← Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
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- [00:02]
Heidi Wong
Hi listeners, it's Heidi Wong. Real quick, before today's episode of Twisted Tales, I wanted to tell you about
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Katie Ring
another show from Crime House that I know you'll love.
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Heidi Wong
America's Most Infamous Crimes. Hosted by Katie Ring. Each week, Katie takes on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history.
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Katie Ring
Serial killers who terrorize cities, unsolved mysteries
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Heidi Wong
that keep detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes Tuesday through Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is crime house. A tomb sealed for 3,000 years where an ancient pharaoh waited in darkness. And when an archaeologist broke it open, did he unleash a terrifying curse? Welcome to Twisted A Crime House Original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep into humanity's darkest stories and how they influenced some of the world's biggest horror movies. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier the better. And for early access and ad free listening, subscribe to our Crime House community on Apple Podcasts. We're also on YouTube with full videos bringing each story to life. Just search for Twisted Tales and be sure to like and subscribe. Today, I'm diving into the real history behind one of horror's most terrifying legends. The Curse of the Mummy. The truths, the myths, the mysterious deaths, and how they all led to an iconic franchise that's about to come back in a huge way.
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Heidi Wong
Let's start in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, a stretch of desert where some of ancient Egypt's most powerful pharaohs and nobles were laid to rest. They were supposed to spend the afterlife surrounded by their earthly treasures. But when archaeologists realized what was buried under the sand a couple thousand years later, their eternal slumber was disturbed. And that might have made them very angry. In November of 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter had been digging in the Valley of the Kings for the past few years, funded by a wealthy aristocrat named George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Most experts thought the Valley was tapped out, that there was basically nothing left to find after decades of treasure hunters picking it clean. Carter wasn't convinced, though a few artifacts had been found with the name of some obscure pharaoh from the eighteenth Dynasty, a boy king called Tutankhamun. King Tut had died around 1323 BCE, when he was 19 or so, not even a decade after becoming pharaoh as a kid, and he wasn't exactly popular. His father had made a lot of unpopular changes, especially when it came to religion. So after King Tut unexpectedly died, the pharaohs who came after him tried to erase him from history by scratching his name off of monuments in official records, which is partially why nobody had found his tomb in the thousands of years since his death. That is, until Howard Carter came along. Carter had a hunch Tut's tomb was still out there in the Valley of the Kings, buried under tons of rubble and debris. But they'd been searching since 1917 with basically nothing to show for it. This was George Herbert's last season funding the whole thing. Before he called it off, it looked like they'd be going home empty handed. But on November 4, 1922, a water boy on the team was digging in the sand with a stick when he uncovered a stone step. He called the crew over, and they found another and another. Then a whole staircase leading down into the bedrock, ending at a sealed door. When Carter saw what was down there, he sent an urgent message to George Herbert. Get here now. Herbert knew that Carter wouldn't send a message like that unless he found something big. So he rushed to Egypt. And on November 26, they opened a sealed doorway at the bottom of the staircase. When Carter peered through a small hole into the burial chamber with a candle, Herbert asked what he could see. Carter's response became legendary. Wonderful things. The tomb was almost perfectly intact. Gold, jewelry, chariots, furniture, weapons. And the mummified body of King tut himself. Over 5,000 objects were crammed into four small rooms. It would take almost a decade to catalog everything. The discovery made headlines worldwide. People couldn't get enough of it. But George Herbert made a controversial move. He gave exclusive rights to to the story to the Times of London newspaper. The other newspapers did not take this well. Reporters had traveled all the way to Egypt to cover what was arguably the biggest archaeological discovery of all time. And now they weren't getting any access to it. So they started looking for other angles. And then George Herbert got sick. In March 1923, Herbert took a trip down to the Nile river and a mosquito bit him on the cheek. Then he nicked the bite while he was shaving, and it got infected. The infection turned into blood poisoning, and on April 5, 1923, Herbert died in a hotel in Cairo. He was 56 years old. But some people thought a different kind of infection had killed him. Just days before his death, a popular novelist named Marie Corelli was mentioned in the Daily Express newspaper. She said she owned a rare Arabic text warning of dire punishment for anyone who entered a sealed tomb. So when Herbert died, the press connected the dots. This was the story that they'd been looking for, and they ran with it. Some reporters claim that at the exact moment of Herbert's death, all the lights went out across Cairo. And back at his castle in England, his pet terrier, Susie, supposedly howled and dropped dead. Newspapers claimed a cursed inscription had been found in King Tut's tomb. Death comes on swift wings to him who disturbs the king's peace. And then more people started dying. An American businessman named George J. Gould, who visited the tomb, died of pneumonia in 1923, shortly after George Herbert. Then Herbert's half brother Aubrey, died just five months after his sibling. He was blind and got all of his teeth pulled to try and cure it. After that, British archaeologist Hugh Evelyn White died by suicide in 1924. He allegedly wrote, I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear. Following his death, a few years went by without any more tragedies. But then Arthur Mace, an archaeologist who helped open the tomb, died in 1928. The next year, Richard Bethel, who worked on the dig and was one of the first people to enter the tomb, was found dead at a gentleman's club in London. It wasn't just newspapers buying into the idea of King Tut's curse. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, claimed that an evil elemental from the tomb might have caused Herbert's death. And according to the Daily Express, terrified people across Britain were donating Egyptian antiquities to museums to avoid getting cursed themselves. Mass hysteria was spreading across the world. But they probably didn't need to be scared because the newspapers made it all up. Or at least they exaggerated the story beyond recognition. Marie Corelli's ancient Arabic text, let's just say it was imaginative. There was no ancient warning. She just wanted attention. The lights going out across Cairo at the moment of George Herbert's death didn't happen. And if it did, power outages were pretty common in Cairo. And Susie the dog didn't drop dead at the same moment either, although she did die four hours later. The cursed inscription supposedly carved into the tomb. Death comes on swift wings to him who disturbs the king's peace. That wasn't real either. And if you look at all of the deaths linked to the curse, there's an explanation for all of them. And Howard Carter himself, the guy who actually opened the tomb and spent years working inside it. He lived until 1939, 17 years after the discovery. He died of complications from lymphoma in his mid-60s, which was actually pretty good for that era. His tombstone even quotes an Egyptian blessing. No curse, no mysterious illness, just a normal life, well lived. But the newspapers had already won. The pharaoh's curse became one of the defining cultural moments of the 1920s, completely changing how people thought about Egypt. Tombs weren't just historical sites anymore. They were dangerous, forbidden places where the dead could reach out and punish the living. The name Imhotep would soon become attached to this terror. But the real man behind that name was he was nothing like the monster that people imagined.
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Katie Ring
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- [12:43]
Heidi Wong
the legend of the mummy's curse needed a villain, but King Tut managed to avoid it. Instead, the name Imhotep became associated with Egyptian curses and vengeful mummies. But here's the truth about who Imhotep actually was. Imhotep actually existed. He lived around 2650 BCE during Egypt's third dynasty. And he wasn't some evil priest. He was one of the most respected and accomplished figures in ancient Egypt. Imhotep was a polymath, architect, physician, high priest, scribe, astronomer, and one of the pharaoh's chief advisors. His most famous achievement was designing the first pyramid ever built in Egypt. If ancient Egypt Had a Leonardo da Vinci. It was him. Before Imhotep, people were only building with mud, brick and wood structures that would crumble and decay over time. Imhotep revolutionized architecture by figuring out how to construct massive stone buildings that would last thousands of years. He essentially invented giant stone architecture. His pyramid rises about 200ft high and consists of six massive terraces stacked on top of each other. It was the tallest structure in the world when it was built, and it's still standing today over 4,600 years later. But Imhotep's influence didn't stop at architecture. He was also a doctor and a healer. The medical texts he wrote mentioned the treatment of diseases, setting broken bones and performing surgeries. His knowledge was so advanced that 2,000 years after his death, some Egyptians started worshiping him as the God of medicine and healing. So calling him a cursed villain is more than a stretch. It's the total opposite of who he actually was. But somehow his name would become synonymous with terror and vengeance. And Imhotep wasn't the only historical figure whose story got twisted in the name of a good horror story. There was also a queen named Ankha Sinoman, who was actually King Tut's wife and his half sister. That's weird enough, but here's where things get genuinely creepy. After Tut died, the queen vanished from history completely, practically. No info on her tomb or burial, no records, just gone. Some believe that she was forced to marry the man that took power after Tut's death. Others think that she died mysteriously or was murdered. Her disappearance is one of ancient Egypt's greatest unsolved mysteries. The real Ankhesinnamon's fate might be even darker than any fictional curse. A young queen who disappeared without a trace right after her husband's unexpected death. Almost like a curse of its own. The real Imhotep and the real Ankhesinnamon lived over thousand years apart in completely different dynasties. They never met. But Egypt's real history is of full of genuine mysteries that don't need exaggeration. Egypt has always been a land of legends. Stories about hidden tombs, buried treasures, and cities lost to time. And some of those legends turned out to be true. Let me tell you about the city of Taunis Heraklion. Located where the Nile river met the Mediterranean Sea, it's one of the most famous cities in ancient mythology. It's where Hercules supposedly first set foot in Egypt. Paris and Helen of Troy went there before the Trojan War. But even though it was mentioned by ancient historians as an actual place, no One in modern times could find any trace of it. They figured it was either just a myth or had been completely destroyed. Then, in 1996, an underwater archaeologist started mapping the seabed a few miles off Egypt's coast. And after four years of searching, they found something massive. A colossal rock emerged from the underwater shadows, then stone faces and statues, then the ruins of an entire city. Tanas Heraklion was actually real, and it had been sitting on the ocean floor for over 1,000 years. The discovery was massive. The team found all kinds of artifacts, from shipwrecks to jewelry and giant statues up to 16ft tall. The question was, how did it all end up underwater? It turns out that the area was hit by a series of earthquakes and tidal waves around 150. It was so bad, the land underneath the city completely liquefied and collapsed. Everything seemed to happen all at once because everything was preserved in a perfect snapshot. There were temples in the middle of construction, ships still loaded with cargo. Even 2,400-year-old wicker baskets filled with fruit. It goes to show just how much left there is to uncover. And you won't believe how far people have gone to find it. First, the 19th and 20th centuries were archaeology's Wild West. Western archaeologists flooded to Egypt, backed by wealthy patrons and museums desperate for exotic artifacts to display. And they weren't exactly subtle about what they were doing. Different teams would race to excavate sites. First, they'd bribe local officials for permits and exclusive access. Then, when they found a promising location, they'd hired armed guards to keep rival archaeologists away from their digs. And if they found something valuable, they'd smuggle it out of the country before anyone could stop them. Let me give you an example of how crazy this got. Giovanni Belzoni was an Italian circus strongman turned treasure hunter who worked in Egypt in the early 1800s. And those two jobs went together about as well as you'd think. He used battering rams to smash through the walls of the tombs. He'd even crush mummies by leaning on them by accident. And when there was something that he wanted, he would hack it apart and send the best pieces to his bosses in England. Later generations of archaeologists called him, quote, the most notorious tomb robber Egypt has ever known. But in Belzoni's era, this was totally normal. Expected, even archaeological sites were damaged beyond repair. Entire tombs collapsed because treasure hunters were smashing through them. They created the real world version of what would become a powerful story. Greedy outsiders invading sacred spaces, stealing what wasn't theirs, and facing the consequences It's a story with heroes, villains and real stakes. There's just one ingredient. The horror. Which brings us to the Book of the Dead.
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Heidi Wong
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Hannah or Suruthi from Red Handed
If you like your true crime like you like your coffee, Red Handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah. I'm Saroti. And every week on Red Handed we break down a different fascinating case. From the most recent US Trials everyone is obsessing over, like Brendan Banfield, Karen Reid and Ellen Greenberg, to the most unbelievable stories from around the world. There's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover. Getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Red handed has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now. Plus be sure to check out our weekly sister show, Shorthand, where we unpack everything from the Black death to Area 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts.
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Heidi Wong
The Book of the Dead is one of the most iconic artifacts from ancient Egypt. In pop culture, it's portrayed as this ultimate power source. Read from it and you can bring back the dead, summon plagues, and command supernatural forces. It's terrifying, but not exactly accurate. The ancient Egyptians didn't even call it the Book of the Dead. The actual title translates to something like Book of Coming forth by day. The idea was to help people navigate the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians believed death was just the beginning of a journey. Your soul had to pass through the underworld, facing challenges, dangerous creatures, and divine judges. The Book of the Dead was essentially a guidebook. It had spells for transforming into different animals to escape danger, passing through locked gates, defending yourself against monsters, and proving your worthiness to the gods. The most famous ceremony is the weighing of the heart. You had to stand before Osiris, God of the dead. While your heart was weighed against the feather of Mu', at, the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice, and cosmic order. If your heart was heavier than the feather, weighed down by sin and wrongdoing, it would be devoured by Amit, a demon with the head of a crocodile, the torso of a lion, and the back of a hippopotamus. And after Amit devoured your heart, your soul would cease to exist. Complete annihilation. But if your heart balanced perfectly with the feather, you'd be allowed to enter the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian paradise where you'd live forever in perfect peace. The focus isn't on resurrecting the dead or bringing mummies back to life. The spells are all about helping the the dead stay dead peacefully and successfully. But if you've seen the Mummy, I know what you're thinking, right? The Book of the Dead isn't the scariest part of the movie. The scarabs are in horror stories. They're terrifying bugs that burrow under people's skin and devour them from the inside out. In reality, though, scarabs are harmless. They're dung beetles. They roll around balls of animal waste. Ancient Egyptians did consider them sacred, though. The scarab beetle was a symbol of rebirth, regeneration, and transformation. When they saw scarabs emerging from the ground, it seemed like spontaneous creation. They didn't understand the full reproductive process, so it looked like new life appearing from nothing. It reminded them of Khepri, a God associated with the rising sun. Just like Khepri rolled the sun across the sky each day, scarabs rolled their little balls of dung across the ground. So the Egyptians carved scarab amulets, placed them in tombs, and used them as symbols of eternal life and resurrection. But eating people and crawling under their skin? That's made up from movies, not actual Egyptian beliefs. And then there's the mummification process itself. Ancient Egyptians developed mummification over thousands of years, perfecting techniques that to preserve bodies for eternity. The goal was to preserve the body so the soul could return to it. They removed internal organs, dried the body with salts, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in elaborately decorated coffins. They built elaborate tombs filled with everything a person might need in the next world. Food, furniture, clothing, jewelry, even servants, represented by figurines believed to come to life and serve the dead. Some tombs contained hundreds of these small statues, and a lot of them were inscribed with spells. It was all about making sure they had a comfortable, successful afterlife, about respecting the dead and helping them on their journey. But by 1999, mummies had become something else, something to be scared of. And I'll tell you how it all came together into one unforgettable adventure. The Mummy hit theaters in May 1990, and it became an instant hit. But director Stephen Sommers wasn't trying to make a straight up horror film. He wanted something different. A romantic adventure in the spirit of Indiana Jones mixed with Universal's classic monster legacy. Here's the setup. American adventurer Rick o' Connell teams up with librarian Evelyn Carnahan and her con artist brother Jonathan. They're hunting for treasure in the City of the Dead. But they're not alone. American treasure hunters are racing to get there first. Everyone's taking huge risks, including Evelyn, who accidentally reads aloud from the Book of the Dead. This wakes up Imhotep, an Egyptian high priest who was killed 3,000 years ago as punishment for trying to resurrect his dead lover, who was also the pharaoh's mistress. When Imhotep got caught in the act, the ancient Egyptians mummified him, cut out his tongue and buried him with flesh eating scarabs in a sarcophagus designed to trap him for eternity. And now he's free and he's hungry. Imhotep starts draining the life force from everyone nearby to regenerate his body. Each attack brings him closer to full strength. His eyes return, then his tongue. His flesh reforms piece by gruesome piece. Once he's whole, Imhotep needs the Book of the Dead to resurrect his dead lover. And he thinks Evelyn is her reincarnation, which means she needs to be sacrificed. So Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan have to race against time to stop an immortal priest who commands plagues, controls sandstorms and gets more powerful every day. The movie delivers unforgettable moments. Flesh eating scarabs burrowing under skin. That massive sandstorm with screaming faces chasing the heroes across the desert. Critics praised it for balancing action, humor and horror perfectly. Audiences loved it so much, it spawned two sequels and became a defining film of the late 90s. And guess what? There's another mummy movie coming out right now. It's a new horror take from the Evil Dead rise director Lee Cronin that drops in April of 2026. And it's also been confirmed that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are coming back for another installation installment of their franchise in 2028. There's a reason people want more. Almost 30 years later, the movie felt plausible enough that audiences could imagine cursed tombs and ancient priests waiting beneath Egyptian sand. And now you know why? Because a lot of it the mummy's curse, the treasure hunters, the death, the fear that really happened. Hollywood turned Egypt's sacred funeral practices into horror. Mummies became monsters. Sacred burial grounds became death traps. Ancient Egyptians deepest religious beliefs became the source of curses and supernatural evil. But maybe that transformation tells us more about ourselves, about how we view death, about our complicated relationship with other cultures, about the thrill we get from being scared by things we don't fully understand. The mummy isn't really about ancient Egypt at all. It's about adventure, about romance. It's about regular people facing danger and discovering they're braver than they thought. It's about the thrill of discovering something ancient and powerful, even if that discovery comes with consequences. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted Tales, a crime House original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's story? Anything you're dying for me to COVID Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow Twisted Tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious. And remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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