“Mixed bag. The book itself is great, and the photos are good. But.
The captions for the photos are all fucked up. Half the time I’d think I was reading a caption referring to a pig fetus in a jar, when really it was a malformed human fetus I was hearing all about. They were awkwardly written and placed.
But, okay, that’s not really the big deal here. There are a few big deals, and that’s not really one of them.
Big Deal 1: The people profiled here, with a few exceptions, were super uninteresting. If I was being a dick about it, I’d say they collected shit instead of developing personalities. It’s possible they were being coy and unsure about being interviewed, and if that’s the case, cool, but skip the interviews.
Big Deal 2: There’s a dulling effect as you go through the book. If you knew one of these people, they’d be the biggest weirdo you knew. But compiled into a book together, each one doesn’t seem all that much of an individual. All the women were like a grown-up Wednesday Addams, some with tattoos and bangs, and all the dudes were somewhere between hipsters and bikers, and everyone was some kind of a designer, tattooer. And how many skulls do you have to look at before you start yawning? A couple dozen, apparently.
Big Deal 3: Some of these collectors are…kinda heinous. I’m not going to judge based on the mere fact of having human body parts as part of your collection. A good example though, one collector said “fans” of his brought him a human head that they said they “found” in a graveyard the night before when it was raining and a head was washed out of the ground. That’s about the biggest buncha bullshit I ever heard. Were they visiting him in the midst of a fucking hurricane? But then the collector didn’t take it, and I breathed a sigh of relief. BUT THEN the collector took pains to say he didn’t take it because it was heavy, wet, could carry disease and was probably infested with maggots. Basically, he didn’t take it because the quality wasn’t up to his standard, not because some asshole kids probably dug up a grave. Also, for being a collector of the macabre, he should know that he’s less likely to get sick from a rotting head than from the humans who brought it to him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw7bsNKsABQ). Unless they then dumped it in the town’s water supply. Then you’d be fucked.
Big Deal 4: The ethics. Some of these collections are pretty unethical in my eyes, and I’m not the most ethical person in the world. There are just some items that don’t belong to the individuals who possess them. For example, you have a grave marker in your house? With a person’s name on it? That shit has been labeled and clearly belongs to someone else. You might not be able to ever find that person, but it’s still pretty obvious it’s not yours. These are the assholes who find a wallet with a picture ID in it and don’t bother. Now, something like a deformed fetus in a jar that toured the States for 30 years as part of a freakshow, that I don’t have as much of a problem with. Because, eh, you’re never going to figure out where that dude belongs, plus being in a private home is better than being on tour. Not perfect, not ideal, but when we’re talking about a pretty fucked up history, it’s at least better. SEE, that’s how unethical I am, I have no problem with a preserved punk in someone’s house, but a gravestone is taking things too far.
Big Deal 5: Everyone in this book was asked a version of how others react to their collections. And they’re like, “I don’t care. People think it’s weird, or that I’ll be a killer, but I just move on with my life.” I think they’ve misinterpreted the problem. Because as I see it, the problem isn’t that I’m afraid you’ll be a killer. It’s that if you don’t see a problem with having a “reclaimed” child’s coffin in your house, which you use as an ottoman, then I’m forced to wonder whether you make good voting decisions, don’t leave your garbage in the hallway of your apartment building, and should be generally trusted (by the way, quick rant: I knew someone who left their garbage on the front porch until their HOA complained about it. I normally think HOA’s are a bunch of assholes playing student council, but leaving trash just outside the door is a pet peeve of mine. It’s too rank to be in your house, but not so rank that it warrants a trip ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY? What the fuck? It’s even worse in an apartment building. I get it, you don’t want to go all the way downstairs and outside, but fuck me, the solution is to share with your neighbors? C’mon). Point being, I’m not afraid you’ll start “collecting” me or something, I just don’t know if you make great decisions.
Big Deal 6: The weirdest part of this whole book, there’s this taboo in the book around collecting things that “glorify” modern serial killers. There was one lady with a serial killer collection, letters, pictures, art they’d done.
By the way, before I talk more about the taboo, this fuckin’ lady, she had a hand tracing done by Richard Ramirez, which I guess he did a lot of. She lost it, asked him for another, he obliged, and she LOST THAT ONE TOO! Seriously?
Anyway, it was kinda funny that some of these collectors would be showing off their shrunken head from Borneo or something, and then they’d turn up their noses at collecting stuff from serial killers. I didn’t get that one.
Big Deal 7: I was hoping for more variety. There was one collection of gas masks and weird head gear, including a gas mask for a horse, which was weird and interesting, and there was one of ouija-type boards and planchettes, which was also different, but SO MANY of these collections were bones, skulls, hair, fetuses, and so on.
Big Deal 8: For having such unusual collections and being such individuals, these folks all displayed their shit in almost the exact same way. At least manufacturers of velvet drapes still have something to do once movie theaters entirely shut down. “