OBSIDIAN PRESS
Lying in a Tomb: The Mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico
by Jeannette M. Potts, MD
From the Author
“Can I tell you a story?
In the early 1980s, I studied the naturally mummified bodies of Guanajuato, Mexico. I also survived: a curse, an abusive relationship, and a world of machismo fueled by alcohol. “I returned in 2024 and 2025 to the city that never left my soul—to reconnect with its mysteries and confront the ghosts of my past. This is a photograph of the young woman I was at the time.
This book is who I am now.”
—Jeannette
The Background
In 1865, routine exhumations in Guanajuato, Mexico, revealed bodies preserved by the earth itself, mummified naturally. The city began to display them, and a spectacle grew around the dead. Ray Bradbury entered the catacombs in 1945 and later confessed: “The experience so wounded and terrified me, I could hardly wait to flee Mexico.”
In 1979, Werner Herzog opened Nosferatu, his vampire film, with these same figures, writing, “They stand like a chorus of ghosts from which no sound ever comes.”
Image from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979)
©Werner-Herzog-Film/Deutsche Kinemathek
The Book
In the early 1980s, Jeannette Potts gained private access, alone, late at night, to the mummies. What began as research became a decades-long pursuit through morgues, archives, and museum back rooms, chasing names, histories, and the uneasy commerce built around human remains.
Threaded through her investigation is a haunting personal journey: a brutal romance, a whispered curse, and the fear that Guanajuato might claim her, too.
Today, Dr. Potts returns to Guanajuato to give the mummies a voice, and to finally share her intimate story.