Two-headed things, albino things: if it isn't normal, it has a home at Dark and Deviant Oddities.

Dark and Deviant Oddities

Asheville, North Carolina

"Oddities and tattoos go well together," said Justyn Travers, explaining why his Dark and Deviant Oddities collection is displayed inside the Valiant Inscriptions tattoo parlor. Justyn said that its owner, Marc Robertson, gets as excited about some of the items as he does. The business is in a strip mall, but Marc -- a self-described art nerd -- has spent time and money designing its interior, room by room, as if it were a neo-gothic Victorian mansion. Both men have an eldritch flair: Justyn likes human skulls and things with two heads, Marc told us that he and his wife are having their house built as a replica of Norman Bates' home from Psycho.

Human skull chomps sage to counteract its ghostly tendencies.

Oh, and both Justyn and Marc have a lot of tattoos.

Oddities museums have sprouted across the U.S. like weeds in a haunted graveyard. As with many of them, much (but not all) of what's in Dark and Deviant Oddities is available for a price, from a Tibetan goat skull kapala to a monkey in a jar. "As a kid I would go to museums and say, 'I want that and that and that,'" said Justyn. "I wanted my place to be somewhere that people could see museum quality pieces, but also take one home if they wanted to." The general public is often content just to peek at the various rooms and exhibits, which is fine with Justyn and Marc. "If we're lucky," Marc said, "they buy something or they get a tattoo, which is still buying something."

Cyclops fawn dressed in Oddfellows regalia.

What elevates Dark and Deviant Oddities above other urban purveyors of bone saws and scorpion paperweights is that Justyn clearly has an eye for the good stuff, and Marc has provided a suitably atmospheric surrounding to showcase it.

Justyn's collection of two-headed things, for example, is a mix of genuine genetic monstrosities and lovingly hand-crafted fakes. "People have conversations about which ones they think are real and which ones aren't," said Justyn, who wants visitors to appreciate both types. One memorable example, an age-blackened full-body corpse-mummy of a two-headed woman, is generally perceived as legit, Justyn said, but she is not; she's a former circus sideshow attraction created by gaff-master Juan Cabana. "He's known for making his pieces out of real animal parts," said Justyn, admiring the macabre artistry.

Voodoo display include brain candle, pin-ready doll.

Human heads made from the derrieres of deer.

"A lot of people my age or younger just don't know about this kind of stuff," said Justyn, who was born in 1991. "If a piece comes with a history, then I want to share it, get people excited, teach them about things that they may not have known before." When asked for an example, Justyn said that antique taxidermy -- he used raccoons as an example -- will sometimes still have the skeleton inside.

Among the weird exotica we observed at Dark and Deviant Oddities were a six-legged calf, a lamb with twin rear ends, a grizzled and sticky-looking Fiji Mermaid, and a matched pair of "assquatches" -- deer butts reworked into fasimilies of human faces. There are mini-dioramas of mice as sideshow performers (made by Brandon and Julie Howey of the Wacky Taxidermy Museum in Michigan) and a cyclops fawn dressed in Oddfellows regalia (made by Donna Marian at the Creeper Gallery in Pennsylvania). Justyn observed that people who collect and create oddities are outsiders who tend to stick together.

No oddities museum is complete without a two-headed calf.

Justyn is proud of his home-jarred wet specimens, but we were particularly taken by his diorama of a Dickensian cemetery with fetal pigs rising from their graves. "That was a Covid project," he explained. "I was sitting around with my craft supplies, and I had all these broken, messed up fetal pigs, and I don't like to throw anything away." Some visitors, he said, are upset by all of the dead animals at Dark and Deviant Oddities, but Justyn pointed out that they're already dead when he acquires them, and that their transformation into display pieces is a gesture of postmortem respect.

We noticed that one of the many human skulls showcased at Dark and Deviant Oddities had a bundle of sage clamped in its jaws. Justyn said that it was put there because some of the tattoo artists believe that the skull is haunted. "I've heard stories from these artists about stuff moving around on its own," said Justyn, who downplays the supernatural in his exhibits, although he did once own a doll that, when touched, gave him a jolt, he said, "almost like when you have too many energy drinks." The doll sold quickly, as do most of his items with haunted pedigrees. The skull, however, is not for sale, and thus the sage was enlisted to counteract its persistent ghostly juju.

Justyn admitted that visitors, too, sometimes get "weird vibes" from his collection, "but once you start talking to them and explaining what these things are, then they start to be more interested and less frightened." Children, he said, are usually open-minded. "I love taking kids around," Justyn said. "They're so intrigued. 'What is that? Where did that come from?' I was that kind of kid."