The Museum of the Weird sign on 6th Street in Austin, Texas. Photo by Marc Hartzman.
Keep Austin weird.
It’s not a request, it’s the city’s slogan. And with a collection of two-headed creatures, a mysterious man frozen in ice, and live performers who smash sharp objects into their faces for your entertainment, the Museum of the Weird is doing its part.
The museum was founded fourteen years ago, shortly after owner Steve Busti and his wife opened Lucky Lizard Curios & Gifts on Austin’s iconic Sixth Street. Among the unusual items for sale were a Feejee Mermaid and shrunken heads.
“People liked looking at them, but no one was buying them,” Busti told Weird Historian. They also loved looking at the live lizards housed in a terrarium at the back of the shop. “One day I half-jokingly told my wife we should charge for this,” he added. So they did, and the Museum of the Weird was born.
Busti had been a life-long collector, but once the museum opened his focus turned to oddities. As his collection grew, word spread and visitors offered their own contributions. “People will bring me things because they know I have the museum,” Busti said. “Like someone will walk in with a two-headed pig and ask if I want it. I may already have one, but sure, I’ll take another.”
Today, the museum offers two floors of weirdness and is currently expanding. The first level begins with a self-guided tour of the collection, filled with sideshow exhibits on P.T. Barnum, the Elephant Man, and other human anomalies. Joining them are glass cases displaying stuffed two-headed beasts and pickled freak animals.
The rest of the tour continues with a guide who leads visitors upstairs, past an apartment once occupied by Johnny Depp, and into a miniature wax museum the Edward Scissorhands actor surely would’ve loved. It’s packed with hovering figures from early 20th-century horror movies: Dracula, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, King Kong, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and more.
Wax figures from This Island Earth and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Photo by Marc Hartzman.
“One of my early influences was horror films,” Busti said. “I grew up in the ’70s, and every Saturday afternoon they’d have a marathon of horror movies.” He started making his own stop-motion films, drawing further inspiration from Rick Baker’s special effects (famous for his work in An American Werewolf in London). The wax figures are Busti’s way of passing these legendary characters on to a new generation of kids.
“It keeps their memory alive,” he said.
But the monsters are merely a prelude to the museum’s crown jewel which awaits in the next room: the Minnesota Ice Man. Lying in a giant box, frozen in ice, the Bigfoot-like creature is another step into Busti’s childhood.
“This is the thing that got me started in all things weird,” he explained. “I saw it when I saw about five years old.”
A showman named Frank Hansen had been touring the country with the attraction since the ‘60s. Curiosity seekers paid a small fee and stepped into a dark trailer to stare in wonder and amazement at the illuminated Ice Man.
Busti saw him in a Pennsylvania K-Mart parking lot. His Aunt Ginger had seen an ad for the exhibit and knew her nephew would love it. “I couldn’t see,” Busti said, recalling how little he was next to the strange creature’s massive encasement. “My aunt lifted me up, and I came face to face with these bulging eye balls and hairy face, frozen in this block of ice. I screamed, but when I overcame the shock, I was so amazed. I just kept staring at it. People were going around me. My aunt finally said, ‘Ok Steve, it’s time to go.’”
Not long after opening the museum, Aunt Ginger passed away. The event stirred up memories of the Ice Man and Busti began researching its whereabouts. Hansen had stopped touring sometime in the ‘80s. Determined to add it to his collection, Busti followed leads for eight years before finally discovering Hansen’s family had retained possession of it. He arranged to purchase the spectacle in 2013.
“If I hadn’t seen the Ice Man when I was a kid, I probably wouldn’t have the Museum of the Weird,” Busti said.
The Minnesota Ice Man, of course, isn’t real. But what follows is. Live entertainment concludes the tour with a rotating cast of performers that do things that seem like they shouldn’t be possible.
Black Scorpion. Photo by Anastasia Synn.
The Black Scorpion, for example, begins his show dressed in a superhero-like costume and innocently places a gloved hand on a table. Then he smashes it with a hammer. When he removes the glove he reveals a hand that looks like the blow just split it. Black Scorpion, the audience quickly learns, was born with Ectrodactyly, known as Lobster Claw Syndrome, which causes a clefting of the hands and feet. The hammer had struck the gap in his unique hand.
“People looked shocked, like, ‘What did I just see?’” Busti said, “We’ve had people pass out.”
But for those not too shocked to listen, Black Scorpion explains his condition and how it affects him in everyday life. “I use Ectrodactyly as an education tool, and use humor to share my experience and knowledge of something considered a negative and do my best to turn it into a positive,” he told Weird Historian.
Black Scorpion has been performing at the museum for more than a year, and is just one of six different currents acts.
Blockhead Benny is one of the featured performers at the Museum of the Weird. Photo courtesy of Steve Busti.
John T. Rex, born with tiny arms, performs stunts with electricity. Doc Ravencraft offers a mentalism show. Magic Chris dazzles with prestidigitation. Blockhead Benny lives up to his name, pounding nails into his nose after jamming his fingers and tongue into animal traps. And Dan Block, another human blockhead, tasers the nail after hammering it into his face. “He can’t do that all day,” Busti noted.
“We try to keep it different,” Busti added. “Whoever you see is different from the last, so you never see the same kind of show. And as we expand, we’re always looking for more performers.”
All part of the job when you’re keeping Austin weird.
