Museum of Death
227 Dauphine Street
New Orleans, Louisiana
For details on other hauntings on this street see my “Street Guide to the Phantoms of the French Quarter—Dauphine Street.”
So many of the buildings of the French Quarter have exuberant, life-giving architecture. Lacy ironwork, medallions, fluted columns, and fanlights add their own organic touches to buildings, however, the building housing the Museum of Death lacks those touches and is, well, architecturally dead. Here there is nothing but angular lines without any frilly curves or decorative flourishes. And, it is certainly appropriate. To make a point in all this death, a skeleton stares out of the rather blank rectangular window above the entrance.
The Museum of Death started in sunny California; certainly, a place that is life-affirming, which only makes tragic death even more shocking. In 1995, Catherine Shultz and her husband, J. D. Healy compiled a collection of morbid artifacts, opening a museum in San Diego in 1995. Their collection includes a range of macabre items ranging from mortuary training videos, crime scene photos, and coffins to furniture and clothing associated with the 1997 Heaven’s Gate mass suicide. One of the most grotesque items is the head of French murderer, Henri Landru, which was separated from his body with a guillotine in 1922.
In 2014, the museum opened this location in New Orleans where the sunshine is interspersed with rain which adds a verdancy to the landscape. Perhaps death doesn’t seem as out-of-place here, but the building’s architecture is still jarring. The museum exhibition at this location includes Dr. Jack Kervorkian’s suicide machine amongst the strange, bizarre, and morbid.
On a recent Reddit post, a museum visitor notes that the atmosphere inside the museum feels quite odd, “You can feel the vibe change as you walk through the door.” They continued, “You can definitely feel it. Some people feel dizzy, others take a quick see and leave, twice I’ve seen people walk in and straight back out. Your experience will be very interesting to say the least.”
It’s not hard to imagine that the museum is haunted by an array of negative and strange vibes, which would be altogether appropriate for a Museum of Death.
Sources
- “Haunted or spooky spots in New Orleans/the French quarter.” Reddit. Accessed 14 July 2024.
- Museum of Death. com. Accessed 14 July 2024.
- Museum of Death. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 14 July 2024.