The Oddities & Curiosities Expo, a traveling exhibition of gothic and occult art, sideshow performers, and bizarre specimens, stopped at Villa Park, Illinois on July 20-21, 2019. CBS News photographer Jake Barlow took in the odd sights.
Credit: Jake Barlow/CBS News
Vendors offer such bizarre items as preserved specimens, unusual antiques and original arts and crafts, horror and Halloween notions, and generally bizarre stuff.
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This “Vampire Killing Kit” contains everything you need to vanquish Dracula, including a cross.
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A genuine human skull previously used in a medical school.
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The expo features a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Mini Museum, with exhibits from the famed collectors of human oddities. Pictured: A shrunken human head. The mouth was sewn shut in order to keep the victim’s spirit trapped inside.
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Also on loan from Ripley’s is a large ball of human hair, nicknamed Hoss, for which donations are still being accepted. (It will take a bit more to pass the Guinness World Record holder for largest ball of human hair, which weighs 167 pounds.)
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A death’s-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos).
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A blind baby python.
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A model of “Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy,” a popular sideshow attraction who was brought to the United States from Russia by P.T. Barnum in the late 19th century. His excess hair was the result of hypertrichosis.
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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo in Villa Park, Illinois.
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Since she was a little girl, Massachusetts artist Laura Morriseau, of Creative Cinderella, has been capturing and preserving spider’s webs as art.
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A curiosity indeed, at the Oddities & Curiosities Expo.
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Spooky crafts.
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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo in Villa Park, Illinois.
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The tattooed Manda Rexx, who – aided by her husband, Chadillac Rexx – swings by hooks in her legs. They offer professional instructions in suspension and body piercings.
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A sideshow offers entertainers performing feats of daring.
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A taxidermy specimen. Classes are offered, in which students can create their own mounted taxidermy mouse. All specimens, we are assured, have been “ethically sourced,” and died of natural causes.
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A wishing doll, with horns and tied hands, is draped with a red cloak from the Carpathian Mountain Region. “Strigoi Vii” witches are reputed to leave their bodies and insert their life force into these dolls, offering wishes to their owners.
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While arsenic has been purported to have medicinal purposes over the centuries, take a little too much and you die.
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The expo is described as “kid friendly,” but as the operators helpfully note, “it depends on the child.”
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The perfect accessory for the goth inclined.
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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo in Villa Park, Illinois.
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A John Wayne Gacy clown costume for sale.
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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo will be crawling over to Detroit (August 3), Austin (August 17), Kansas City (August 31), New Orleans (Sept. 21), Denver (Oct 5), Portland, Ore. (Oct. 19) and Atlanta (Nov. 16).
Photographs by Jake Barlow.
Text by David Morgan.
Credit: Jake Barlow/CBS News
