Ye Olde Curiosity Shop as it looked in 1938. There's still a lot of weirdness in it today.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop

Seattle, Washington

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is the oldest surviving oddities museum/souvenir store in America, a link between the grisly attractions of the 19th century and those of the 21st. Many large American cities now have their own "weird" store that thrives selling tarot cards and displaying taxidermy freaks, but none has the pedigree of this one.

Gloria the mummy has been in the Shop for over 100 years.

The Shop has been in Seattle in one form or another since 1899, continuously operated by the same family now for five generations. Its founder, "Curio Joe" Standley, acquired many of its bizarre artifacts in the early years from sailors whose ships had docked at the waterfront. Back then nearly everything in the Shop was for sale, but certain items were considered too charismatic to part with, and over the years exotic memorabilia continued to be added to the permanent collection.

The Shop's most famous relic (and unofficial mascot of the entire city) is Sylvester the mummy, a postcard superstar since he arrived in 1955. He's an American, not an Egyptian, mummy, with reddish brown skin -- like beef jerky -- ragged teeth, a bushy mustache, and ropey limbs. To prevent scandalous snapshots, he wears an Indian blanket modesty cloth.

This scraggy Merman is suspended from the Shop's rafters.

Sylvester, according to his display signage, was found by two cowboys in 1895, half-buried in the Sonoran Desert outside of Gila Bend, Arizona. He's exhibited behind glass for his own preservation -- and because he smells pretty rank. Some believe that Sylvester was once hauled around as a State Fair attraction named "McGinty," and he definitely made appearances at both the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exposition and the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. He's been studied by experts from the Smithsonian and National Geographic.

Andy James, the Curiosity Shop family president, once wrestled Sylvester out of his glass case for us. We got a memorable whiff of Sylvester fumes, and a close-up view of the "gut shot bullet hole" that was long believed to have killed him -- but that's now seen as a tool-made embellishment from his sideshow days. "Yeah, they [the experts] stuck a drill bit in there and it fit perfectly," said Justin, Andy's son.

Sylvester during a brief airing outside of his display case.

Sylvester's afterlife partner is Sylvia, a mummy supposedly found in a cave in Central America. Frozen in a postmortem howl, Sylvia arrived at the Shop in 1970 and was given a CT scan at the University of Washington's department of radiology. No fake bullet holes here: the scientists determined that Sylvia was a Caucasian woman who had died of tuberculosis about 100 years before Sylvester.

Completing the desiccated mummy family is Gloria, a child found in the Southwestern desert (like Sylvester). She's been in a Shop showcase, curled up on a comfortable blanket, since the 1920s.

The Curiosity Shop's narrow aisles and a packed-to-the-rafters interior give it a claustrophobic Victorian vibe that never fails to please and terrify. Stuffed creatures with too many heads and limbs are everywhere. Barnum-inspired denizens of the Shop include a scraggy Merman and a Mer-Baby. A Mer-dog named "Petri-Fido" was taken off exhibit, said Justin, "because it looked too much like a dead dog."

The Shop claims to have the largest number of genuine shrunken heads on display outside of Ecuador ("This barbaric custom is strictly forbidden now," notes a reassuring sign). Careful looking -- which can be difficult given the constant jostle of tourists -- reveals tiny curios such as The Lord's Prayer engraved on the head of a pin, a Mount Rushmore painted on a grain of rice, and fleas wearing dresses that were made by a woman in Mexico. Freaks of nature and creepy antiques dangle from overhead cables, including a nightmarish Pacific Wolf Eel, a giant whale oosik (penis bone), a Kamikaze flag, and a brown blob labeled "flattened walrus face."

Shop founder "Curio Joe" Standley and fanged friend.

Other artifacts of note include a cow hairball, a "cannibal fork," and a two-headed lamb named "Ewe-2." A 19th century teaching tool, "Medical Ed," is made from a real human head with its brains scooped out. Black Bart, an antique slot machine, dispenses souvenir tokens when you pull his one pistol-clutching arm. A two-faced cat and eight-legged pig, both in jars, share space with a miniature ship built entirely of matchsticks. A 350-year-old "African voodoo monkey" has had its intestines removed and braided onto its head.

The Shop's guestbooks have recorded visits from celebrities going back over 100 years, including Teddy Roosevelt, Katherine Hepburn, Jack Dempsey, J. Edgar Hoover, and Will Rogers -- proving that the elite like to gawk at weird stuff just like the rest of us.

The business side of this free attraction sells familiar souvenir fare -- branded snow globes, refrigerator magnets, etc. -- along with miniature hand-carved totem poles and, in the appropriate spirit of the Shop, fake shrunken heads made of goatskin.