The Titanic Conspiracy Theory That A Mummy Cursed The Ship
Wikimedia CommonsA 1909 Pearson’s Magazine cover featuring an “unlucky mummy” — that was later accused of cursing the Titanic.
One Titanic conspiracy theory alleges that the ship sank due to a mummy’s curse — and this idea emerged shortly after the liner sank. On May 12, 1912, The Washington Post ran a story with this headline: “Ghost of the Titanic: Vengeance of Hoodoo Mummy Followed Man Who Wrote Its History.”
William T. Stead, a British editor who was a passenger on the Titanic, shared with his fellow passengers the tale of a cursed mummy, an ancient “Egyptian priestess” who brought misfortune, destruction, and even death to those who disturbed her — or even dared to share her story with the world.
“[Stead] told of one person after another who had come to disaster after writing its sinister history,” the Post article stated, as reported by Slate. “‘I know the story, but I shall never write it,’ added the veteran publicist.”
Within hours of Stead sharing this information with his fellow passengers, the Titanic crashed into an iceberg, and Stead sank to the bottom of the ocean along with it. This led some to believe that Stead talking about the mummy on the voyage doomed not only Stead, but hundreds of others.
This theory has expanded over the years to claim that the unlucky mummy was actually on board the Titanic, as some alleged the British Museum sold the mummy to an American who was traveling home on the Titanic.
But in reality, the so-called “cursed mummy” in question never left the British Museum — and it was actually just the coffin lid of the Priestess of Amun in the museum, not a full mummy. And cargo records for the Titanic don’t show any mummy ever being loaded on the ship.
As a Snopes article put it: “A few days after the Titanic’s sinking, one of the survivors recounted Stead’s ‘cursed mummy’ tale in an interview with the New York World, and eventually the ghost story Stead and Murray invented, Stead’s presence aboard the Titanic, and reports of Stead’s having related the mummy tale to Titanic passengers became jumbled together, producing a new legend about an actual mummy aboard the Titanic.”
