Have you ever had a bad reaction while in a museum?

[obstacles]

First of all, I want to say that I've received some messages in my absence and I plan to respond to all of you within the next few days. There's been a lot going on in my family since I was last posting here and I may have to travel again at the end of this week. I'm really sorry about that.

Speaking of that, while there was a lot going on, I ended up unexpectedly visiting a museum due to a last minute invite. It's a museum that has a collection of 18th century items. Not just artwork but also furniture and whole rooms of antiques. A lot of items in the collection are from France. It turned out, there were even a few items that belonged to my PL family.

Before I visited, I didn't know the exact items they had in the collection but I knew the kinds of items I'd be seeing. I was pretty excited and thought maybe it would trigger some memories or at least cheer me up.

That's not how it turned out. Instead, I found myself feeling irritated, agitated, frustrated, angry...

I kept a calm appearance and didn't show any of that emotion but I wasn't able to feel better until we left the museum. In the middle of looking at the collection, I felt like I wanted to escape. I was really bothered by all of the people, bothered by everything, and...even bothered at myself for having ridiculous feelings.

Though I was able to hide most of my reaction, I ended up barely eating my lunch and I lied to the people I was with by telling them I had a stomach ache. I felt like I'd turned into a child.

Later on, I was trying to think about WHY I became so angry...

I decided that it might have been from feeling a sense of...things being mixed up...the way everything was put on display...that and...all of the people...and the way they were acting...feeling how much time has passed and how much of a stranger I've become to my past...and how much of a stranger I'm considered by others.

I may not have seen every object from France that was there in my PL but, if there were some I had seen, and them being mixed up with everything else...I can imagine that would have produced a distinctly uncomfortable feeling.

I felt uncomfortable before I started feeling the irritation. A weird feeling.

Anyway, I have been stressed lately so that also could have contributed to having a negative reaction but those feelings caught me off guard.

I was wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences or if any of you have input on this.

 

[Spatz]

Hm, have I ever had a good reaction in a museum? LOL


Reactions can definitely vary and I think you're probably right, any stresses or other issues going on can contribute to how one feels when one gets triggered in the thick of things. Due to the stress and emotion I'd experience, I actually avoided museums for most of my adolescent life if I could, but these days I can typically do all right.


Even though it might not've been easy on you, it's rather a privilege to be able to see some of 'your' old stuff on display. That's a pretty unique experience that not everybody gets, and sounds like you got some decent validation out of it too. How do you think you'll approach pl related exhibits in the future?

 

[helz_belz]

I've had both positive and negative reactions to museums and things in museums.


Went to the newly re-opened Imperial War Museum in London the other week, which resulted in both kinds within the space of a single afternoon. Good was seeing old footage of the kind of teams I worked with, brought back some of those feelings of comradeship, teamwork and regimental pride. But for bad reactions, it wasn't anything relating to museum objects as I was expecting, instead the most affecting area was where the kids could try on replica uniforms; seeing lads barely past their mid-teens in admittedly replica-khaki gave me feelings of eerie familiarity that was very hard to shake, was very affecting.


On an odder note, was looking up an object on the collections database at work once and as soon as I saw it I got a very strong pressing sensation in the middle of my forehead; 'third eye' resonating or just plain biological weirdness, the jury is out, but the effect was there! Not had a reaction like that before or since when checking objects on the database, and I do it a lot as part of my job.


Maybe there isn't such a thing as a 'good' or 'bad' reaction, instead its how we react to that reaction that is good or bad? It's fine to feel anything that comes up when confronted by museum objects, and if thats feeling angry/happy/sad/etc then thats ok.


Museums go out of their way to make their exhibits and objects 'speak' to the visitor, i.e. for the visitor to have a reaction or emotional response to an object. If only they knew how many people were probably responding on a PL-level too!

 

[Totoro]

I'm a big lover of history and the only time I've felt close to what you're describing is when I visited the Holocaust museum here in Tampa / St Petersburg.


Granted, I had nothing to do with the time period, as I was in China during the war. But I felt that the museum had a very heavy handed "slant" and they weren't really telling the whole holocaust story or all that it entailed.


I found that I was very angry with that and I was not feeling the humility and sensitivity I felt I should have been, because it seemed like to me that it was a cued, politically correct response that they wanted to get from you.


I was angry because they did little to explain what the holocaust was really about or the full scope of what it encompassed and instead they thrust children's shoes front and center and other things like that to just to create a tear jerker.


At the top of the museum though, way off in a room by itself they had displays that actually got into the story of the holocaust and about how other people and not just Jews were sent to concentration camps.


And I only say that (and that I was angry) because it only showed a standardized politically correct version of history and I think that in cases like this, everyone is important and the causes and so on need to be examined and not just the "teacher's guide" version where we gloss over everything.


But then on the other hand, I recently visited a military museum and it was just "stuff" to me and I didn't think much of it until I saw a authentic Japanese flag and looking at it made me feel dizzy and nauseous. But that was directly past life related.


But from reading what you've written, I think I can say that I can relate to what you're feeling. I haven't been able to visit a museum of my own time period, but there's been plenty of books and diary that have been published. And the feeling I've gotten when I do research is that my own personal life (and that of my friend and family) has become a tourist attraction. People who weren't there are making casual comments and insinuations about things that could be easily disproved if they cared to look deeper into it, but they don't.


And really, it's that general feeling of being on display for people that don't understand the context or reality of what they're looking at. Ergo, they typically don't have the respect or understanding of it that we wish they would. I'm quite sure to you, that these chairs, desks etc were used by people that lived lives and were loved and cherished as family heirlooms and now they're bought and sold as commodities and sitting behind glass for people to gawk at.


It's unsettling to being with, let alone being a link with the past and how confusing that must feel. It's got to be hard. I would like to visit China someday, but I'm not too sure if I could deal with it emotionally.


So I don't think you're abnormal or anything. Do be too hard on yourself.

 

[tanguerra]

I went to see an exhibition of 'Art Deco' in a gallery a few years ago. There were artworks, costumes and jewellery, and movie clips of Josephine Baker and what have you. There was furniture laid out, as it would have been in an apartment, with ash trays on the side tables, cushions on the sofa, Lalique vases on the sideboards and so on. There was also, as a main feature of the exhibit, the glass revolving doors from the Strand Hotel in London of the time.

The whole thing gave me so much de ja vu, from my life in the 1920-30s, it was very strange. The 'apartment' would have been the apartment of someone very rich, the sort of place that I had certainly been in, but only as a 'short term visitor'. The thing that gave me the most shivers were the doors to the hotel, which I could remember having gone through, more than once.


At first I sort of liked it, but after a short while I felt a bit overcome and had to get out of there. I cried myself to sleep that night. I don't even know why. Something to do with all that had happened being sort of 'paved over' and smoothed away. Only the rich being remembered, the 'poor' being left out of the airbrushed picture of the idealised past. Sure, the rich had much nicer things, that were more likely to be preserved and one day end up in a gallery. But, I just found it sad for some reason.

 

[Nangijala]

Four or five years ago there was an exhibition in the Domschatz-Museum at Speyer. It was all about witches and the Inquisition. There were many showcases full of horrid instruments of torture. There was a big round room where they had built up an impressive stake and a huge TV screen showing clips of a film about a witch burning surrounded by a happily cheering crowd.


And there was a fake castlewall with tiny little peepholes so you could look through and see a made up torture chamber (complete with rack and a fireplace and tongs and branding irons and other grisly items) and a really dark dungeon with a dummy in chains, a female figure in a shirt on a heap of straw. Everything was very realistic - maybe a touch TOO realistic - and it was quite disturbing, even depressing.


I visited this exhibition with a friend - actually it was her idea of a nice Sunday afternoon trip! But after half an hour in the museum I noticed that my friend, who is usually the most talkative woman I ever met, had become very tight-lipped. And she looked peaky. Eventually she told me she had a splitting headache and could we please, please just go home? Of course we left immediately.


Outside I offered my friend a pill and a sip of water because she looked so miserable. In this moment she broke out into tears and told me she had lied to me. There was no headache at all, she just couldn't stand this hideous exhibition for one minute more.


I asked her why but she just refused to talk to me. When I insisted she got really upset, almost hysteric. I began to worry about her strange behaviour, generally she isn't the hysterical type. But I was also a bit angry because it was a sweltering summer day and we had just wasted our time and our money for this ugly display of the dark witchhunting times, which always give me the creeps. And now she was standing there on the street and bawling like a baby and I hadn't the faintest idea what the hell was going on.


Finally she told me sobbing she had seen us. I said, what does that mean, and she simply said: "I have seen us."


I was stunned. I didn't know what to think or to say. We had never really talked about reincarnation because my friend is a die-hard catholic and utterly against "esoteric mumbo-jumbo". (Her words, not mine!) She rejects the very thought of it. And then THAT coming from her! It was unbelievable.


After she had calmed down a bit we went home by train and that was it. We never broached the subject again. I tried once but she veered off and I didn't want to pester her. But I'm sure she had a kind of flashback and remembered one of our shared past lives.

 

[Sister Grey]

I'm a big lover of history and the only time I've felt close to what you're describing is when I visited the Holocaust museum here in Tampa / St Petersburg.
Granted, I had nothing to do with the time period, as I was in China during the war. But I felt that the museum had a very heavy handed "slant" and they weren't really telling the whole holocaust story or all that it entailed.


I found that I was very angry with that and I was not feeling the humility and sensitivity I felt I should have been, because it seemed like to me that it was a cued, politically correct response that they wanted to get from you.


I was angry because they did little to explain what the holocaust was really about or the full scope of what it encompassed and instead they thrust children's shoes front and center and other things like that to just to create a tear jerker.


At the top of the museum though, way off in a room by itself they had displays that actually got into the story of the holocaust and about how other people and not just Jews were sent to concentration camps.


And I only say that (and that I was angry) because it only showed a standardized politically correct version of history and I think that in cases like this, everyone is important and the causes and so on need to be examined and not just the "teacher's guide" version where we gloss over everything.

I agree 100% with you here. I'm so old that I was born when WWII and its aftermath was still very fresh. I remember people around me, who were not Jewish, being very affected by the revelations coming out about the holocaust because they felt that they could easily have become victims. Over my lifetime I've seen it become very slanted to the point where I think people dismiss it as of no concern to them, because they aren't Jewish. I don't know, it's hard to explain.


As to museums, I've been very strongly affected by most museums, and art galleries, that I've been in, including the Vienna State Opera, courtyard houses in Beijing, and displays outside trendy Japanese restaurants, to the point where I become 'over-excited' and can't sleep. I don't think they're past life related (unless I've had a number of privileged past lives all over Europe and Asia, which I'm not swallowing ), but rather there's something inside me that they're resonating with. On the other hand some that I think I should be really taken with are...eh, boooorrrring.

 

[seagreen]

I also had a strong reaction at a Holocaust museum a couple of years ago. What Totoro described is similar to what I saw at the museum I visited. However, there were some moments that really hit me at a spiritual level because I lived during WWII in Europe and I believe that my family was Jewish, although I did not die in the Holocaust myself. In one section of the museum, we had to crawl through a dark tunnel and into a hiding place. Inside the hiding place were mannequins that were dressed as a Jewish family. There was an eerie red light hanging in the little space; and the soft sounds of crying, moaning, and prayers could be heard playing over the speakers. It was extremely unsettling to me. I felt like I was going to panic and had to crawl out quickly. I really felt afraid, almost like I was surrounded by ghosts. There was another section of the tour during which we had to get into a cattle car and the doors were shut. It was black. The entire tour was dark and disturbing. I am sure that it would feel that way for anyone, but I think it hits those of us who were living back then on a different level. Maybe.


While not exactly a museum, I recall having another strong reaction when I was a kid and we visited Colonial Williamsburg on a school field trip. One part of the tour involved going through the old jail (or "gaol," as they spelled it). I think I posted about this one other time on the forum. I felt sick and afraid and had to leave the building. At that time, it was the strongest reaction I'd ever had to a place and to a time period. In fact, it might still be. I've often wondered if I spent time there in a past life, or if I was in a jail similar to that one. It must have been a very bad time, judging by the reaction I had.

 

[Ehrenbreitstein]

I had a bad reaction to a Civil War museum while I was in Virginia. They had a room where they tried turning it into a simulation of what a real Civil War battlefield would be like. There was like a trench or some sort of tunnel you had to go through and they had a projected battlefield in the distance with soldiers shooting at you where there was loud gunfire and artillery noises with flashes and smoke. It shook me up pretty badly. The actual present-day battlefields were much more peaceful and didn't affect me at all.