Horror Short Story Review: "The Mummy" by Kelsey Percival Kitchel

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The unnamed narrator of this tale is a mining engineer sent by his company to a mining facility in the Atacama in Chile. He describes the elevated desert, how empty of life he finds it, and how little time off workers get. When his time comes, rather than going to port and spending a night at decent hotel, he decides, as other have, to make an “archaeological trip” to the ancient Incan burying group. He doesn’t want to go back to New York without and honest-to-goodness relics. He’s hoping for a skull he can use for a tobacco jar. “You can tell by that how young I was,” he tells the reader. On horseback, he makes the trip, stopping at an oasis where there is an inn. He lucks out, finding a full mummy, well preserved, buried with a few artifacts. “He was quite free of sand by the time I laid my discoveries on the crusted surface of the desert. I sat down to roll a cigarette and have a swig at the canteen, and I fell to thinking that what I was doing would be called grave robbery if it were carried out in a modern cemetery; but if a burying ground is ancient, why, we illogical little microbes called men name our digging ‘archaeological excavation.’” He cuts off the head, packs away a few of the artifacts, and head back to camp. But something feels off. His skin starts to tingle... What is most intriguing about his story is not the plot, but the outlook of the narrator. He sees himself as a “practical” man who doesn’t believe in spirits or spooks. He’s callous and unapologetic. He regards the “natives” as a labor force or a backdrop. Nevertheless, this is an interesting little tale. Author Kelsey Percival Kitchel, born in New Jersey, spent several years in Latin America with her husband, who came from a family of engineers. I could not find an online source for the text. _____ Title: “Mummy” Author: Kelsey Percival Kitchel (1881-1967) First published: Weird Tales Nov. 1929 Source: ISFDB Bio details: Tellers of Weird Tales