Est. 1920 · Pinellas County's Oldest Museum · Egyptian Antiquities · St. Petersburg History
The St. Petersburg Museum of History was established in 1920 by Mary Wheeler Eaton under the name St. Petersburg Memorial Historical Society, making it the oldest museum in Pinellas County. It has occupied its current waterfront location at 335 2nd Avenue NE and holds more than 32,000 artifacts alongside a public research archive of over 5,000 indexed city photographs.
The museum's mummy — the artifact most tied to its paranormal reputation — arrived in 1925. Her carrier was the Tamiami, a floating museum that traveled the Mississippi River, its tributaries, and the eastern seaboard between 1918 and approximately 1927, stopping at cities to open for visitors. The mummy was left at Avery & Roberts Marine Ways in St. Petersburg; George Roberts, one of the owners, gave conflicting accounts of how he acquired her — in some tellings she came from a friend who worked in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, in others she was offered as payment for ship repairs. The museum received her as a donation in May 1925.
A 1988 CT scan established she was a woman of upper or middle-class standing, given the quality of her mummification. Dental and radiological examinations conducted over the decades placed her age at death somewhere between 26 and 35. She lived during the New Kingdom period, approximately 1630-1075 BCE.
Sources
- https://pathwaytoeternity.learnflorida.org/our-mummy/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_Museum_of_History
- https://spmoh.com/exhibits/
Shadow figureObject movementFelt presenceUnexplained energy
Two objects anchor the St. Petersburg Museum of History's paranormal reputation. The first is the Egyptian mummy herself. A museum employee, speaking to local paranormal media, acknowledged the ghost story while contextualizing it: the mummy, they suggested, had passed over many years ago in her own time and country and was at peace — framing the shadow-figure legend as an urban tradition the staff is aware of without endorsing.
The second object is a Victorian-era black mourning gown in the collection. Visitors and staff who have been near the dress have described it as feeling unusually heavy and have reported seeing it shift or move without apparent cause. The dress became a recurring feature in ghost tour literature covering downtown St. Petersburg, and the museum's 'Creepatorium' seasonal exhibit — which the Tampa Bay Times covered in 2020 — leans into the museum's reputation for unusual and unsettling artifacts.
The SPIRITS of St. Petersburg paranormal research team, led by Dr. Brandy Stark, has conducted documented investigations in the area and includes the museum as a stop on St. Petersburg haunted history programming. The museum's downtown location, surrounded by other reported haunted sites within a few blocks, has made it a fixed point on organized ghost tours.
