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Cruising along Hollywood Boulevard, blaring AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," the words 'Museum of Death' crept along my peripheral vision. A gasp, shriek and swerve later, I parked in the museum's parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street.
Moving from their original location in San Diego in October, owners JD Healy and Cathee Shultz converted a former old mastering and recording studio where Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was recorded, into a museum dedicated to the inevitable.
Nervously walking towards the giant looming skull marking the entrance, Healy and Shultz cheerfully welcomed me with their two dogs Shadow and Buddy at their side, before briefing me with a caution: "Can you take graphic pictures?" asked Healy. "We've had people faint in here before."
Apprehensively, I stepped through an iron jail fence where the first exhibit paying tribute to the burial process awaited. A TV showing a documentary on after-death procedures breaks the silence as coffins, pictures and autopsy instruments settle into my eyesight. Modern and antique funeral home matchstick booklets plaster one wall, while funeral home fans adorn the adjacent wall, both illustrating the history and styles of mortuaries over time.
The next exhibit recreates San Diego's Heavens Gate suicide, complete with authentic clothing, suicide letter, and bunk bed set, while two mannequins play the role of the departed. Pictures of particularly gruesome murders of the past and the travails of drunk driving plaster the maze-like museum walls between the major displays.
The Charles Mason murders garner their own exhibit, where original pictures of the victims such as Sharon Tate and the LeBianca family, taken at the crime scene, are on display. Mixed in with various books, are pictures of Mason throughout the various stages of his life, and artwork completes the exhibit. Also included are various fact sheets on other famous deaths, including Phil Hartman, Black Dahlia, and River Phoenix.
Walking up to the Theater of Death, I can hear heavy metal music and I mentally try to prepare myself for what could lay inside. Sitting in a fold-up chair, the only light came from the big screen TV which played a fuzzy film montage of various deaths caught on camera. Looking around the room, which contained an assortment of beat-up folding chairs and crime scene taped walls, I could only bear the view for a few minutes, unlike Orange County resident Katie Glaister.
"It fascinates me, I'm not usually drawn to death, although I'm curious about it," said Glaister. "In the theater, there was footage of the sacrifice. That was interesting to me; I didn't even know that it existed."
Going through the last exhibit, dedicated to serial killers, such as Son of Sam and Richard "The Slayer" Ramirez, I couldn't take much more. Walking out to the entrance, Healy pulls out a two-headed turtle and tells me stories about their dogs, and the history behind their museum.
"We've always been into art and it just evolved out of our Art Gallery," said Healy. "You hang a sign that says Museum of Death and people start bringing things out of the closets and donating them to you."
For $15, anyone is welcome inside to immerse themselves in the infamous and grisly history of man's mortality. Two dollars are taken off for students, with proper identification, so even you can come and see for yourself why the museum has found the perfect location amongst the other oddities that make up Hollywood.
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