If you’re all about new experiences and do not mind a bit of morbidity and gore, these off-kilter museums should make way into your bucket list.
1. Mutter Museum, Philadelphia
What it offers: Skulls, jars filled with diseased organs, and the world’s largest intestine
This medical museum in Philadelphia has walls lined up with skulls, jars filled with diseased organs, and houses the world’s largest intestine. If creepy and gore is what appeals to you, they also let people get married inside the premises.
2. Vent Haven Museum, Kentucky
What it offers: Ventriloquial figures
If you’re pediophobic, you will definitely freak out at this museum. The museum houses the largest collection of ventriloquial figures- 900, which have been collected from over twenty countries.
3. Morbid Anatomy Museum, Brooklyn
What it offers: Wax sculptures ‘cut open’ to reveal accurate organs
The non-profit museum houses an antique wax figure of a German serial killer with exploding skull bones and wax sculptures of nude women ‘cut open’ to reveal anatomically accurate organs. Even creepier is the fact that these figures, which now have been donated to the museum, were once owned by private collectors.
4. Catacombe dei Cappuccini, Sicily
What it offers: World’s largest collection of mummified bodies
The catacomb/ museum holds the world’s largest collection of mummified bodies. These bodies belonged to Capuchin friars who were ‘naturally mummified’. Thousands of other mummified bodies from the Capuchin community joined them here over time. The mummies are strewn across five floors which are arranged according to profession, gender, and social class.
5. Glore Psychiatric Museum, Missouri
What it offers: Relics used to treat patients with mental illness
Glore once used to be a functioning psychiatric hospital. Now, it houses relics which were used to treat mental illness like ‘bath of surprise’ and ‘lunatic box’. One of the more interesting exhibits include 1,000 objects which were once swallowed by a patient during her stay.
6. Disgusting Food Museum, Sweden
What it offers: Weird and gross dishes from around the world
The rather new museum houses exhibits that will make your stomach churn. The exhibits in the museum essentially are weird dishes from around the world: Swedish Fermented Herring, Maggot Cheese from Sardinia, and Roasted Guinea Pig from Peru, amongst others. People who are adventurous enough can also taste or smell some of the exhibits.
7. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
What it offers: Collection of shrunken heads
Shrunken heads from the Amazon river region between Peru and Ecuador is what you’ll find in this museum display in Oxford.
8. The Hunterian Museum and Anatomy Museum, Glasgow
What it offers: Anatomical, pathological, and zoological specimen collections
This museum, opened in 1807, houses Europe’s largest anatomical, pathological, and zoological specimen collections. From medical instruments to pickled human parts, this museum has it all.
9. Torture Museum, Amsterdam
What it offers: Torture instruments from around Europe
Journey through the history of pain and punishment in this tiny Dutch museum which houses medieval instruments of torture from all around Europe- from spiked inquisition chair to skull crushers. These exhibits were earlier used to force out confessions from suspects and lawbreakers.
10. Clowns Museum, Germany
What it offers: Clown costumes
Coulrophobics’ worst nightmare, as you enter this small museum in Leipzig, you will be greeted by thousands of clown faces who seem to be perpetually smiling. Crammed with over 3,000 figurines, most of the stuff in the museum have been donated by clowns who have dropped by the museum.
11. Avanos Museum of Hair, Turkey
What it offers: Severed locks of more than 16,000 women
The museum, which is located in a basement space, is filled with severed locks of more than 16,000 women. The locks of hair have been donated by women who have visited the museum from around the world.
12. Froggyland, Croatia
What it offers: Dead frogs made to pose like humans
One man’s taxidermy mission led him to turn frogs into a slideshow of the creatures frozen in time with human-like poses inside a circus, a classroom, playing poker, and even tennis. The exhibits are a weird mix of both hilarious and creepy.
13. Meguro Parasitological Museum, Tokyo
What it offers: Creepy-crawlies, microscopic bugs, world’s longest tapeworm
The small museum houses more than 300 rare microscopic bugs, creepy-crawlies, and also an 8.8 metre-long tapeworm. The museum also has a souvenir shop which sells tapeworm T-shirts and parasites in acrylic, so that you never forget.
14. Nimhans Brain Museum, India
What it offers: Brain specimens which are sliced and pickled
As the name suggests, it essentially is a brain museum, and for a slight twist, visitors can actually touch the brains for an ‘out-of-body experience’. The hundreds of specimen housed in the museum have been donated with consent since the 1970s. The brains are sliced, pickled, some showing the results of infestations and diseases.
15. Museum of Shadows, Nebraska
What it offers: More than 1,000 haunted objects from around the world
Dubbed as the most haunted museum in the United States, the building which houses the museum was once a saloon and a brothel. The museum is packed with over 1,000 haunted objects from around the world. People who have visited the museum have reported a variety of paranormal experiences.
16. Museum of the Occult, Connecticut
What it offers: Haunted relics including the Annabelle doll
Famous for housing the famous Annabelle doll, Ed and Lorraine Warren’s personal collection of haunted relics is the result of 60 years worth of paranormal hunting.
17. Museum of Death, Los Angeles
What it offers: Articles about violent crimes and cult activities
The extremely graphic museum’s walls are covered in articles, photos of violent crimes, and cult activities. They also have an original painting by John Wayne Gacy, an American serial killer.
My body is ready, but not my soul.