back to article Fright at the museum: Bored curators play spooky Top Trumps on Twitter over who has the creepiest object

Before "The Event", aesthetes occasionally visited museums as a low-cost way to ingest some culture. Those vaults of bygone curios still exist, and their staff have had an ingenious idea in this age of isolation – public Twitter throwdowns over which establishment has the best exhibit on various themes. The weekly hashtag " …

  1. Martipar

    A few years ago in Cornwall

    I spotted a 2 headed piglet in ajar, apparently it didn't live long, i was fascinated my vegan friend wasn't

    1. MacroRodent

      Re: A few years ago in Cornwall

      The natural history museum in Helsinki has a two-headed calf, stuffed. Possibly even worse: during one visit as a child, I recall glimpsing through a half-open door (that probably should have been shut) things in glass jars that belong to a horror movie...

      1. Grikath

        Re: A few years ago in Cornwall

        Meh... I know Radboud University in Nijmegen still has its old Pathological collection.

        If the Anatomical Museum, showing off what the finest of surgical hands can produce in displays of the human anotomy how it should look, the Pathological Museum has all the Stuff That Went Wrong.... And the usual 18th/early 19thC Curiosa to boot.

        You do have to book in advance though, it's only open on appointment.. And... not everyone manages the full exhibit... 3:-)

    2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: A few years ago in Cornwall

      Could have been at the old Potter Museum at Jamaica Inn, unfortunately long gone (I was there on the last day of opening). Lots of bad Victorian taxidermy - there's a nice collection of photos here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2013/sep/13/curious-world-walter-potter-pictures-taxidermist-victorian

      Strangely, the Witchcraft Museum at Boscastle hasn't participated in this competition (yet) to my knowledge.

    3. Rich 11

      Re: A few years ago in Cornwall

      i was fascinated my vegan friend wasn't

      Both of you thought 'Bacon!' at the same time.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    A good reminder that a pandemic...

    .... may not be the worst happening to mankind.... just I'm afraid someone could restart, if they didn't already, to make some of those artifacts...

  3. STOP_FORTH Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Salzburg

    The museum in Salzburg has a pretty grisly collection of pickled things in jars.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Salzburg

      As good as traditional British pubs?

      1. STOP_FORTH Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Salzburg

        They were all too big to go into a packet of salt and vinegar.

  4. Arthur the cat Silver badge

    The Wellcome Galleries at the Science Museum

    have some fairly gruesome exhibits. The 18th C devices for dealing with bladder stones definitely cause involuntary leg crossing.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: The Wellcome Galleries at the Science Museum

      I'm surprised the Mutter Museum hasn't entered. http://muttermuseum.org/

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    School field trips that scarred me

    Growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC, school field trips were common. Two exhibits I remember after half a century.

    The Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine) had an amputated leg from a patient with elephantiasis.

    https://www.medicalmuseum.mil/assets/images/exhibits/visiblyhuman/elephantiasisleg1.jpg

    The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center had a live cow with a hole where you could look into its stomach (link is to a similar study program)

    https://assets.dnainfo.com/photo/2017/5/1495210225-299456/extralarge.jpg

    1. holmegm

      Re: School field trips that scarred me

      "The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center had a live cow with a hole where you could look into its stomach (link is to a similar study program)"

      I know from experience that this (at a different location) was still on offer for school field trips, as recently as last year.

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: had a live cow with a hole where you could look into its stomach

      How very iruminating.

      1. Jan 0 Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: had a live cow with a hole where you could look into its stomach

        Mr. Alexis St. Martin was even more interesting and useful than a cow.

    3. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: School field trips that scarred me

      As soon as you said "Medical Museum" it is certain the horrors wouldbe unleashed...

      I remember doing a high school assignment at the local hospital and rummaging through their collection. The creepiest thing I recall was the trachea of a child who had chocked on a marble. The marble was of course, still on its final location.

  6. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Coat

    So the fight started with a bun...

    Speaking of creepy dolls, there's this 3 faced one from the '50s

    https://old.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/g4rqka/creepy_old_doll_from_1950s/

  7. John 110
    Pirate

    one upmanship...

    A colleague, who looked after IT for the local Histopathology lived in a cubby hole, that to get to, you had to go through the viewing gallery for the autopsy suite, then past the shelves full of stuff pathologists had kept "because they were interesting"...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The best we have in Manchester is a mummy with an erection.

    1. Woza
      Joke

      Are you sure that's not a Daddy?

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