A cameraman films the only known example of a pregnant Egyptian mummy, displayed at an exhibition in National Museum in Warsaw, Poland May 4, 2021 (photo credit: REUTERS/KACPER PEMPEL)Ryan Novozinsky/nj.com/TNSWed, November 26, 2025 at 3:36 PM UTC·3 min readThe strange tale of two mummies discovered beneath the Prudential Center collides with the Devils’ run of bad injury luck this season.
Before we let archeologist Scott Warnasch explain the gripping history of the mummified remains he found underneath the Prudential Center, let’s first ask him the question on the minds of every Devils fan:
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAre these mummies to blame for the team’s terrible injury luck this season?!
“I don’t think so,” Warnasch told NJ Advance Media in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.
It makes sense why fans would start blaming paranormal factors.The Devils just lost star player Jack Hughes for eight weeks after he slipped and fell on a piece of glass at a team dinner in Chicago last week. Before that, seven other players were dealing with injuries. According to NHL Injury Viz, they rank fourth in man games lost to injury this season.
They’re managing it well. New Jersey sits atop the Eastern Conference standings with a 13-4-1 record, but things might look different with their best player now out.
(Illustrative) New Jersey Devils center Michael McLeod (20) celebrates his goal with the bench of the New Jersey Devils against the New York Islanders during the second period at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 2021. (credit: REUTERS)Defenseman Brenden Dillon, who missed some of Saturday’s game with his own injury, summed it up best two weeks ago.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“We need to sage this place or something,” said Dillon.
Sage it from what, exactly?
Enter the mummies.
Archaeological finds hidden deep beneath the Prudential Center
Warnasch, a forensic archaeologist for over 25 years, first discovered the remains when the Prudential Center broke ground in 2005. It’s not uncommon to find human remains during archeological digs. The Prudential Center was built over a cemetery belonging to the First Presbyterian Church, so they actually found over 2,000 bodies underneath the site. For Warnasch, the stunner was finding two 19th Century cast-iron coffins filled with 150-year-old mummies.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I remember thinking, ‘Well, it’s probably a pipe from the drainage system for the parking lot or something like that,’ Warnasch said. “I had no idea iron coffins existed. Nobody on the site did at that time, because they’re very rare. My jaw dropped.”
Four years later, Warnasch opened the sarcophaguses (with the help of the Smithsonian) and was able to analyze who rested inside. He found two people with direct ties to the founding of Newark and Jersey City.
The bigger casket belonged to William Pollard, a “crime fighter” who served as the fourth fire chief and first captain of the first permanent police force in Jersey City and the captain of two militias. He was born in 1816 and died of Cholera in 1854. The smaller belonged to Mary Camp Roberts, who was a descendent of the Puritans who founded Newark in 1666. She was born in 1764 and died of old age in 1852. The hair and clothing of both bodies were “completely preserved,” according to Warnasch.
So while these mummies may not have impacted the Devils’ injury luck, they certainly played a huge role in the region the team calls home.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Well, I’m not a sports fan, so I don’t really know the psychology of (blaming the mummies for the Devils’ injuries), but to me the team is a perfect fit for this: If you’re gonna name yourselves the Devils, then you might as well have some corpses go with it,” he said with a laugh.
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