SAD, SICK, AND SENSATIONAL STORIES: A REFLECTION ON THE ROLE OF HORROR MUSEUMS

Museum Mysteries | Jefimija Vujcic

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What do haunted places, clowns, microbes, breakups, cursed objects, and supernatural creatures all have in common? Besides the obvious creepy factor, they have also all had exhibits or entire museums dedicated to them at one time or another. Horror museums are a phenomenon widely discussed in movies, television, YouTube videos, news articles, and tourist websites. While they are perhaps little understood, beyond the sensational aspect, they do help us grasp the reflective role of museums in our societies.

A model of the bloodsucking creature Yara-ma-yha-who (originating among indigenous Australians). / Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches (ROM feature exhibit, November 2019–March 2020). / Photo courtesy of the editor.  

The idea for this blog post actually came about a few months ago, when I was watching an episode of The Good Place. In order to stay spoiler free, let’s just say some characters end up on the run in hell (yes, literally!). In disguise, they find themselves stuck in a hall of the “Museum of Human Misery” where animated human dioramas depicting low-level torture form the vast majority of exhibits. Their charade is up when one brand new diorama is unveiled — featuring our heroes torturing one another. Although certainly strange without context, this scene highlights a trait of many museums — the ability to confront the best and worst of ourselves (usually referring to the loftily imagined ‘humankind,’ rather than the very literal direction the show takes!). 

The museum in “Black Museum” (the finale of the fourth season of Black Mirror) similarly serves as a mirror for the worst parts of a society set in the horrifyingly not-so-far-off future. Without giving too much away, many objects in this museum don’t just represent human stories — but actual elements of human consciousness. As the enthusiastic curator/docent says, there is a “sad, sick story behind almost everything” in the museum. A show like this, much like horror museums or other controversial sites of dark tourism, can “tell us a lot about what it is to be human.” Further, also according to a professor researching the phenomenon, tourists of these places have the opportunity to “reflect on and try to better understand the evil that we’re capable of.”

A framed explanation of the linguistic origin of the word "vampire." / Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches (ROM feature exhibit, November 2019–March 2020). / Photo courtesy of the editor.  

If you search for horror museums, you’d find tourist-oriented top-10 or top-20 lists with museums right around the world. One in particular, the Warren Occult Museum formerly located in Monroe, Connecticut (but recently closed due to zoning violations) is closely linked to well-known horror films. Reportedly filled with cursed objects that formed the basis of movies such as Annabelle (a doll that is perhaps the most famous of the collection) or the Conjuring series, it was a popular destination for various YouTubers as well (with about 3 million views on a segment of Buzzfeed Unsolved).

Further, according to such lists, museums focusing on one particular scary or gross object are quite popular. Themes include ventriloquism (Fort Mitchell, Kentucky), disgusting food (Malmo, Sweden) and clowns (Leipzig, Germany). One noteworthy variant of these object-themed horror museums focuses on the medical sciences. These gore-filled exhibits include those located on the sites of hospitals (a former operating theatre, in London, England) and those dedicated to dentists (also located in London, England), pharmacies (New Orleans, Louisiana), microbes (Amsterdam, Netherlands), locks of hair (Cappadocia, Turkey), parasites (Tokyo, Japan), brains (Bengaluru, India), devastating breakups (Zagreb, Croatia and LA, California), and death (as one medical museum is known colloquially, located in Bangkok, Thailand). This idea of body-based horror also conjures images of wax museums, which reportedly “would not be complete” without a chamber of horrors. Perhaps the most horrific type of all are the ones linked to historically grim places or practices. These include museums dedicated to medieval crime (Rothenburg, Germany), magic and witchcraft (Cornwall, England), and torture (Amsterdam, Netherlands), among others. 

A movie poster of Dracula from the early 1930s. The ROM exhibit It's Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection (July 2019–January 2020) did a good job discussing the xenophobia and racism inherent in many classic early horror films. / Photo courtesy of the editor. 

Finally, museums or exhibits dedicated to the dead can also be quite commonly found – from Sicilian catacombs to shrunken heads in Oxford, England. Notably, the Pitt Rivers Museum actually very recently (in September 2020) permanently closed their gallery of shrunken heads, as part of their efforts to decolonize their institution. Due to this connection to colonization and to othering, this deserves an entirely separate conversation – one which I will explore in an upcoming blog. What is worth noting at the present is how, by looking at the sordid histories of some of these earliest collecting practices, it is clear that horror has always had a place in the museum. 

COMBINING HORROR, HISTORY AND HALLOWEEN

Program Reviews | Samantha Kilpatrick

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In search of a Halloween event to review for this column, I finally decided on 'Legends of Horror: 'Vampire Circus', presented by Captain Morgan at Casa Loma'.

While trying to summarize the experience, I kept coming back to my sister's review of Mamma Mia 2: "Do you want to see a movie musical titled 'Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again?' If yes, you're going to enjoy this movie."

Similarly: Do you want to go to 'Legends Of Horror: Vampire Circus, Presented By Captain Morgan at Casa Loma?' Do you want a fun horror romp without much history or fact? If you do, you will enjoy the experience.

My My, How Can I Resist Ya. Entrance to the experience.
Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. 

This experience was void of guides, in cloaks and hushed voices, speaking of grisly murders a hundred years past. It was not a tale of cold spots, and mysterious apparitions, and small objects going missing. It was a carnival haunted house. One of the groups in front of us included a man who brought a rubber chicken with us, who would squeak it at his companions when they were being 'chicken'. This set the mood. It's a fun group event; horror, like joy or a bottle of wine, is best enjoyed shared.

The horror maze itself was reasonably by-the-book. The maze included flashing lights, smoke machines, actors jumping out of bushes and from behind corners, hanging 'bodies' to push past, and animatronics rigged up to motion detectors to lunge at the visitor on their way past. Themes ranged all over the place. If you want a smorgasbord of horror, with everything from Phantom of The Opera, to werewolves, to cannibals, ghosts and demon children, Legends of Horror has you covered.

One of the performers in the haunted house, juggling flaming devil's sticks. Impressive, absolutely. Scary? The jury's out. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick.  

There were also many acrobats, I'm entirely not sure why. They veered mostly away from the 'scary circus' theme, but still included a number of incredible acrobats, some on aerial devices and trampolines. I think I spotted only one murderous clown and no allusions to any of the other traditional horror elements of the circus. The acrobats felt included to simply bring credence to the subtitle of the show this year; contributing to the production value, but certainly not the fright of the experience.

After about forty-five minutes walking through various horror experiences in the grounds, you find yourself actually inside Casa Loma for the first time. Your first glimpse inside the castle itself is a bar.

In case you wanted a fortifying shot or a meal before going on to the rest of the Legends of Horror, or just to disrupt the mood. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. 

The second half of Legends of Horror takes place in Casa Loma rather than just on the grounds, and it is the piece of the experience I most wanted to talk about. The second half of the trip attempts to tap into the actual history of Toronto with the exact same level of tact and production value that the rest of the house had displayed.

That is to say: costumed actors, smoke machines, special effects and jump scares, set against the backdrop of actual historical events. It was so dark in the tunnel it was difficult to take photos, so please bear with me a moment while I talk about the exhibition on display, and how it was used in Legends of Horror.

"Toronto, The Dark Side" a permanent exhibition in the Casa Loma tunnels. The tunnel is covered on both sides by photos from The Toronto Archives, blown up and sorted into different 'Dark Sides' of Toronto's past, including fires, the depression, and Toronto's first plane crash Most notably was the photos titled 'the Plague Years', which were photos of real children treated for unnamed diseases at Sick Kids Hospital- given that the photos in question were from the 1920s, typhus? Cholera? Smallpox? Just getting vaccines?

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A post shared by Legends Of Horror (@legends_ofhorror) on Oct 31, 2018 at 4:53pm PDT

Legends of Horror's Instagram post about Casa Loma, featuring their intervention in the tunnels. 

Regardless of the facts of the photos, they served as the backdrop to the same sorts of effects that the rest of the experience featured. The photo was framed by a 'cage' of plastic bars, convincingly rusted. Between the photo and the viewer, was a bloody fake body on a bed which lurched at the visitor, and a mannequin of a girl in a bloody, old-timey dress covered in sores was lit by a menacing red light. Again, I emphasize: the backdrop was a blown-up black and white photo of a children's ward at a hospital circa 1920, and the foreground was 'look at how scary sick children are.'

Photos of the aftermath of the fires in Toronto's history were subject to their own genre-appropriate treatment. Red and yellow lights, crackling sound effects, a full-body replica of a man with horrible burns.

I spent the first half of the experience wishing that the Legends of Horror would engage more with the actual history of Casa Loma, and the second half deeply regretting my wish. I'm not sure if there is a tasteful way to plug into actual lived tragedy for the purposes of provoking titillating and exciting horror for the viewer, but I am certain that this isn't it. Perhaps it's unfair to demand a haunted house experience treat historical figures with the respect they deserve. In that case, I would vastly prefer they hung sheets over the photos and had an actor with a chainsaw chase us through the tunnel. I think this is the first time that I have found historical context detract from an experience rather than add to it.

Legends of Horror was exactly as advertised: a high quality, high budget, horror experience. But it certainly wasn't a historic experience, and it didn't tap into any ghosts that may have been haunting the premises. And it was weakest when it was trying to be.