You don’t need to be 7 to love Halloween or everything spooky.
And you don’t need to limit your visits to spooky museums to the Halloween season.
We put together a list of ten of the spookiest for a new Travel + Leisure story, but here are five of our favorites.
The Witch Board Museum: Baltimore, MD and Salem, MA
Ouija boards—also known as talking boards, spirit boards, or witch boards—were invented, patented, and mass-produced in Baltimore from the late 1800s into the 1960s. Learn the spooky history at Baltimore’s Witch Board Museum and see boards from around the world at the Witch Board Museum branch in Salem, Massachusetts.
Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
The well-known Mütter Museum in Philadelphia has a curious and very creepy collection of more than 25,000 medical oddities, antomical specimens and other items that reach to the mid-1800s.
(Image by: Constance Mensh for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia)
Robert the Doll – in Key West, Florida
The Fort East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida is home to Robert, a 40-inch-tall doll custom-made in 1904. He may look innocent, but he’s not. Locals and museum visitors swear he changes facial expressions, wreaks havoc and curses visitors who take his picture without asking him for permission.
International Museum of Surgical Science – Chicago
The International Museum of Surgical Science on the Chicago lakefront is filled with exhibits exploring the twists and turns of surgery and medicine throughout the ages and includes a Hall of Murals depicting see some of surgery’s most important moments, in all their gory glory.
National Museum of Funeral History – Houston
The National Museum of Funeral History documents all aspects of death with exhibits on everything from unusual caskets (including one for three people), historical hearses, mourning rituals, funerals for popes, presidents and other celebrities and rooms devoted to the history of embalming and cremation. You can even write your own epitaph.
(Image at the top courtesy of the International Museum of Surgical Science)
