 | | Monstrous: Stan the T. rex |
If you were to spend a night at Manchester Museum surrounded by mysterious objects gathered from the four corners of the globe, would you be scared? What phantoms might begin to stir in the dark corridors of your imagination? Staff who work there tell stories of an old porter who used to come and have a morning cup of tea with his friends before work, long after he'd retired; a Victorian gentleman who likes to hang out with the Egyptian mummies at night; and ghostly footsteps that follow staff around at night when they’re trying to lock up. When the Museum was undergoing restoration in 2000, one of the Museum staff had a strange encounter in the Egyptology department.
 | | Walk like an Egyptian? |
He said: "I’ll never forget the sight of a strange face looking back at me for as long as I live. The restoration work had resulted in plenty of dust circulating round the room. And, on top of one of the glass cases, the dust had created a kind of death mask and the features followed you around the room." Alarming! One visitor from Longsight had a very spooky experience one night at The Manchester Museum:
"It was a hot summer night and I was the call-out engineer for an alarm company, when I had to attend the Museum due to the security alarm having activated in the Egyptology department. When I arrived close to midnight, the security people said they would lock me in to trace the problem, and that when I found the fault I should telephone them to come back and let me out. When they had gone I realised that they had only left the foyer light on and that the whole place was in darkness. And I couldn't find the light switches. | "I was petrified! I didn’t know whether to shine my torch and do a mummy count or hide in the darkness. Was I glad to get out of there..." | | Alarm engineer |
"Fortunately, I had a small torch with failing batteries and, with this, I walked off into the darkness. All around me were these Egyptian mummies in their sarcophaguses and, as I approached the alarm panel, I could see the equipment’s BDI (background disturbance indicator) light flashing in time with my steps, as my movements were being detected. I stood still for a while and, of course, the BDI light also turned off as there was now no movement. "But then after a few minutes this BDI light started to flash again for a few seconds and then stop and this process kept repeating itself, just as it would with someone walking around.
 | | Death mask at the Museum |
"I was petrified, I didn’t know whether to shine my torch and do a mummy count or hide in the darkness. Eventually I summoned the courage to carry on and two hours later I found the problem. "Because it had been such a hot day, somebody had left a window open on a stairwell and forgot to shut it again on securing the building. A nearby movement sensor was picking up the turbulence as the cool air entered the building and this was the source of the problem. Was I glad to get out of there!" | 
