The Pedro Mummy: Inspiration for Whispers of the Stones
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| THE PEDRO MUMMY |
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/The_San_Pedro_Mountain_Mummy.jpgnknown (Life time: 1936) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commonsption
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While living in Laramie, Wyoming, Vickie came across the curious case of the Pedro Mummy. According to old newspaper accounts the mummified remains of a tiny man had been discovered sitting cross-legged in a cave by miners in the area in the 1930s. There's no There's no question that the Pedro Mummy actually existed. It became an object of curiosity and scientific speculation until its disappearance in the 1950s. It was not a fake.
The little mummy, which was soon nicknamed "Pedro" because he was found in the Pedro Mountains changed hands several times and was sold and resold. For a time, it was displayed in a drug store, then a used car lot, then a cigar shop in Casper. In the care of Ivan Goodman in the 1950s, the mummy was examined and X-rayed. It was found the mummy had a definite human rib-cage.
At the time of the Pedro Mummy’s discovery, it was thought to be the remains of a tiny, ancient little man in his late sixties. Many people believed that the discovery of the tiny mummy might be proof that the “Little People” of Native American legends actually existed. The “Little People” are part of the legends and folklore of the Shoshoni, Arapahoe. and many other tribes. In some tales the tiny men, who remain hidden in caverns and deep in the mountains, are good-natured tricksters, in others they are more mean-spirited and may shoot arrows at their larger counterparts. In many tales the “Little People” serve as spiritual guides or helpers to lost travelers.
In the 1980s the original X-rays were carefully studied and scientists indicated that the tiny remains were more likely to be those of a malformed infant who had been left in the cave to die instead of a full-grown man. The infant might have suffered from anencephaly, which would account for the misshapen head. But it didn’t explain fully developed rib-cage or reports that the mummy had teeth. Since the mummy can no longer be found to examine, no one really knows who he was or how he got there.
The last owner of the mummy was New Yorker Leonard Wadler. After that, the mummy disappeared from history. Many articles have appeared about the Pedro Mummy, including stories in the Casper Star Tribune. Since its disappearance, scientists and collectors have had interest in finding the missing mummy, even offering rewards, so it can be examined.
All of this caught our interest and we decided to write a mystery starting with the premise: what if some antique dealer actually had the mummy? What would happen if such an artifact resurfaced?
In our third Jeff McQuede novel, Whispers of the Stones, Sheriff McQuede investigates such an event. The details concerning the mummy in this story are as true as we could make them from varying research sources. The rest, of course, is fiction.
