According to a museum sign, this is what happens "when mankind meddles with forces too great to control."

International Monster Museum

Salem, Massachusetts

"I grew up as a 'Monster Kid,'" said Louis Grande, co-owner of the International Monster Museum. Building monster models, watching monster movies on tv, he said, were happy memories from his childhood. "A love of horror," Louis said, "carried into my adult life."

Ghouls make a meal of Edgar Allan Poe's entrails.

That love is evident in the Monster Museum, a visually rich compendium of some of the worst things in the world. No friendly Bigfoot lives here. Its denizens are all hellish nightmares, ravenous for human flesh and blood.

The museum, in a way, is a breath of graveyard-fresh air for Salem, a town that has become perhaps too witch-happy in recent years. Louis and his partners, he said, built the attraction to purposefully extend the monster horizon. "We tried to stay away from monsters in a typical monster museum," Louis said. "We knew that there were a lot of other monsters that've really been overlooked."

Vampires and werewolves (and witches) are here -- obligatory, in Louis's judgment -- but the museum also showcases unholy horrors such as the Wendigo (a cannibalistic forest spirit) and Slenderman (a kid-craving freak from Ohio). Informative signs accompany each monster, offering helpful details. Goblins (from Scotland) "don't eat much but will kill for the pleasure of it." The Cyclops (from Greece) "took great pleasure in eating humans whenever possible." The Gashadokuro (from Japan) "roam after midnight grabbing lone travelers and biting off their heads to drink their spraying blood."

Pennywise, Cujo, and Carrie decorate the apparently occupied crypt of Stephen King.

What level of horror are we talking about? Well, ghosts, which are bankable fear-inducers elsewhere, are among this museum's least scary inhabitants. And its "international" scope is oddly reassuring. Foreign cultures may sometimes seem unfathomably strange, but they all turn out to have awful monsters, just like America.

Demon worshippers with melting faces.

Also, if you previously couldn't distinguish between a specter, a wraith, and a banshee, or between a ghoul and zombie, a visit to this attraction will clear things up for you.

The museum is self-guided, and visitors are given little LED lanterns to lighten the gloom. Monsters and darkness go well together, although here it can be too much of a good thing, as the overall murk -- sometimes lit only by fake flickering candles -- obscures the museum's careful attention to detail.

In the lobby, for example, which has been built to resemble a Victorian parlor, is the sarcophagus of Stephen King, painted with images of some of his most frightening movie creatures. Elsewhere, easily overlooked, are a fossilized baby dragon, a cameo appearance by Rob Zombie, and the crypt of the three Monster Museum business partners, including John "Professor Nightmare" Denley, who oversaw the museum's design. The half-rotted corpse of Annabelle Lee wears a wedding dress made of pages from Edgar Allan Poe stories. Poe is in another part of the museum, having his entrails eaten by the undead.

The Wendigo, according to its sign, has "feelings of insatiable hunger and the desire to cannibalize."

Vaguely horrifying soundscapes follow you from room to room, alternating bursts of Phantom of the Opera organ music with screams, evil laughter, and spectral whispers. The monsters themselves are often theatrically lit in lurid reds, green, and blues, and no matter your location -- a simulated haunted cemetery, gothic mansion, or mad scientist dungeon -- you'll find that every surface is distressed, stained, or moldy (Monsters clearly don't live clean). Motion-triggered jump scares add more terror to the tour: werewolves burst through walls, a dragon spits smoke, a disemboweled mummy bucks violently and roars.

We were surprised to learn that the International Monster Museum, although clearly a passion project for Louis, is just his side gig; his main job is as a lawyer and a traffic court judge. "I scare people during the day," he joked, "and then I scare them at night." For a grown-up Monster Kid like Louis, his dual careers as justice dispenser and monster museum maestro offer tempting possibilities for the future.

"We could do a whole museum of bad-driving monsters," Louis speculated, the gears turning in his brain. "People who constantly break the law, how they ended up. Yeah, that's not a bad idea."