Staff at an anonymous medical school found this jar of stillborn conjoined twins in a closet. The study specimen is from the 19th century and was donated to the Mütter Museum where it is on display today.Mütter Museum of Philadelphia
2 of 34
This is an early 19-century wax mannequin from Germany. The waxen child was stored face-down in a heated attic for years, flattening its nose into an unsettling snout. Museum of Fear and Wonder/Twitter
3 of 34
Pictured are victorian-era handmade figurines made from crab's legs and claws.York Castle Museum/Twitter
4 of 34
These creepy wax heads are made with real human teeth and hair. Platt Hall/twitter
5 of 34
Half of a pregnant cat is displayed in fluid. According to the Grant Museum of Zoology's official account, this object is the one that disturbs visitors the most.Grant Museum/Twitter
6 of 34
These 19th-century genital warts were strung like a necklace to make studying them easier.
Mütter Museum of Philadelphia
7 of 34
This is the severed head of Peter Kürten, a 1930s German serial killer called the "Vampire in Dusseldorf." His head now hangs in Wisconsin's Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum.Ripleys/Twitter
8 of 34
This is a "naked" sea snail known as the giant spider conch (Lambis truncata) without its shell. It was collected on a reef off of Cerf Island during the Yale Seychelles Expedition in 1957. Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History/Twitter
9 of 34
This photograph features a band of clowns from the archive of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. It was taken sometime in 1920 and was part of the scrapbooks of Great Lakes captain Edward Carus. Wisconsin Maritime Museum/Twitter
10 of 34
Meet Isobel, a doll from 1851 and one of the older dolls in the collection at the Chelmsford City Museum. The brand of doll was known as "Mad Alice" because their wax faces cracked over time giving them a deranged look.Chelmsford City Museum/Twitter
11 of 34
This baby doll was so creepy that museum staff covered its head and put it in storage. But a peep hole mysteriously appeared in the cover, giving the doll a way to look out.Museums Victoria/Twitter
12 of 34
A domestic pig with two snouts preserved in a specimen jar.Zemědělské Muzeum/Twitter
13 of 34
Three-faced dolls from the collection at the Rideau District Museum in Westport, Ontario, Canada. Twitter
14 of 34
This bizarre red-eyed "drinking bear" toy is displayed at the Toy Museum of Penshurst Place. If visitors feed the bear coins it will drink from its cup.
Penshurst Place/Twitter
15 of 34
This is a county executioner's axe that between 1770 and 1866 executed 88 people. The axe now hangs in Sweden's Västernorrlands Museum.Västernorrlands Museum/Twitter
16 of 34
This is an eye modeled in wax that was purchased in 1882 from the Paris firm of Maison Tramond and used as a teaching tool for medical students to diagnose eye conditions.
Mütter Museum of Philadelphia
17 of 34
Jarred human hands show the effects of gout, a common ailment of the 19th century.
Mütter Museum of Philadelphia
18 of 34
This is a small carved ornament or "netsuke." Just over one-and-a-half inches tall, it was used in 19th-century Japan to secure a small box to the obi sash of a kimono.
Asian Art Museum/Twitter
19 of 34
Pictured is a sheep's heart stuck with pins and nails and strung on a loop of cord. Made in South Devon circa 1911, it was meant for "breaking evil spells."Pitt Rivers Museum/Twitter
20 of 34
This odd ceramic figurine features the head of a feline and the body of a human. The piece is part of the collection at the Centre of Ceramic Art at York Art Gallery in England.Reyahn King/Twitter
21 of 34
This 19th-century "hair bouquet" was gifted by a son to his father in the Victorian era and is crafted from the hair of several deceased relatives. Fans of this bizarre item can find it at the Tot Zover Museum in Amsterdam, Holland.Museum Tot Zover/Twitter
22 of 34
This strange child's toy was found inside the walls of a 155-year-old mansion. The toy is named "Wheelie" and according to the museum's staff, it often moves on its own.PEI Museum/Twitter
23 of 34
This creepy "mermaid" is made in part from a Pacific wrasse and the head and thorax were sculpted separately. A fish jaw was also inserted into the mouth.
Natural Sciences NMS/Twitter
24 of 34
This cloth doll named “Michelle" was used by laryngologist Chevalier Jackson to demonstrate his non-surgical techniques for removing foreign objects from the throats of children.Mütter Museum of Philadelphia
25 of 34
This mummified pigeon is part of the Education Collection at Minnesota's Bell Museum. Sealed in the wall of a building when it died, the pigeon was eaten clean by insects — save for its feathers.
Bell Museum/Twitter
26 of 34
This is a pair of gruesome "necropants" made out of real human skin. To access the pants' powers, the wearer had to put a stolen coin from a widow and a magical inscription in the scrotum where more coins would then magically appear.Icelandic Sorcery Museum/Twitter
27 of 34
This mourning slide with the mysterious inscription "AB" was made out of woven hair, metal, and glass in the late 17th century.The Holburne Museum/Twitter
28 of 34
This terrifying pincushion features tiny children's heads peeking out from inside. Norwich Castle/Twitter
29 of 34
This already creepy doll was turned to stone when it was strung under a notorious Petrifying Well. The well is located at Mother Shipton's Cave in Knaresborough, England, and has the uncanny ability to turn whatever object is strung beneath its running waters into stone over time.Mother Shipton's/Twitter
30 of 34
This curious two-headed kitten was brought back from Nairobi in 1948. Now it's displayed at the ON at Fife Museum in the U.K.Fife Museum/Twitter
31 of 34
This is the 200-year-old scalp of the Red Barn Murderer, William Corder. Beside it is a book bound in the skin from his back.Twitter
32 of 34
A PH mask (Phena-hexamine, a caustic chemical) which was one of the earliest versions of gas masks used by the British forces during the First World War, circa 1916. Glenbow/Twitter
33 of 34
A whole tray full of eyeballs found at the Birmingham Back to Backs Museum in England.NTMidlands/Twitter
33 Of The World’s Most Disturbing Museum Artifacts
View Gallery
Museums are tools for education and sometimes they play host to the most inexplicable artifacts in the world.
Recently, a call was put out to the museums of the Twitter-sphere to unveil their #CreepiestObjects. Initiated by England's Yorkshire Museum, which houses five permanent collections including archaeology, numismatics, and astronomy, the "disturbing yet educational" fad quickly took off.
As it turns out, the world's museums are full of macabre and unpleasant artifacts. Sometimes, the stories behind these collectibles are more disturbing than the artifact itself.
These pieces are sure to make your skin crawl.
Eerie Collections Around The World
Pitt Rivers Museum/TwitterTip of a human tongue that was used as a charm and is now a part of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
There is the Pitt Rivers Museum, in Oxford, England, which has devoted an entire room to shrunken heads. Then, there is the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo, Japan, where 300 rare microscopic bugs and parasites are on display.
Other strange museums include the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which is exactly what it sounds like — a collection of animal penises preserved in jars. There is also Mother Shipton's Cave in England which features a well with the powers to petrify any objects strung beneath its cascading waters.
But one of the most famous collectors of strange artifacts in America is no doubt the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians in Philadelphia.
Founded by American surgeon Thomas Mütter in 1863, the museum is host to an array of medical specimens that originally included the most puzzling anomalies handled by Mütter and his colleagues. Today, the museum houses over 25,000 specimens, including pieces of Albert Einstein's famous brain and a replica of a woman whose head grew a horn.
Unfortunately, the Mütter Museum did not participate in the viral competition. When asked by eager followers about what they would enter into the contest, the museum graciously declined to join in the whacky festivities.
"No entry from us! There's nothing creepy about the human body," their response read. Although their efforts to destigmatize human anatomy are commendable, they nonetheless house some of the most unsettling artifacts in the gallery above.
Haunted Artifacts
State Library Vic/TwitterElizabeth Batman's doll from sometime between 1820 and 1830 on display at the State Library of Victoria in Australia.
Among the pieces displayed in the gallery above are some that have a touch of the uncanny. For instance, the workers at the Prince Edward Island Museum are acutely aware of a nearly 200-year-old wheeled sheep toy that appears to move on its own accord.
Other artifacts were made with the dark arts in mind, like a 200-year-old book bound in the back skin of an English murderer. Indeed, as it turns out, binding books in the skin of criminals was a somewhat common practice among the superstitious in 19th-century England. These books bound in manmade leather were considered eerie talismen or exercises in vengeance.
Not all the collectibles, however, have interesting backstories. Others appear creepy due to age or just poor stylistic choices, like the ceramic doll with a feline head and human hands on display at the Centre of Ceramic Art in England.
Severed Hands, Heads, And Necropants
Harry Fisher/Allentown Morning Call/MCT via Getty Images Dried hands from the Grimm's Anatomy exhibit at the Mütter Museum. The exhibit is modeled after the morbidity that inspired Grimm's fairy tales.
While manmade artifacts can cause a stir, no doubt the objects made of man are the most unsettling featured in these museums.
One such object rests in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum in Wisconsin: the severed head of Peter Kürten, a 1930s German serial killer known as the "Vampire of Düsseldorf." Also called "the king of sexual perverts," Kürten killed indiscriminately and even engaged in cannibalism.
He was arrested five different times before he was finally caught and put on trial. Kürten confessed to committing up to 68 crimes, including 10 murders and 31 attempted ones. He reportedly drank the blood of his victims, once drinking so much of it that he vomited. He was sentenced to the guillotine after which his head was bisected for study and then mummified.
Meanwhile, the Tot Zover Museum in Amsterdam features a 19th-century "hair bouquet" made out of real human tresses from its original owner's dead relatives.
At the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery, visitors can view a pair of "necropants" made out of the skin of a dead man. The pants were made as a talisman to magically summon more money, but could only be fashioned after a dying man consented to be made into them in the first place.
At the Mütter Museum, visitors can peruse a necklace fashioned out of genital warts.
These artifacts are still on display in museums around the world, but until you can get tickets to all of them, let this gallery suffice.
A former staff writer for All That's Interesting, Natasha Ishak holds a Master's in journalism from Emerson College and her work has appeared in VICE, Insider, Vox, and Harvard's Nieman Lab.
A former associate editor for All That's Interesting, Leah Silverman holds a Master's in Fine Arts from Columbia University's Creative Writing Program and her work has appeared in Catapult, Town & Country, Women's Health, and Publishers Weekly.
Cite This Article
Ishak, Natasha. "33 Of The World’s Most Disturbing Museum Artifacts." AllThatsInteresting.com, May 1, 2020, https://allthatsinteresting.com/weird-museum-artifacts. Accessed April 25, 2024.
