Antique Funeral Vases, Framed Butterflies from the Akron, Antique Home Embalming Kit, Spooky Victorian Shadowbox, Post Mortem Pictures & Memento Mori

I had a busy, productive week. Lots of hunting and searching for strange items to add to my website, many hours spent on the computer uploading photos for slideshows and website postings. And of course, a few more episodes of Dark Shadows :-) We are somewhere deep into 1968 and Angelique is now a vampire. I was doing some research online about "The Old House" where Barnabus lives and came across this great article all about the real house used for the outside pictures on the show. Seems it really was The Old House on an estate that included a larger mansion, Lyndhurst which was the house used in the Dark Shadows movies of the 1970s. Sadly The Old House burned down and all that is left is the basement.

A wonderful find this week! A very spooky Victorian wedding shadowbox featuring clasped hands made of wax. The clasped hands represented the loved ones and you will also see that image on gravestones at cemeteries.
I will be adding this to my website this weekend.
Also this week, I sold some fun things to one of my best customers, Julie. She collects antique funeral vases (among other fun macabre things!) and she has a large collection, including some of my all time favorites from my shop. She has most of these ...

Well, I ran across a really great pair of graveyard vases with crosses on them and they have a wonderful old patina and I knew Julie would love them. Also on her wish list was some of the old framed butterflies and moths from the now-defunct Akrons store. Akrons used to be a home furnishings store back in the 1960s and Julie was telling me how she wished she had bought some of the butterflies they carried in the little black frames. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon three of these little gems in my travels! They even have the little faded "Akron" sticker on the back. It was fun to be able to get Julie what she was looking for.If you have any special requests for odd items, be sure to drop me a line because you never know what I might find.

New to the website this week is the Antique Home Embalming Kit. A very creepy collectible direct from an old funeral home. Click here for more info.

Also just up on the website is a new section called Memento Mori where I showcase my extensive collection of antique post mortem photos and other Victorian death-related photos. A really haunting one is this cabinet card of a compellingly beautiful young lady with this sad newspaper clipping attached at the bottom. It reads ... Macdonald at 24 Barony Street, very suddenly on the 27th inst, Violet Hall, dearly beloved and only daughter of William and Janet Macdonald; sadly missed and deeply regretted. Funeral to-morrow (Saturday) at 3 pm. Click here to see this one.

Another haunting image is this home funeral for a child with an elaborate canopy above the tiny casket. Click here for this one.

And on a lighter note, you just have to get a pair of these 3D hologram glasses! Great to wear and freak out your friends, but my favorite thing to do is to use them as props.

My mannequins love them! Click here for your pair.

And for the conspiracy theory/alien invader crowd out there, I have a fun vintage press photo with a picture of a horse skeleton and a veterinarian and a caption all about how Snippy the Horse was believed to have been killed by "something not of this world." Good fun! Click here to check out Snippy's posthumous celebrity.Well, now I'm ready for a nice weekend - some time with the family and more items to add to the website. Have a great weekend yourself!