I enjoy finding stories about unusual creatures that have been found or people are still on the hunt trying to find. This caught my eye. The Fiji mermaid, or also referred to as Feejee mermaid, was a mummified body that looked half mammal and half fish.In 1842, Moses Kimball brought the creature to P.T. Barnum’s attention. They formed a written agreement that Barnum would advertise it as a mermaid with Kimball getting $12.50 a week and remain owner of the creature. Barnum called his creature “The Feejee Mermaid” and told all that the mermaid was caught by a Dr. J. Griffin. There were stories of another mermaid called the “Banff Merman”, which was on display at the Indian Trading Post. P.T. Barnum claimed that it was a torso of a monkey sewn to a back half of a fish and had many people believing him.
For several centuries, mermaids have been a part of entertainment shows. It wasn’t until P.T. Barnum’s exhibit of the Fiji mermaid, they became popular with many others putting them in their attractions, even Robert Ripley. Barnum took his little creature all over the United States until the 1860’s when a fire destroyed his museum and his attraction was lost. The exhibit is now housed in the attic of the Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
There have been many claims that P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid was fake with many shows and documentaries trying to prove it so. Whatever the claims are, many believe that Barnum had a mummified body of a real mermaid.
The Fiji mermaid lives on today. It was featured in an episode of The X-files, made into a game by Wizkids and in Rob Zombie’s “House of 1000 Corpses”, one of the characters is killed and turned into the Fiji mermaid through taxidermy.
Tombstone’s Merman
This one I have seen with my own eyes and have the picture to prove it. This creepy looking mummified creature is in a glass box, near the entrance of the Bird Cage Theatre’s display room. Many wonder how a mermaid would be found in the desert, so far from a body of water. The best explanation is that sometime in 1934 someone donated it to the Bird Cage Theatre’s tiny little museum. Whatever it is and however it got there, it is a weird little artifact.
~~Julie~~
