For over 3,000 years mummies were made by the Egyptians in an ever evolving process. To be perfected by removing the internal organs and placing them in canopic jars, removing moisture from the body, and protecting the dried remains with layer after layer of tightly wound strips of linen, leaving only a guess as to what the remains looked like after several centuries.

With the brain removed with a hook through the nose or occasionally an eye socket, eyes pushed into the eye socket and stones or glass substituted, with the fingernails and toenails tied onto the body so that they wouldn't fall off the mummy was a very imposing figure. It was no wonder that fear would replace sense and the mummy would become "The Mummy" with curses to be unleashed on grave robbers and unwary explorers. It was one way to best protect their tomb.

One of the best stories of a mummy is told in a segment from "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie". It is a tale based on a Arthur Conan Doyle story, "Lot 249", where a student unleashes a deadly curse on his classmates with the mummy stalking and removing their brains with the "hook". The suspense is great! The fear of a mummy, something that is dead, that can't be killed is strong.

Less known than his "Dracula", Bram Stoker's "The Jewel of Seven Stars" involves a female mummy named Queen Tera. She was quite imposing too. With seven fingers, and the ability to be reanimated, she brought much suspense to this gothic novel. Though it originally had a much darker ending than the 1913 version which is published more often.

..."We laid her in the sarcophagus, and placed the severed hand in its true position on her breast. Under it was laid the Jewel of Seven Stars, which Mr. Trelawny had taken from the safe. It seemed to flash and blaze as he put it in its place. The glare of the electric lights shone cold on the great sarcophagus fixed ready for the final experiment--the Great Experiment, consequent on the researches during a lifetime of these two travelled scholars. Again, the startling likeness between Margaret and the mummy, intensified by her own extraordinary pallor, heightened the strangeness of it all.

When all was finally fixed, three-quarters of an hour had gone; for we were deliberate in all our doings. Margaret beckoned me, and I went with her to her room. There she did a thing which moved me strangely, and brought home to me keenly the desperate nature of the enterprise on which we were embarked. One by one, she blew out the candles carefully, and placed them back in their usual places. When she had finished she said to me.

'They are done with! Whatever comes--Life or Death-- there will be no purpose in their using now!'"... Bram Stoker