The Haunted Cincinnati Art Museum

Posted: 12.18.2024 | Updated: 12.18.2024

There’s art in telling a good ghost story. You need compelling characters, a spooky setting, and enough engaging twists and turns to keep your audience guessing. 

As it so happens, Cincinnati – a pretty artsy city – has its share of good ghost stories, particularly in the Cincinnati Art Museum. 

No, this isn’t your average Night at the Museum kind of haunting, although there are certainly some similarities! We’ll leave it up to you to decide what’s real and what’s not about the legends of this museum, but one thing is certain – it’s a fascinating place. 

If you agree, be sure to take our in-person Cincinnati Ghosts tour to learn more about the haunted Queen City. 

Who Haunts the Cincinnati Art Museum?

You might be surprised by the answer.

This ghost story isn’t your average ghost story. In fact, there’s one tale we’re about to tell you that suggests that it’s not a ghost that haunts the Cincinnati Art Museum but another mythical creature! 

But all of you fans of the phantasmic shouldn’t worry. There are also plenty of ghosts that locals, visitors, and workers of the Cincinnati Art Museum have claimed to have called this artsy place home over the years. 

Interested? How can you not be after that? Be sure to keep reading and find out which person (or people) are said to have haunted the Cincinnati Art Museum. The story of how the museum came to be, who funded it, and the tragedies that have dogged the place would make for compelling drama, with or without the added ghostly element. 

Keep reading to see exactly what we mean. 

History of the Museum

Even though most American cities have at least one art museum nowadays, they weren’t always such a popular fixture. And ones that were open to the public? Forget about it. Until the late nineteenth century, art collections were seen as something only for the wealthy. 

However, this idea began to change as America expanded its territory and developed its cities. By the 1800s, Cincinnati had established itself as a city and a center of American culture. 

Wanting to celebrate these accomplishments, citizens of Cincinnati – particularly the Women’s Art Museum Association members- came together to promote the idea of establishing a museum for Cincinnati to call their own. 

Their hard work paid off, and in 1881, they received enough funds to actually construct their dream project. In 1881, they selected Eden Park, located in downtown Cincinnati, as the site of the new cultural center. 

Five years later, in 1886, the museum doors opened to the public and certainly lived up to the hype. With Romanesque architecture, large sweeping walls, and even invites to two presidents, the fanfare was incredible. Evidently, the workers had as much fun building the museum as the citizens had exploring it. They even buried a time capsule that commemorated their time during construction. 

Nowadays, the museum maintains a vast collection of over 67,000 works of art and continues to draw crowds worldwide. 

Museum Hauntings

However, despite the museum’s prestigious reputation, its history underneath the surface might be a bit more…eerie. 

And perhaps that’s no surprise. After all, many historical pieces from around the world are among the art exhibits, which seem to draw the scariest creatures from across time. 

For one, there’s a reproduction of a 12th-century medieval chapel in one of the wings. It’s an eerie scene if you ever visit: dark, quiet, and cold. That coldness is only exacerbated by the ghost of the Spanish monk that’s rumored to haunt there. 

The monk has been seen a number of times, most notably by a security guard making his rounds one night. It was an ordinary shift – as boring and uneventful as every other round he’d done. However, tonight, as he was rounding the medieval gallery, he was confronted by the figure of a seven-foot tall menacing figure, cowled in a dark robe and hood. 

It showed the monk standing guard over the Moorish arch of the chapel. Evidently, reproduction or not, the monk felt compelled to protect this medieval chapel, much as he had in a previous life. 

And the monk is hardly the only one that guards regularly spot on their rounds. The Great Hall is especially ​​filled with sightings. Guards and other museum staff report hearing footsteps and seeing shadowy figures there all the time. Despite having no bells, a Samuel Best clock in one of the exhibits is always heard chiming at odd hours of the day. That’s not the only time unexplained sounds are heard in this building either – many visitors have reported hearing mysterious coughs and whisperings in empty wings, almost as though an invisible person is enjoying the exhibits. 

The Mysterious Mummy

But topping all of those sightings is that of the mummy in the first-floor antiquities section. No, this isn’t the plot of a Universal monster movie – this is a creature that a number of different visitors and museum workers have spotted. 

The sightings all follow a similar pattern. Those who stumble into the first-floor Egyptian section at the right time will typically see a strange mist emanating from the former pharaoh’s case. The mist will rise above the sarcophagus and take the form of a man. Although this man has the usual funerary wrappings associated with mummies, he does have some distinguishing features that set him apart from pop culture mummies like King Tut and the Yummy Mummy. 

For one, there’s the funerary mask that supposedly is affixed to the mummy’s face, even while he makes his rounds in the museum. Curiously, some people have noted that the mask almost appears to be smiling while the mummy is up and about. 

The mummy is also adorned in battle armor, as if he’s prepared to guard the museum (or perhaps his tomb) with his life—or, more accurately, his afterlife. 

Curiously, there’s a connection between this mummy and the museum’s resident mad monk that we mentioned before. In the monk’s chapel, there’s a painting of a grotesque-looking ibis

The ibis, in ancient Egyptian lore, represented the god Thoth. Thoth was a god closely associated with the Book of the Dead, a guide to the afterlife that contained instructions on how to shepherd the pharaohs into the afterlife. 

This Thoth connection stands in stark contrast to the more Christian symbols and saints that adorn the rest of the chapel. Perhaps it was this ibis that had summoned the mummy to walk around in the first place? 

Haunted Cincinnati

Mummies, ghosts, and shadowy figures? These sound more like the back of a Halloween catalog than the regular haunts of a prestigious art museum in Cincinnati. 

And yet, that’s what the Cincinnati Art Museum is all about—defying expectations. You expect a small art museum in a quirky Ohio town, but beneath the surface, there’s an imposing monk wandering the halls and strange whispers fluttering in the air.

We hope you agree and that you enjoyed reading about these haunted tales. And, as always, book a tour with Cincinnati Ghosts, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and keep reading our blog for more real Ohio hauntings. For fanatics of all things haunted, it’s the best way to stay informed and maybe find a new destination for your next ghost-hunting trip. 

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