I know exactly the piece you are talking about! Whenever I was little and visit the museum, at the time the piece was located on the basement level. It was near the pre-Columbian artifacts/possibly Mayan time period. Not exactly sure. I ve not had any experiences with this piece, but I ve always loved to look at it and it creeped me out, for sure.About 2 years ago I returned to the musuem for an art course I was taking. They were in the process of rennovations, and the place was a mess. I was going to write about that piece, but couldn t find it. I asked one of the gentlemen that worked at the museum. Unfortunately I could not remember the name of the piece but I described it to him. He told me that he had worked at the museum for over 15 years and had never seen or heard of the piece before. I was sort of disappointed.Your inquiry got me to googling, and I found this articlehttp://www.saucemagazine.com/a/5And this paragraph about the figure from the article: In the visual arts, there is a widely known story surrounding a mystical statue behind glass within the Oceanic gallery at the Saint Louis Art Museum; supposedly at night, this feisty figure scratches its glass encasing from the inside. Entitled ��Effigy Figure�� (rambaramp), the life-sized statue sports the actual skull of the high-ranking south Malakulan man the figure represents. Brian Adkisson of the Saint Louis Art Museum told me it was less an urban myth and more of something that the museum talks about openly. ��So, it��s no secret,�� he said. The information panel flanking the figure openly addresses the lore: ��There are some who think that this rambaramp figure contains a spirit that still lingers, and people have pointed out scratches on the glass pane in front of you as proof. As far as we can tell, the figure is not alive; the scratches were made by something harder than a dead man��s fingernails.�� Hope this helps!
It is not true.There is an encased mummy, and that is what they were talking about because it has something to do with King Tut and the curse.
I have been to the art museum a ton of times and have never heard about this.