been walking about threatening people with historically accurate weaponry. Not to say things are escalating, but last night a Spanish student Mario style leapt into one of the fucking Pegasos. We didn't know that was possible. We need to get to the bottom of this. I did have one encounter on one occasion.

People would often come up and talk to us, the staff, about what we thought was cool. Is there anything you can recommend? Because the galleries are so huge. People are like, hey, I've only got an hour. What should I go check out? And this guy was talking to me for a while, and he was like, oh, you know what's my favorite it's the Rothko rooms and I was like oh yeah do you know what I

I only started recently I haven't I haven't been there yet I was like oh yeah Mark Rothko they've got these rooms dedicated to his works he's famous for painting these kind of giant overwhelmingly kind of large and quite simple colorful colorful pieces. But crucially, he was very specific in his lifetime about telling people how the painting should be depicted. Right. So he would say they need to be in rooms of a certain size and a certain lighting and quite dark, and they need to be lined up in a certain way and such and so it's pretty cool i think if you go there today the gallery have honored that and they've represented his

paintings in the way that he wanted and this guy who was telling me this he was like yeah he was a f***ing he was a mad bastard people claim to like see him like out dancing under the moonlight and like who knows what he was getting up to yeah he was he was a bit out there um and i ever since i've looked at oh the artist not the guy who was asking you about the museum i thought you're like and this guy that was talking to me he had seen him in the moonlight and his feet were hooves and he had a pointy tail. All right. Sorry. The artist. Yeah. And ever since then, when I see a Rothko, I kind of think of this and they do have this kind of overwhelming, kind of powerful presence. Like check this out. I'm just showing Rory a photo of the Rothko room.

Wow. That's at the Tate. I didn't see this the last time I went. That's amazing. Oh my God. I love the Tate. If you live in London or are close to London or are visiting London, make sure you swing by the Tate Museum of Modern Art. It's incredible. But yeah, that would invoke something in you. Not necessarily, gank me off this wall, brother,

and let's get the f*** out of here, like this two-headed dog did apparently. But yeah, I could definitely see how, you know, you could feel, you could feel some sort of connection to that artwork. But don't get me wrong. That might be a harder thing to find in a modern art museum. If you're hanging out at the Louvre and looking at Renaissance paintings of hell, you might feel something a little bit more paranormal.

Yeah, and we'll get to the Louvre. Don't worry about that, folks. Stick around. So are we starting to see a pattern here there's so many paranormal stories from the museum we couldn't even cover all of them in just one episode in 2004 another night guard was trying to close two doors that were mysteriously stuck when he forcefully tried to pull them closed he claims to have been struck in the chest by a ghostly force. My God. His supervisor watched him fly backwards through the air like a Dragon Ball Z fight scene.

Oh my God, this is like a martial arts scene. And if being punched by a ghost wasn't enough, how about being driven insane? And in 2014, another guard was monitoring the CCTV cameras when all of a sudden, he noticed what looked like several large disembodied balls of light whizzing around the staircases of the museum. What? They hovered almost completely motionless for a few moments before chasing one another around in circles, then zooming away to another area of the museum. Luckily, there were other guards on duty, and the man quickly called them over to see.

Holy shit! Guys, look at this! What the fuck are those orbs? What are you talking about, James? Even though the floating spheres of light were still perfectly visible to his eyes, no one else could see them on the screen. That's bad. That's scary. It's time to his eyes. No one else could see them on the screen. That's bad. That's scary. It's time to go home. Cap off. Nightstick on the table. I'm going home, guys. And I might not come back. I gotta

rethink a lot of shit. Oh, gents. I must be slightly mistaken. I must have had a bit too much Earl Grey in the canteen. That's a scary one. that's a scary one because you you've fallen under uh a false sense of security thinking that you've caught these bastards on cctv and uh my god i can't imagine i can't imagine that awful feeling

when you're sitting there smug arms folded you hit play on the vcr you're watching these balls dangle in front of you and no one else can see them right you've you've just you've just managed to secure five minutes with the director of the museum about an ultra pressing issue right read it and weep you insisted that that the president of Egypt join the viewing party. There's no one else is seeing what you're seeing. That's an awful, that's got to be an awful feeling. And yet it doesn't end there. Guests have reported seeing ghosts in reflections.

A pair of curators were hit by a flurry of flying stones coming from a completely empty corner of the room. Jones, coming from a completely empty corner of the room, and a whole group of guests claimed that they spotted what they described as, quote, a mummified Mexican baby boy hovering in midair. What? A mummified baby boy? That is the quote. A mummified Mexican baby boy.

If they're mummified, how did you know they were Mexican to begin with? I have no idea. Were they speaking a Mexican dialect of Spanish? That seems strange. Hovering in mid-air as well. That's definitely more of the bizarre ones. But let's talk about this on a bigger scale. If we're going to try and prove our case that the British Museum is actually haunted, one easy way to do that is to look at other museums around the world and see if they have also reported any paranormal activity. Of course.

Because let's face it, if every museum is saying, hey, yeah, we've got this as well. Oh, you guys got a little mummified boy floating through the hallways? We've got six. Oh, did baby boy turn up? That's interesting because baby boy wasn't around at ours this weekend he must be with you i mean that does sound like the name of a rapper that would be playing in museum festivals all over the world it's like yeah you

guys should come we're doing a whole exhibit on a world war ii baby boy's gonna be there yeah he's sweet he's headlining so let's dive into this let's let's investigate some other museums and see if they're paranormal uh i guess based on the cases that i present in front of you kit feel free to decide whether or not you think any of these are paranormal stories love it quick fire round let's do it first up the san francisco art institute okay now this museum has a bell tower that is so haunted, they had to remove it from public access. Good God, man.

In the 60s, when the institute was undergoing renovations, the men working on site were hounded by ghostly screams, falling objects, and major equipment failure. That's insane. Not something we commonly associate with life in North America. Because how old could the bell tower possibly be? I don't know. Yeah, this is going to have to be an old building

to have an ancient bell tower and also be due renovations. Possibly paranormal. Possibly incompetent construction workers. Falling objects and equipment failure isn't necessarily paranormal. Ghostly screams. You did say they were harassed, harangued by ghostly screams. I said they were hounded by ghostly screams. Okay, another H word.

That's bad. You've clearly never been on a construction site with me when I hammer my thumb instead of the nail, because that is a ghostly shriek. Oh, that that would scare you off a building site, I would say. Granted, we often lean on this trope, but it would surely take a lot to scare off these rough and ready men of the construction industry. These oiled up beefcakes, these six pack chiseled abs, clean cut chin, muscled up beef boys. It's going to take a lot to scare them off a construction site. Although you did say this is San Francisco. So even the construction workers probably interned at twitter and drink flat whites on their

lunch break and that would make sense because construction workers ultimately quit before they could even finish the job what do you think about that one so far i guess on the edge but there's too much stuff there's too many elements paranormal you're gonna go paranormal i think i one security guard getting scared away that's not necessarily paranormal a group of construction workers yeah that's pretty weird okay ding that's one for paranormal next up the louvre in paris now believe it or not this world famous museum is built on the site of an old medieval fortress where you guessed it people got f***ing messed up. No shit.

That would make a lot of sense. I've been to the Louvre. It's, that would, yeah, it makes sense. It's a giant open plaza. Have you been there? I haven't, no. Way to call me out on it, but sure, fine.

Oh, yeah, just saying. I've been to Paris, so everyone knows. I've been, I was just short on time and I couldn't make it but I've been I have done it I was just busy alright I didn't have a lot

I had like three days there and I had a whole ton of shit to do so it's totally fine I didn't I didn't mean anything

it's just because I'm the one presenting the case and you saying you've been and I haven't been but I have been to Paris and it makes me it makes me look like I'm coming off as like uncultured like i didn't want to go it's definitely fine i'm sure

you did plenty of cultured stuff when you were there i did i did did you see like the eiffel tower or uh the octatrium for uh so i didn't see those um because as i said it like the itinerary was quite slammed i was big i was balls to the wall slammed like day one itinerary was quite slammed. You said you were... I was balls to the wall slammed. Like day one itinerary is like I heard rumors that over there for a start, the menus that they have at the McDonald's are totally different than the shit that we have over here. Okay. So you can get a McShrimp over in France. Right.

I don't know if you know that or not. And in some places, they actually do waffle fries instead of regular fries. So I just wanted to check off on that. But that should just, right, that would be like the first morning or afternoon. Sure. Cool. Yeah. And we got that out of the way because we were like, we are in Paris.

You know, we want to explore. We want to drink wine. We want to go dancing. Absolutely. So the next day was Burger King because they have something there called a Shrimp King. So you think similar to the McShrimp. So sorry, there was just quite a jump between day one and day two. So day one, McDonald's and just McDonald's.

I got really sick after the McShrimp, so I had to go straight back to the Airbnb. But next day, the King Shrimp turned out to be a rumor. They didn't have it there. It was a myth. Might have been for the best. Yeah. So I went back to get another't have it there. It was a myth. That might have been for the best. Yeah. So I went back to get another McShrimp. There's no way.

Deathly, deathly ill for day two. So you said you had a slammed itinerary. Yeah. You were vomiting and shitting for at least half of this trip. But I will say on the short bus ride back to the airport, I did, out of the bus window managed to catch a glimpse of the leaning tower of pisa wrong city this is the wrong place that's not in paris that must have been a building then that must have just been a regular building also you

said this short ride back to the airport did you stay in a hotel by the airport the hilton just adjacent okay yeah i have a membership there that is the single saddest trip to france i've ever heard of the point being we've both been to france and yes i haven't been to the louvre you haven't had a mc shrimp there's things we both haven't done before that is fair as we said the louvre is built on the site of an old medieval fortress. We're talking executions. We're talking battles. At some point, somebody probably fell down the stairs and died. You seen those stairs on castles, the little spindly ones that look like they're made for mice?

They're built to kill. And here's a crazy fact for you. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded there in 1793. The same year it officially opened as a museum. Holy f***. Isn't that crazy? You'd think that maybe those events were decades apart. The same year.

That's really astonishing. France has an insane history. It really does. The McShrimp. Alright. The Shrimp King. Don't say the Leaning Tower of Pisa because we've been over that. People claim to have witnessed spirits

walking in the halls. Most notably that of Jean Le Cochere. Also known as John the Skinner. I don't like the way this is going a secret hitman once hired by the queen to kill her enemies and then of course was killed himself for being the queen's secret hitman the cruel irony the last hit is yourself that checks out uh i believe this is i hate i hate to ask does he skin people

i think the background behind that nickname was that allegedly he used to be a butcher who was then hired to be a hitman um did all these kills for the queen then the queen was like he actually knows about all my secrets and all the people that I've killed. I need to kill the killer. And she did. Hey, there's a lot of logic to hiring a butcher to be a hitman. No one's going to ask any questions when he has a lot of knives covered in blood. Yeah. Blood stained apron. Used to chopping up bodies.

It kind of checks out. Maybe he doesn't have the physical training of a hitman. But I don't know how much of that is is uh popular fiction anyway can an actual hitman do backflips and like break a neck with one movement maybe not right maybe they just bought a gun on ebay you know maybe that's the reality of it when you're the queen's hitman you just get the queen to summon someone. And then he hits you with a rock. Yeah. People who visit the museum claim that his bloodstained ghost appears before them.

And it's often known as a warning of impending danger. Wow, that's really interesting. So this is even more believable, arguably, than the British Museum. In that the actual physical space of the louvre but long before it was a museum is bloodstained yes and you have a direct correlation between the spirit that is haunting people in the museum and the origins in which the museum has been built on very interesting it all checks out it It ticks the boxes. You know, the British museum, it's kind of like a shotgun blast of the paranormal. It's scattered. We have all these different types of hauntings, which does make sense because we have all of these

different artifacts being dragged from all of these other parts of the world. So it's kind of a complicated story, isn't it? It almost doesn't make sense because it doesn't have a focus point but it also makes sense that it doesn't have a focus point yeah because of the fact that it's a museum with all these artifacts in it the louvre is almost like uh one really strong case and the british museum is more like a thousand tiny ones. Yeah. I never saw the movie, A Night at the Museum. Nor did I. But I believe that it's basically

what we're talking about right now, which is at night, it all comes to life. The restless spirits of the artifacts and bodies and remains that have been dragged into this museum all come to life and stir shit up. Go nuts.

And that's kind of what we're dealing with right now we have these other cases of museums being haunted uh included in the story only just to serve up as evidence to prop up our main case which is kit is the british museum haunted first of all great job i have really enjoyed hearing about this. It feels fresh. It feels like something slightly different to how we would normally investigate a paranormal tale. And also very interesting because we've both been there many times. Yeah. As I said, it's a hard one to investigate just because, you know, a lot of our ghost stories have the same kind of formula they start at the beginning of the the haunting proceed towards the end we have our spirit and our reason

behind them being here where do you start with the british museum the building's old i guess that's a start it's filled with shit that shouldn't be there that was stolen from other countries it has like all the ingredients to create the most cursed and haunted building that should exist on earth so i guess it kind of depends on whether you look at this as an opportunity or a problem it does seem to me that it could be problematic that if we have literally tens of thousands of potentially cursed items under one roof, the evidence should be at a pretty high bar. That's true, yeah. That's safe to demand that.

And additionally, the sheer overlapping of the various items and histories would mean that it might even be hard to know that if you're feeling the effects of one curse, where it's even coming from. The British Museum has a lot of problems, but it is an incredible place and if you've been there you know one hallway could be filled with the most incredible artifacts all overlapping each other it's almost a bit overwhelming to have that much of the world's history in one location

and you are very right that you know if you're feeling a little drafty in the ancient Egyptian section that could be the curse leaking in from next door where the viking armor is still dripping in ghostly blood absolutely we don't know the ins and outs of how these items will affect the people near them so when I was doing my research kind of into the history of the British Museum and the exhibits they had there, I did stumble across this exhibit that existed once upon a time, which was kind of referred to as the secret museum that existed within the British Museum. Oh boy. And as soon as I heard about this, I thought I've hit the jackpot here that like I am absolutely

going to find some haunted shit in here I believe it was referred to as the secretum Okay, this is going very dark very fast Now I from that thought okay, we're gonna get the holy grail We're gonna get the ten commandments We're gonna get all of the most... Stuff that would melt your face if you laid eyes upon it. Yeah.

Turns out it's mostly just all of the clay pots that had dicks carved on them and vaginas and boobs. It really wasn't that secretive at all. I think just in the olden days, they were like, Oh, a penis.

No, no, no. We can't. We can't afford for the guards to get around. Yeah, we need to hide that away in our secret sex exhibition. And then once a month, all go in and have a crazy orgy. I forgot that it's also referred to as the British Museum's long-lost porn room. That's definitely not how it's referred to internally.

This is what I loved about it. This is why I thought it was funny. To enter the exhibit, you needed to have a special permit that was only given to, quote, gentlemen who could prove that they were mature of years and sound morals. Basically, we need to trust that you won't jerk it in the secruden.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of items that were on display here. Here's what looks like a man having sex with a goat. Oh, my God. That's, put it away. Hide it. Absolutely. Don't have it in the collection just give it away i believe it's a satyr and having sex with a goat i still think that's not okay i don't know a lot

about satyrs and their relationship to animals um it's a very intimate one apparently but uh lots of sexy uh items of. Not necessarily cursed or dangerous. There's a man having sex with a goat. There's a man having sex with a fish. There's a man having sex with... Geez, never seen that one before. A cow. Now, obviously, to get in here, you are a man of sound morals. But let's say you weren't.

Let's say I had a goat out back. Would that be of interest to you? Well, that is fascinating. It's pretty great and i for purely professional purposes i would love to receive an invite to the secretum yeah i believe i believe the room still exists in the british museum but obviously now that we're all adults of sound morals uh a lot of it has just been relocated to actual public spots in the museum. So you can see a lot of the objects that were once regarded to be too sexy for the public.

They just exist in the regular exhibits. Such is the downfall of society. We've become smut-loving bastards. The shit I've seen on the internet, you think a guy having sex with a goat is even gonna phase me that won't even get my attention oh they put two girls one cup next to the ancient egyptian collection absolutely they did they have no fear anymore i did go to when i was in amsterdam i went to um a sex museum granted as you do you have to um and it was great it was really cool that was uh

it was like a bit of history and then a bit of like you know teaching you about the sex industry throughout the ages and how it's changed and at the end you could get a photograph with a giant penis and who doesn't want that it's their mickey mouse it truly is a giant that can uh take pictures with you i really love the dutch brand it's like they mesh the sensibility and efficiencies of scandinavia the hard-working ethics of you know, the Germans and Central Europeans, and then the horniness of really just themselves. And they just embrace it. I feel like we possibly got a little off topic in that conclusion. So let's try and rewind it back and come back to our decision

as to whether or not the British Museum is haunted. Right. Was the secretum supposed to make me think it is haunted? I just wanted to include it as a fun fact because I thought it was worth mentioning. Because it is an interesting part of the history of the museum. I've talked a little bit about what I think. What do you think? We look at a lot of ghost stories on this podcast. And this location makes the most sense

out of anywhere in the world to be haunted, I would say. It's got to be top 10 locations. Aside from, you know, some of those houses where it's like there was a bloody axe murder and the ghost still walks the halls. Sure, that makes sense as well.

But a building like this with so much creepy stuff inside, if this isn't haunted, nowhere is, you know? This is big if true. It really is. I'm kind of on the fence with this one. I will say, I did a lot of searching online

and the stories that I did include are some of the most interesting and the most convincing. There are a ton more out there from a lot of different people who have either visited or worked at the museum but as you said it should almost be more overwhelming you know if if these objects were truly cursed or haunted or possessed the evidence should be damning you know it is true

and yet coming back to my own experience of working in a gallery granted nothing as ancient as uh what is present in the British Museum. But it did strike a nerve with me whenever you tell me that guards, curators even, and other staff of the museum have had paranormal experiences. Because in my limited experience, these are not the type of people who think like this. No. The people who work in these places, these are young, educated, city-living people

who don't really have the time or energy really to worry about the paranormal. So for them to experience that does say a lot to me. Yeah. You know what? I think I'm going to come down on a conclusion right now. As I said, if I say that this place isn't haunted I don't have the right to say anywhere else is haunted so I am going to I'm gonna it's gonna be a wild card for me this one

but I'm gonna say yeah the British Museum is haunted I'm gonna say the British Museum is haunted too oh my god here we go we did a double yes i can't believe it folks i mean i think we came down on the right conclusion there i know it's a bit of a loose one today um and what's surprising is usually the cases that we say yes to are more the scientific ones with the the ufo cases aliens amazing to have a double yes about a haunting that's right and it's well overdue and i hope that we will continue to be proven right here maybe we'll have to keep an eye on what goes on there maybe we'll have to go back ourselves maybe we'll have to um get the keys to the secretum i don't believe that it's empty i believe that there's even more f***ed up shit

in there yeah i'd say you know that is a double yes uh in the hopes of future future stories proving us even more right than we are right now absolutely what a great case though and what a rallying cry to going back and hopefully in a world that's a bit more opened up after covid seeing some of these cool places again. Absolutely. We got to start a petition. Get Rory past the McShrimp and to the Louvre. Right. Yeah.

Well, I think I know I think like the McShrimp can be part of it because whatever. It doesn't sound like it because it sounds like the moment that shrimp touches your lips, you you there is no holiday left. It's crazy, right? It's like I'm allergic to shrimp or something. Almost. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Get us, a petition to get us out into the world, exploring the paranormal.

We stay at the Hilton, obviously, adjacent to the airport because I've got a membership there so I get points every time we stay. You're not even in the city. So quick bus ride, quick bus ride in there and sure, do a little drive-thru,

pick up a couple McShrimps just for the road. I'm not eating a McShrimp. Then we go to the Louvre. We can spend all day there. We won't. We absolutely won't. Where's the bathroom though?

I do need to know where the bathrooms are on every floor. Just in case, just in case the McShrimp goes down wrong. I think it's a good idea. You know,

they've already got Jean the Skinner. Why not Rory the Shitter? Visiting the Louvre. Shrimp in hand. Visiting the f***ing Louvre, more like. We got there. We got there in the end. Thank you so much

to Amy Grisdell for helping with the research on this week's case. Thank you to Cammie Thoman for editing and thank you to you guys for listening to another episode of This Paranormal Life. Namaste brethren. Guys if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast or any episode of

the podcast and you want more or you just simply want to show your support head on over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life. Over there we have a ton of bonus episodes never released to the public before covering even crazier wilder conspiracy theories and paranormal creatures i'm gonna put it out there we're gonna go to the secretive and it's gonna be a bonus episode that's the kind of up and sexy shit we do on patreon that actually would be pretty fun

i think you can book in time in the secretum so maybe we'll bring a zoom along and head to the secretum in the british museum and if not just walk the aisles i think that two-headed dog is still on display so we could go point at him and see if we could set the alarms off anything is possible on patreon so check it. Patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life. Thank you as always for listening to this week's episode. And you know, we will be back next week with another paranormal tale. See you then.