CHAPTER 1

MUMMY DEAREST

Strapped to the sideboard of a Ford Model-T, Hazel the Mummy bounced down the roads of Alabama and beyond, bringing a hefty income of $150–$200 per week for her owner, Orlando Clayton Brooks, during the early part of the twentieth century. How, exactly, Hazel became a mummy is the stuff legends are made of.

Hazel Farris was born sometime around 1880 in Kentucky. As a young newlywed, some twenty years later, Harris had developed quite the knack for spending money. Some say she was particularly fond of hats. Apparently, she purchased (or expressed interest in purchasing) one hat too many, over which her husband became outraged. On the morning of April 6, 1905, during a struggle that ensued over the hat purchase, Hazel shot and killed her husband. Three policemen happened to be walking by and heard the shots. When they arrived at the home, they found Hazel standing over her husband’s body holding a gun. She shot the three officers as well.

By now, quite a crowd had gathered. The deputy sheriff tried to take her in to custody but succeeded only in shooting off the ring finger of one of her hands before she returned a deadly shot. She fled her pursuers and made her way to Bessemer, Alabama, where she took up new residence. There is some question as to how she portrayed herself to the public in her new home, although consensus seems to be that she worked as a prostitute and was known to drink heavily.

Hazel must have felt alone in this new town and developed the need to share the details of her past with someone. Unfortunately for her, she chose her new beaux, who apparently was a policeman. Law won out over love, and he turned her in. Rather than go to jail, she decided to kill herself. On December 20, 1906, she drank a fatal combination of alcohol and what many have concluded was arsenic.

Hazel’s body was taken to a nearby furniture store, which served as a makeshift funeral parlor, as many furniture stores did during that time. No one claimed her body, and as it lay in the back of the store, it began to decay (or not decay) in a most unusual way. The skin became dried and tightly drawn over her skeletal remains. Some claimed her hair and nails continued to grow, although today we realize it is actually the skin receding, making the hair and nails appear to be longer.

The store owner saw the opportunity to cash in on the notoriety of the case and offered anyone interested the chance to see Hazel, propped up against a wall in the back of the store, for a mere ten cents. He then sent the mummy by train to his brother in Tuscaloosa so he could display her in the same manner.

Captain Harvey Lee Boswell (not to be confused with Lee Harvey Oswald) also exhibited Hazel’s remains before traveling showman O.C. Brooks purchased the body for twenty-five dollars in May 1907.

With ticket sales bringing Brooks such a nice income, Hazel’s ride was upgraded to a 1931 Oldsmobile. Brooks continued to show the mummy for another forty years. His printed handbills claimed the body was “exhibited for the benefit of science.”

What mummy is not going to develop certain rumored “powers”? Hazel’s power, it seemed, was to bring good luck to those who rubbed her hand. When this special ability became “known,” Brooks offered Hazel’s visitors the opportunity to do just that for an additional twenty-five cents. Hazel’s fame continued to spread, and she reportedly appeared before royal audiences in Europe after World War II.

As the popularity of traveling circuses began to dwindle, Brooks retired to Coushatta, Louisiana, where he died on April 1, 1950. Hazel was passed down to Brooks’s twelve-year-old nephew, Luther. Rumor has it that a note was found in Hazel’s casket that instructed Luther never to sell her or show her as a freak…and never to bury her. If he was to show her, Luther was instructed to donate all proceeds to charity. Luther disputed any restrictions.

Luther kept Hazel in his garage in Nashville, Tennessee, and reportedly relished the fact that he was the only kid in school who owned a mummy. He showed Hazel at school carnivals, and after graduating from high school in 1958, he added carnival rides to his show. He sold the rides in 1965 but kept Hazel for continued showings at schools and churches. While in Luther’s care, the mummy suffered some further bodily injuries, including a broken nose.

Booking notice for the showing of Hazel Farris, the mummy.

Eventually, Luther’s two daughters took over the exhibits for a short time before the Brooks family stopped promoting her and let her rest. In 1974, researchers with the Bessemer Hall of History tracked down Hazel’s remains, which had become one of Bessemer’s most famous legends. The Brooks family agreed to bring Hazel to Bessemer for a special exhibition in a vacant downtown building that October. Thousands of people paid fifty cents each to walk past her casket.

Hazel was returned to Bessemer on several more occasions after the city museum opened in the basement of the Bessemer Public Library. She also was brought to the Alabama State Fair and to the University of Alabama’s Ferguson Center in 1975. Her final appearances in Bessemer occurred in October 1994 and 1995.

In later years, the corpse passed to the next generation of Brookses, who were not as excited about sharing their home with a mummy. They also did not feel bound by their family’s early wishes. In 2002, Hazel was taken to the Pettus, Owen and Wood Funeral Home for cremation. Before the destruction of the mummy, she appeared on an episode of the National Geographic Channel’s The Mummy Road Show.

X-ray, computed tomography (CT) and endoscopic examinations performed for the show indicated that the body was infused with high levels of arsenic, which contributed to its preservation. Arsenic was a fairly common method of embalming in the day, so there was no conclusive indication that the arsenic was taken by Hazel in a suicide attempt rather than used as part of her embalming. Blood clots were also found in her pulmonary system, but it could not be determined conclusively whether they were formed as a result of illness, such as pneumonia, or during the embalming process.

Apparently, Hazel also practiced atrocious dental hygiene, as tests showed cavities and damaged teeth. She lost her gold teeth in 1959 “when the tent fell on a Nashville carnival and a group of women accidentally turned her casket over and dumped Hazel into the sawdust,” according to Luther Brooks’s account in Myths, Mysteries and Legends of Alabama.

After National Geographic’s televised autopsy, Hazel’s remains were finally cremated and entombed in Madison, Tennessee.