Abita Springs, Louisiana -
UCM Museum - Bassigator Monster

UCM Museum - Bassigator Monster

If you loved the movie "Big Fish," you will definitely enjoy finding this small town with its small mystery museum. I enjoyed getting off the highway and venturing into this small, delectable town. [Jolynn, 07/07/2011]

Abita Mystery House

This was our second visit in 12 months. He has added a lot more stuff since then -- or maybe we just didn't see it all the first time. Our children also enjoyed it. While we were there we met locals who said that they come monthly to see the latest creations. We were lucky to meet the owner this time, and he showed us some "behind the scenes" things. We spent about an hour there and it was well worth it.

Both times we were there we could not help but notice how beautiful the cashiers were. What are super models working at a place like this? We thought that maybe they were robots. [Timmy Wood, 01/19/2011]

[RA: Curator John Preble says that he was inspired to create the UCM Museum/Mystery House after a family visit to Tinkertown in New Mexico. He realized that his personal collection of oddball clutter was just as worthy of a museum.]

Abita Springs Mystery House

Awesome mix of junk and genius. First, you walk through a literal maze of paint-by-number paintings interspersed with walls of bottle caps, popcorn boxes, celebrity light-up beer signs, and old radios. You then come to a hall of dioramas, made with popsicle stick furniture and sculpted figures depicting life on a plantation, a mardi gras parade, turn of the century toy shop, a jazz funeral, and a hurricane ripping a part a trailer park. Some of this have been rigged to move with a push of a button which makes them even more amazing.

This guy has a lot of time on his hands, and the mix of crudeness, ingenuity and humor make it unlike anything else you've seen before. Our favorites were the taxidermy exhibits, such as The 23-foot Bassigator, a fiji mermaid and all kinds of critters that have been dismantled and re assembled to make something else. In The far back he has a bunch of old fortune telling machines, one of which works and hands out custom fortunes like "Your lucky color is squashed banana brown" and "You will move to Canada with twelve cats and one dog named Goober." [Dukey Flyswatter, 10/25/2010]

UCM Mystery House

Amazing collections and just lots of funny stuff. A 3D cartoon of the South. I took a bunch of people here last weekend, all ages, and everyone liked it.

The owner gave us a short "behind the scenes" tour. They had a good gift shop with some very strange stuff. [Harry Steadman, 01/30/2010]

UCM Museum - Mystery House

The owner/creator has put his experience in the circus to wonderful use. He has assembled a collection of freak show curiosities, nostalgia kitsch, and assorted junk (often donated by visitors) into a sum total that is a brilliant work of art. I am so glad I turned off the freeway to see it. The town itself is quite picturesque too.

The only place that this can be compared to, that I have seen, would be the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA, and the similarity is probably more in spirit. [Andreas G, 11/24/2009]