The Merman's Home Page
The Merman (AKA Feejee Mermaid, Fiji Mermaid), veteran of sideshow tent and county fair midway, has seen it all. If you can't trust his sense of a good attraction, then who can you trust? The Merman Emblem of Approval -- "Merman Pick" -- let's you know a sight delivers just the right mix of garishness, exploitation and grisly discovery.
While the Merman has a slight bias towards sewn-together fish and body parts on display, you'll find his faves span all of Roadside culture!
- Merman Picks
- Where the Merman Lives
- Where Did the Merman Come From?
- The Merman's Pals
- Plague of the Mermen Keepers: Private Collections
- Public Outrage: Mermen in Storage
Merman Picks
- Belhaven Freak Collection
- Mummies of the Insane
- Medical Oddities of the Mutter Museum
- Clubfoot George's Clubfoot
- Funeral Home with Perky Animal Dioramas
- Ye Olde Curiosity Shop
Where the Merman Lives
Arkansas Alligator Farm
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Arkansas Alligator Farm sits right outside the entrance to Hot Springs National Park. It fulfills a vital role in the Hot Springs tourism cluster.
The Merman has been a resident of this gator farm for fifty years. The owner has fought off repeated offers of cash by entertainment franchises like Ripley's. They don't want the farm -- just the Merman, who is at least 95 years old.
We've noted on visits over the last ten years this place has become more inert, like a gator baking senseless in the humid, hundred degree Arkansas air. The Merman is displayed indoors, in a glass-sided box among a sprinkling of mounted deer heads and stuffed sea turtles. A lone squirrel monkey bathes in an orange heat lamp, scampering up and back on a tree limb. He is the only living thing in this room of empty cages and pits.
AAF used to sell spun glass mermen, but not anymore. It's always worth a stop, though, along with its neighbors, Educated Animals and Tiny Town.
Where Did the Merman Come From?
The first "merman" known in America was purchased from Japanese sailors in 1822 (mermen were apparently "ritualistic objects" of Japanese and Indonesian origin). P.T. Barnum purchased his first merman in 1842 and put it on exhibit as the "Feejee Mermaid." It was an immediate sensation. Other mermen quickly emigrated to America.
Public
Outrage: Mermen in Storage
Several institutions are in no rush to display their Mermen. The New York State Museum in Albany had loaned theirs to Cooperstown for awhile, but now it's back, though out of public view. The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Amherst, MA also chooses to keep its Fiji Mermaid in "storage."
At the Milwaukee Public Museum, "Al," an official from the History department chuckles: "We haven't had that on display in 50 years! It's a blatant fake and we just don't show it." Why is a mystery, since Al volunteers that "we get one or two calls a month asking about it."
The Peabody Museum at snooty Harvard has a "loaner" Merman that it ships out for exhibits at other museums with "legitimate credentials." Forget about borrowing it for your next party. They have no plan to put it on display.
