Exploring the Haunted Stories and Mysterious Artifacts Hidden Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Step inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for a tour unlike any other. From witch balls to banshees to watchful mummies, freelance writer Lindsey Kelleher explores the eerie stories and mysterious artifacts that bring the museum’s haunted side to life.
(By Lindsey Kelleher)
Seeing Across the Shoreline
Envision this: you’re standing on the shoreline at your local lake, and you think you can see across the water all the way to the next town over.
Are there houses? Trees? Woods? Local businesses?
Do you know who lives there? What they do for a living? What their living situation is like? Yes, you say to all of these questions. Well… maybe. Some of your friends may think you’re crazy. Others may think you’re psychic. And if you lived in 17th-century England, people would say you’ve spent too much time looking into a witch ball.
What Is a Witch Ball?
A witch ball, used to ward off evil spirits, is one of many artifacts that can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York City.
Some fun facts about witch balls, as told by my tour guide Evie, are that people kept them as decorative pieces in their homes to keep evil spirits away. People believed the balls could protect them from bad things happening to them. Back in 17th- and 18th-century England, if someone woke up with a cough or a pain in their side one morning, they could have simply been getting sick. But the cough or pain could also, in their minds, be from a witch casting a spell on them.
Ghost Stories in an Art Museum
As you’re preparing to tour Metropolitan Art Museum—or any art museum—haunted houses and ghosts may not be what come to mind. But be prepared: there could be some strange stories lurking through the walls. Each piece of art has a story, and sometimes more than one story, behind it. Some stories are passed down from the artists themselves, some are told by the tour guides, and others may come from your imagination as you try to understand what each piece could represent.
A Distressed Visitor: The Tempest
One of the first things our group encountered was a rather intense visitor from the late 1800s or early 1900s. She wasn’t a tourist — she was a sculpture. A pale-faced woman carved in marble, mouth rounded into an O, eyes sunken and wide with disbelief.
Her name: The Tempest.
Her creator: French artist Auguste Rodin.
The museum’s description said she was unusually stressed for a woman of her era. My tour guide suggested she might be a banshee — the mournful spirit from Irish folklore who who sings sad songs at funerals. Personally? I thought she looked like she’d just seen a ghost and was halfway through planning her escape route and was running for the hills .
Among the Mummies of the Egyptian Wing
Hopefully the spirits from the mummies didn’t scare the banshee too much.
Over in the museum’s Egyptian Wing, mummies watched our tour group from their sarcophaguses, which are containers that held their coffins. That’s where the mummies rest — or at least their bodies do. Their spirits? Who knows. They watched us silently from inside their sarcophagi, their ancient containers once used to hold their coffins.
One creepy fact is that mummies were once ground up to make paint pigments and even (disturbingly) used as food. If that’s not eerie enough, just standing in that wing makes you wonder what their spirits are up to now, drifting somewhere beyond the hieroglyphics carved into tombs, temples, and shrines meant to bring their gods to life.
Footsteps and Chills in the American Wing
Thoughts of the afterlife don’t end in the Egyptian Wing. Even though the MET isn’t officially haunted, legend has it that some ghosts might pass through the museum every now and again.
Should you ever visit the MET and hear…
Slow, deliberate footsteps in the American Wing? You might be crossing paths with a wandering Confederate soldier searching for his regiment—or simply a museum employee making their rounds.
Or if you…
Ever feel an unexpected chill sweep through that same gallery? It could be the ghostly presence of a curator’s daughter watching over the space, according to our tour guide. Or—it’s nothing more than overachieving A/C vents. Belief, here, is part of the experience.
A Spooky Surprise Behind the Art
So if you think viewing art is just about figuring out an artist’s emotions, think again. There may be folklore behind the masterpieces, too. You may be in for a spooky surprise.
Where’s a museum you’d like to tour?
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