But one of the most ghoulish—and lesser-known—ways upper-class Victorians got their creepy kicks was by hosting and attending mummy unrolling parties. The host would buy a mummy from an auction or a specialist dealer with contacts in Egypt, then the invites would go out.

The Victorians really had a taste for the macabre. When they weren't spending hours posing for photos with their propped-up dead relatives they were trying to contact them at séances or going about their daily business wearing jewelry containing their hair .

As they described what they were finding to an audience, a host would take off the body's bandages to see what was hiding underneath, in the name of both scientific discovery and entertainment. These events happened at the height of Egyptomania—a sweeping craze where people's interest in this aspect of ancient history grew to incredible heights.

Some events—namely the ones by a surgeon called Thomas Pettigrew—attracted around 3,000 people. Pettigrew wasn't the first person to unwrap a mummy, but he was the first to turn it into a spectacle. If you think immersive theatre was invented in the 20th century, you're wrong—you can trace it all back to Victorians like this dude.

I headed to Bart's Pathology Museum in London, where I was promised I'd be transported back to the Victorian era of Egyptomania by "scentertainor" and perfume expert Lizzie Ostrom, a.k.a. Odette Toilette, and Egyptologist John J. Johnston. Tonight the pair will follow in Pettigrew's footsteps, and recreate a live mummy unrolling—with all the "drama, thrills and smells" of such occasions.

Walking into the museum to the sounds of the Bangles' 1986 banger "Walk Like An Egyptian," I was immediately handed a couple of drinks tokens. "You can have sherry, Madeira, or straight gin," the woman behind the makeshift bar tells me. I go for the sherry. I immediately regret it. "Why are the drinks so strong?" I cry, wishing for a nice glass of merlot. Apparently rich Victorians liked to get absolutely wasted as they watched an ancient corpse get desecrated. Maybe they needed something strong to take the edge off.