We humans have always had this morbid fascination with death, so it’s no surprise that various civilizations through different ages had this obsession with dead bodies and preserving them as if they’re still alive. Some of the bodies are so well preserved they look almost flawless! Here are 18 of those people whose almost alive bodies will creep you out...
Lenin was the father of Russian Communism and the first leader of the Soviet Union.
Lenin's body requires extensive chemical baths, injections, and evaluation. The body's organs were removed and replaced with a humidifier and pumping system, designed to maintain the body's core temperature and fluid intake. When the Soviet Union existed, Lenin's suits were changed once a year. Since the fall of the communist nation, the mummy's suit is changed every five years.
Lenin's trademark clenched right hand.
Eva Perón was one of most beloved women in Argentina. She was the first wife of then Argentinean President Juan Perón.
The procedure was performed by renowned professor of anatomy, Dr. Pedro Ana. His embalming technique was so good, it was commonly referred to as the 'Art of Death.'
The procedure included replacing the blood and water weight with glycerin which preserved all internal organs, including the brain. The process took one year to complete. Her body is so life like that after it was stolen by the new government and hidden in Italy, a caretaker was driven mad by sexual fantasies of the body and fell in love with it.
Deep in the Catacombs of the Capuchin Monks in Sicily, inside a tiny glass casket lies the body of little Rosalia Lombardo. When she died in 1920 of pneumonia, her father, General Lombardo, was devastated. He sought the services of Italian Embalmer Alfredo Salafia to preserve her.
Using a mixture of chemicals including formalin, to kill bacteria, zinc salts to petrify the body and its organs, alcohol, salicylic acid, and glycerin. The end result was nothing short of extraordinary. The body was so well preserved she came to be known as 'Sleeping Beauty.'
Also known as Lady Dai or Marquise of Dai, was the wife of Li Cang, the Marquis of Dai, during the Han Dynasty. She gained fame more than 2,000 years after her death when her tomb was discovered inside a hill known as Mawangdui, in Changsha, Hunan, China.
She is undisputed, the single best-preserved mummy ever found, not in terms of physical appearance, but in the simple completeness of her body. Unlike Lenin, her internal organs are perfectly intact, including her brain.
The autopsy revealed many clues about her life. She was overweight, suffered from lower back pain, had clogged arteries, and had a severely damaged heart. Basically, she is the oldest diagnosed case of heart disease.
Over 500 years ago, 15-year-old La Doncella and two other children were left to freeze to death by the Inca in a ritual sacrifice.
This mummy gives us the best look at how the ancient Inca dressed.
Strands of gray hair were found in her braids suggesting a very stressful life.
He was a Russian Buddhist lama monk who died mid-chant in the lotus posture in 1927. His last testament was a simple request to be buried how he was found.
In 1955, the monks exhumed his body and discovered it to be incorrupt.
This peaceful, careworn face is that of a 2,000-year-old bog body.
So well preserved was this Pre-Iron Age corpse that he fooled those who discovered him into thinking he was a present day murder victim.
While her body itself isn’t particularly well-preserved, she is notable for the intricate tattoos that still paint her mummified skin, despite the fact that she died more than 2,500 years ago. She was around 25 years old when she passed away.
She was born a miller's daughter in 1844 in Lourdes, France. Throughout her life, she reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary on an almost daily basis. One such a vision lead her to discover a spring which has been reported to cure illness. 150 years later, miracles are still being reported. Bernadette died at the age of 35 from tuberculosis in 1879. During canonization, her body was exhumed in 1909 and was discovered incorrupt.
St. Bernadette when she was alive.
St. Bernadette's body lays in a gold reliquary. Her face and hands have been covered in wax as customary with french incorrupt saints.
Sometimes mother nature can preserve a body even better than embalming can. Meet John Torrington, Petty Officer of the fabled Franklin Expedition to the Arctic Circle.
He died of lead poisoning at age 22 and was buried in the frozen tundra along with three others at the expedition's campsite.
In the 1980s, his grave was exhumed by scientists in an attempt to discover the cause of the expedition's failure. When they opened the coffins and thawed the solid block of ice inside, they were astonished, and frightened, by what was inside.
In 2003, archeologists excavating China's Xiaohe Mudi Graveyards discovered a cache of mummies, including one that would become known as the Beauty of Xiaohe.
Hair, skin and even eyelashes were perfectly preserved, the woman's natural beauty is evident even after four millennia.
Finding this mummy forced historians to rethink what they knew about the interaction of Eastern and Western Civilizations.
For this 3,000-year-old mummy is caucasian yet he was discovered buried in China. One of several hundred mummies that are now known as China's Celtic Mummies. He was found alongside three women and a baby in Turkestan, China. The clothes he was wearing were equally as baffling and the mummy itself. Perfectly preserved, they were made of European wool.
Lying face down in the frozen Everest slopes, lies the body of one of history's lost pioneers, George Mallory.
In 1924, he and his partner Andrew Irvin attempted the impossible; to be the first humans ever to summit the tallest mountain on Earth.
In 1999 a NOVA-BBC sponsored expedition was launched to try to find Mallory and Irvin. Within hours they made history, 700 feet below the location of the ax, a frozen body dressed in wool and fur was discovered.
Ramesses II was a pharaoh who dutifully served Egypt during the 20th dynasty. For over a millennium, scholars have fiercely debated the events leading to his death. Thankfully, his body was treated with a complex array of different treatments following his death that preserved his mortal remains. Many questions were answered after his tomb was unearthed. CT scans discovered a deep cut on his throat, 2.7 inches (2 cm) in length and going almost to his spine.
Submerged for 600 years in a waterlogged coffin, a remarkably preserved Ming Dynasty mummy was discovered not in some rural village or a long lost mountainside crypt but in the center of town during a construction project!
A huge jade ring was found on the mummy's hand.
She was discovered by accident under a construction site, immersed in a brown fluid that preserved her.
Ötzi the Iceman is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries ago). The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch, on the border between Austria and Italy.
He is Europe’s oldest natural human mummy and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans.
In the mid-20th century, several incredibly well-preserved bodies were discovered in a peat bog in Denmark. Among them, the Grauballe Man is the most fascinating. His still-haunted face, stark red hair, and perfectly discernible facial features also make him one of the most unsettling mummies to look at.
Radiocarbon dating of his still-intact liver showed that he lived more than 2,000 years ago, and the evidence found with his body—or lack thereof—suggests that was killed as part of a sacrificial ritual. He died when he was about 30 years old, probably from a deep cut to the neck.
He was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. Tutankhamun was 9 years old when he became pharaoh and reigned for approximately 10 years, until his death.
Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings (where he still resides) was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 almost completely intact — the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb ever found.
While Tutankhamun may be the most famous mummy in the world, he certainly is not the most well preserved.