“I know where I want to go this week!” “OK, where?”
“Lawrence Mass!”
“….WHY?!”
OK, so it might not be fair but my numerous run ins with Lawrence Mass haven’t left a particularly good taste in my mouth. My first time there the car stalled out in the middle of the night in front of a gas station where the cashier was happily holed up behind a bullet proof window wall. This was long before Covid so it wasn’t there for germs. The only other people around was a roving band of teenagers who looked pretty fucking rough. During another exciting detour I somehow ended up in a psychiatric waiting room in Lawrence where the people watching were… we’ll just say interesting.
So yeah, I wasn’t exactly hopping at the idea of going to Lawrence on purpose. But you know, every city has its good sides and bad sides, maybe it was time to look at it in a gentler light. Apparently there was an antique mall there. I know, the idea of an antique mall in the same vicinity as the above scenario seems preposterous but there it was… in an old mill building, sprawling for thousands of feet on several floors.
And I must admit it is kinda fun to go into a place that could be either amazing or absolutely awful. Keeps you on your toes, you know. And this place was full of surprises. First of all we kinda had a hard time finding the entrance as old mill buildings are like rat’s nests anyway. When we finally figured it out we entered to find an astonishing amount of random junk, very reminiscent of the junk shops in Maine. And then we turned a corner and found the clowns. Hundreds of them, all locked away in a display case with a few paintings spilling out into the general area. It was unnerving. And I like creepy dolls!
After this though we wound our way deeper into the mess and it started to have a healthy mix of junk store, proper antiques, local country chic crafts, and oodles of totally random things. We could have spent a week there picking. I ended up with a Janis Joplin album for $12 which made me super happy. I’d hoped to get some Christmas shopping done here but as sad as it is my family just aren’t as weird as I am and I found nothing to their tastes.
We did however go outside and across the parking lot where we were promised another floor of antiques. They had a completely different flavor. Up there we found lots of swanky furniture and a bunch of salvage items including a giant room full of doors that set off my sense of whimsy. Which one goes to Narnia and which one has a rabbit hole behind it? NOBODY KNOWS. And to make it all the more magical I found a Superman trap! I mean a phone booth. A real phone booth, complete with a phone, for only $900! Man, did that bring back memories.
All and all though this was worth the trip (even thought the GPS was being a total dick and wound me through Boston for no conceivable reason.) And hey, if you have someone who likes either junk or proper antiques this place was appropriate for gift shopping. I took lots of photos but then I lost the memory card. I guess I must have eaten it because it is goooone. Luckily I took a few cell phone snaps that I was sharing with Twitter as I was walking through so this entry won’t be completely naked.
Another thing on our list of to-do’s was to visit an antique store. It’s something we had become accustomed to doing in Rhode Island (where the products are usually quite pricey) and Maine (where every rusty nail is a treasure.) We even discussed potentially finding an antique store with something Civil War related – maybe an old musket ball or something – to see if we could take home something to curse ourselves with. And of course I was on my usual mission of finding the world’s creepiest doll. It’s not a common hobby but it’s my hobby and I like it.
The Antiques Emporium was a great place to stop for all of this. It was huge. Two floors of absolute chaos. Everything from fine furniture to a copy of Marilyn Monroe’s drivers license. And of course there were steam punky things, sharp things, things with faces that shouldn’t have faces, creepy dolls galore, and a painting of an androgynous child I would have totally brought home with me if I had $250.
And some of this stuff was apparently haunted – I can tell because one of my travel companions had to bolt out of the store at one point. No worries, we’re all good now. It was just a case of the heebie jeebies.
After perusing the Wickford Village Antiques we made our way to the Rhode Island Antique Mall. This destination I suggested because it had the word mall in it’s very utilitarian title which indicated it had multiple vendors which is always good when you’re trying to find something weird. And I was. Sometimes it’s fun to actually try to find a specific item and this place looked promising. This time around I had chosen to seek a long silver pipette. Not because I have any particular interest in tobacco paraphernalia as a nonsmoker but because I was toying with the idea of being a flapper for Halloween and how cool would it be to have a pipette to complete that ensemble?! Especially knowing flappers were the first women allowed to go to bars and smoke in public (and vote!) which was HUGE at the time. Flaunt that independence! It’s amazing! Sadly, I did not find what I was looking for but the antique mall was still a great place to end up. We lost several hours wandering here.
This place was pretty big with two fully packed floors that had everything from rows and rows of sparkly jewelry to a fully functional pinball machine. But things didn’t get real interesting until we stepped into a little side room that I hope was tended to by a mortician with a sense of humor. If it wasn’t then…. I have some questions. You see the room contained a child sized coffin cooler (because adult coffin coolers aren’t morbid enough?) A couple fetish dolls (not sure what the correct term for them is?) an old wooden wheel chair and even creepier still a whole shelf full of expired embalming fluid. Because who doesn’t have a few bottles of that kicking around, ammirite? And if death related items weren’t your thing there was a cow yolk here with a tag reading, “This looks like a chastity belt but it’s just a cow harness.” Inappropriate humor! This one tiny room alone was totally worth the trip but there was so much more.
I ended up wandering downstairs not long after this and whew! What a wonderful assortment of random things! Haunted dolls, LOTS of probably haunted dolls made my heart jump with glee. There were even two possessed Micky Mouses and a Donald Duck I am pretty certain was employed reaping souls in the thirties. That’s not to mention the medical dummy with removable organs, the slew of terrible taxidermy and alligator purses, the really old Halloween decorations, or a brand new unicycle! I ended up going home with a $4 Phil Ochs record (a wicked steal!) and The Best of Procol Harem because… I don’t know, it struck my fancy that day. I mean what other band is named after someone’s pet cat AND a random phrase in Latin? That totally embodied the spirit of our meanderings that day.
This was an awesome place that I do believe I will visit again and highly recommend to anyone interested in antiques. Their prices were very reasonable and their assortment was vast!
Once again our weekly adventure was rained out so we did what any adventurous gaggle of millennials would do -we made sure to get a solid two or so hours of sleep and then went antiquing! OK, so I might be exaggerating a little but after 30 everything feels like two hours of sleep. Your knees gets creaky, you gain a fetching pair of black bags to place permanently under your eyes, and you look at children voluntarily sitting on the floor with immense envy. Youth really is wasted on the young. But I digress. We were talking about antiquing. I think. Yes. Antiquing.
ANYWAY. Earlier on my travel companion spent a good few minutes Googling cool places to check out. There was one in town and another whimsically titled store called The Book Garden that garnered his attention but alas the one in town was so devoid of personality I’m not even going to bother making an entry for it and the Book Garden was weirdly lacking in both books and gardens. It was a cute little place in the corner of one of those wedge shaped buildings that may have been nice to visit if you were already shopping on the street but it wasn’t worth just going to in it’s own. By now we were both wondering if today was going to be a total waste.
That’s when we finally stumbled half-hazardly onto a nearby winner – the Wickford Village Antiques! It was a cute little place absolutely loaded to the brim with loose buttons. Ten cents a piece. A button lovers utopia. But it wasn’t just the buttons that endeared me to this place it was also the strange doll in the window that looked like she was maybe an old Halloween decoration but I honestly couldn’t tell. And a creepy Humpty Dumpty plushie. And a windchime in the shape of a fish skeleton. Little weird. Loving that. And for the math nerds and historians there was even a tax book for the town of Coventry circa 1941. Suffice to say taxes were a lot less then. I admit it. I looked.
It was a sweet little shop in the end. Definitely worth a look if you happen to be in town.
Yet another summer has rolled around which means it’s time to go antiquing! And I don’t mean the stuffy sort of antiquing one might expect from Rhode Island. I am not in the market for a 15th century chair or some fine china I’m afraid to breathe on. I do have enough spare change for a good haunted doll though…
And so we found not an antique store but an antique mall. Antique malls are usually large buildings (in this case a 17th century mill) which rent out booths on consignment meaning it’s halfway between antiquing at a little shop and halfway between rummaging through the town yard sale. You never know what you’re going to find! Or for what price. I was in.
I loved the ambiance of the place even before we stepped inside. By the outside it looks grumpy and old. You can see how the cement used on the outside is beginning to crumble from advanced age exposing the rocks within. Nearby in the parking lot there is a river and a structure which I am guessing probably once hosted a big water wheel. Historic accounts of the town say there’s an inordinate amount of factory accidents, drownings, and people run over by horses or cars that has led to this section gaining it’s haunted reputation.
I didn’t know about all that when I walked in. Perhaps I was too distracted by the giant sock monkey being hugged by a Kraken-esque tentacle. Yup, we’d stumbled onto another winner. Right behind that was a cache of great vinyl records – most classic rock from the 60’s-80’s. Usually when I come into a place like this and there’s a record collection it’s 90% dollar records that no one has ever heard of (or just blatantly doesn’t want – I’m looking at you Bill Cosby albums.)
This place was massive and just seemed to go on and on. I was in love with the old architecture and the uniqueness of each booth. There was just everything here – including a bottle of arsenic that gave instructions of what to do in case of accidental poisoning. Somehow I don’t think milk and butter do a hell of a lot but hey, if it worked for grandma…
My travel companion kept entertained finding increasingly scary Santas spread like confetti through the entire store. As fun as that was I had my eyes on the less Christmasy dolls. There was a huge case of trolls… did you know they made PUPPY TROLLS? And they’re just as terrifying as they sound. Even worse was a doll that looked like it might be able to crawl on its own and another in a case with half its head missing – scalped? Lobotomized? One can’t be too sure. Always fun were the usual bassinets full of random doll parts just waiting for some young Frankenstein to come waltzing in. “Ah yes, this’ll do…”
An even more funny image to me was a plastic reindeer situated atop all the cases just looking out over the store. It was missing one foot and seemed… happy about that. And of course there was always a few items here and there to remind us of what racist fucks we’ve been in the past. A mammie doll here, an “Indian Joe” drumming figure there, and can’t forget the odd Chinamen… Still, there was MUCH less of this than in Maine which is what I’m used to.
Did you know that Mr. Potatohead once had a companion, Oscar Orange? I guess he must not have sold as well. Another bizarre find was the entire cast of the Wizard of Oz as cows. At the end of the day neither one of us came home with anything but we both wanted to return at a later date because you just never know…
After visiting the cemetery and general store we were all ready to check out the three antique stores, The Town Trader, The Old Post Office Antiques, and Old Stone Mill Antiques and Treasures, that exist right next to each other in the reportedly highly haunted little village of Chepachet RI. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. The sky was bright and blue, the weather was fair, and everyone was in a good mood after coming out of a long winter.
I am used to going “antiquing” in Maine where I can find dirt cheap treasures in mounds of rusted junk piles. So far my visits to Rhode Island antique stores were far more refined and expensive so I figured Chepachet would be no exception but it really was. These antique stores all sold a variety of goodies for exceptionally reasonable prices. Everything from old cast iron pans, creepy probably possessed clown dolls, old paintings, furniture, and random little piles of vinyl records. And they were all located in very old buildings which were a delight to poke around. The Old Stone Mill antique store had the most to offer as far as ambiance with its exposed post and beams, wooden floors, and masonry. Clearly this was once the heart of this whole area and you could feel the history emanating from it.
On this particular day I didn’t end up coming home with anything although I had strongly considered a cast iron “pancake ball” pan as my travel companion called it. It was Swedish and I was unfamiliar with the particular word on the label but I’d like to hope it translates as pancake balls because that’s hilarious. He did end up going home with an old copy of a Julia Childs cookbook which we’d later flip through and see if ANY of the recipes were devoid of butter. Clearly we’re both easily entertained. And nostalgic of growing up on a steady diet of PBS.
When I was driving around trying to find the abandoned sanitorium I happened to pass this enormous compound of… treasures. I know, it might look like a junk yard, but really it was an antiques mall with all kinds of… shrapnel-looking things all over their expansive yard. Can you believe my travel companion has never been antiquing? Worse he’d never been antiquing in Maine where such a hobby is…. somewhere between dumpster diving and showing up on Antiques Roadshow with an unknown Picasso. I joke but really, it’s an adventure.
And so after we came back from our urban exploration I couldn’t resist driving in. There was a big sign offering RV parking. Think about that. An antique store in the middle of nowhere has so many RV’s driving in it created it’s own parking lot for it. This is exactly what I mean about not knowing what we’re about to walk into.
It took me a moment to realize I’d been here before! In fact it was one of the very first stops for my Catching Marbles after basing it solely out of New England. Back then I was having a grand old time pointing out all the bizarre racist shit that was everywhere – Aunt Jemima jars, pick-a-ninny dolls, minstrel related what-the-fuckery — I mean it was EVERYWHERE. And in the spirit of being all inclusive it wasn’t just black people getting the short end of the stick. There was also a number of offensive items relating to indigenous peoples and Asians soooo… I guess there’s that.
This time around I am actually happy to report the vast majority of those items were missing from the shop. Sign of the changing times? Maybe. Or perhaps I was just here on a good day. Who knows.
This place is EXPANSIVE. It’s in a number of old barns that span many floors and go off in all sorts of directions in a delightful Byzantine maze of weird relics. I let my travel companion loose to find something that interested him – which he soon found in the form of a whole booth of Victrolas and wax cylinder recordings. As fascinating as that was I preoccupied locating all the haunted dolls – of which there is always a ton.
This place went on for what seemed to be miles and we were each having a lot of fun just poking at random things. I found some vinyl records – paid a mighty sum of 60 cents for one that was on sale. Age of Aquarius. I mean come on… everyone needs a copy of that song, no?
My travel companion lamented he’d like to find a straight razor. I asked why he hadn’t found one previously, as this sounded to me to be a perfectly common request, and I guess the answer was normally people don’t spend their Sundays going to flea markets and antique malls… Who knew! Sure enough, two cases down from this conversation he spied a straight razor complete with a box and several replacement blades reading “1906.” And the whole display case was 50% off so he walked out of there $10 poorer but happy as a Cheshire cat.
We actually lost track of time and were escorted out of the store at closing (whoops! Apologies!) It is a store that merits a lot of wandering. And wondering. Still don’t know what’s going through this chap’s mind. He looks confused.
Obviously I will give you all what you came here for – the gallery of haunted dolls!
Another day, another fantastically unending antique mall, filled to the brim with anything and everything my twisted heart could desire. This shop used to be an old roller skating rink but now hosts a great number of different vendors. In typical Maine fashion you will find lots and lots of random junk probably collected by a hoarder, tons of truly bizarre folk art and oddities, and the occasional tasteful antique for an equally tasteful price. This is one of my favorite places to hit when I am up here because it’s always full to the brim and the people are always charming and friendly (that goes for the customers as much as it does the dealers!)
Sooooo….. what did I find today? Well, it started with this delightfully demonic cat lamp…
“LOOK UP!” my mother kept yelling at me. “WHY?! Is something about to fall on me?!” No, there’s just a horrified baby doll hawking cigarettes up there.
Speaking of demonic cats…. This one is made out of “Real feline goat hair.” It’s as surprised as we are.
Maine is a great place to go if you collect racist black history artifacts. Most antique stores usually have a piece or two but Maine doesn’t hide them in the back room… This one struck me as even more “off” than usual! It reads, “My it shure am sweet!”
Then this was nearby. “HOLY SHIT, a black doll that looks human….” Carved from wood this was by far the least terrifying doll on offer.
Then I found this white doll shitting itself making a pouty face. Can’t really blame it. It was cuddled up with a black baby doll… and well… hatred is learned people!
Which brings me to this “topsy turvy doll….” which I think is some sort of liberal’s idea of teaching their kids equality…. but really, at the end of the day, it’s just a naked bi-racial conjoined twin from the Twilight Zone.
Here we have a nun converting all the heathen native children… and Batman. Because Batman is totally cool with that sort of thing.
Heeeeey, it’s Burger King…. before the make-over….. just WOW….
And then I came across this little orange haired clown doll… and I actually thought it was kind of cute. Everyone else was screaming in horror.
“LOOK UP! It’s Bugs Bunny!” I don’t believe that for a second. Why is the carrot glowing like that??
This sophisticated pig says you’re made of bacon.
This little white doll has been kidnapped and dressed in the garb of an Indian. Now he’s sad.
AHHH! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KILL IT!!
Fun trivia fact: Little Miss Muffet was the daughter of a notorious entomologist who bred deadly deadly spiders in his lab.
Remember when Steamboat Willie got Bloat? Yeah, me either.
The look of absolute disgust on this little gent’s face… it’s almost like he heard another doll reciting the original version of Catch a Tiger by the Toe….
Here’s a bunch of African animals lined up behind a meat grinder.
I don’t know what heinous crime this little fella just committed but whatever it was I think I’m OK with it.
This elk looks a little too chill to be dead. He’s like someone’s reincarnated prankster uncle…
Now welcoming the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Doll. Limited granny edition.
I remember when I was a child I loved cuddling into bed to listen to my mother read me Snow White and the Demonic Squirrel...
Slightly morbid, Joe. Slightly morbid.
Hey! Look! It’s me fucking around!
Again I am not sure who this is supposed to be offending. It looks like a Mariachi band led by a really fat Native American woman…?
GNOMES!!! I know what you’re saying, “You’re terrified of dolls but you love gnomes?!” YES, YES I DO. And not just because their great grand daddy is supposed to be Priapus the ever-erect Greek God of Embarrassing ER Visits.Â
Remember when Irish Catholics weren’t considered “white.” *whistles*
PIXIES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!
I’m not sure what just happened in this little scene…. but that little boy is crying and I feel like I need a shower.
What can still suck out your soul that isn’t a haunted doll? A haunted painting of a child…. I would not hang this in my house if you paid me.
Mother: “Look a gay couple!”
Me: “THOSE ARE BUTLERS.”
I don’t know what “gall salve” is but I question the legitimacy of rubbing it on my horse.
Here’s the Prince of Maine… in case you’re wondering…. Maine totally had a prince once and this is Him. His reign was toppled when the schoolyard bully smudged mud on his velvety suit and made him eat worms.
I’m always amused by the random unnamed photos in antique stores. This one isn’t even that old. There’s probably some guy out there, we’ll call him Dave, that is wandering by going, “HEY! THAT’S FUCKING ME! WHY IS MY PHOTO HANGING IN AN ANTIQUE STORE?!”
I don’t know who this little darling is either…. but I don’t trust her….
GAWD, those pixies are everywhere!! Going to have to invest in some Fairy Spray.
Betty Boop WOULD NEVER.
A surprisingly noble stuffed turkey…
Ever had a significant other that kept lamenting, “You make me want to shoot myself!” This is the perfect gift for them. Caffeine and guns. Can’t go wrong.
I have no idea why the scalp of Charlie Chaplin and some random Mountie are 50% off… but that seems like a deal!
Another probably haunted painting… Can you get higher insurance rates on things that are possessed?
Giggling. Killer. Corn.
Finally, this pooch is guaranteed to work better than an actual guard dog…
Since I was already in the area cooing at my submersible friends at AquaCorals, I decided I would stop at an antique mall just down the street. I was told by locals it was huge and would take me at least two hours to rummage through. They were not kidding! This was an enormous building, several old industrial barns I think, with five winding labyrinthine floors. It just kept going and going and going… They had something for everyone here. If you’re familiar with my blog you probably already know what I was looking for – anything really bizarre and a light smattering of soul sucking dolls. I was not disappointed! And since there’s not really much more I can say on the topic I decided this entry will be a little… different. So I am taking my favorite photos of the hundreds I took and am just going to add a little…. commentary. If you’re easily offended this is probably the point you should leave this page, otherwise continue on!
Literally the first thing I saw was a giant cock… no really, isn’t he handsome? If I still ran a poultry farm he would have so come home with me.
After entering the store I stumbled onto this HUGE moose head with the most amusing sign behind him… It reads, “Hunting $50.00 per day, by written permission only.” I’m not a hunter but I sort of think this one’s already spent.
Then I found an album of what is most likely some of my distant relatives…. though this woman has a striking resemblance to Lizzie Borden and I wonder….
Followed by a set of terrifying patriotic mugs…
By this time my mother, who was tagging along in today’s adventures, was rifling through the old photos when she came across this one and finally admitted they might actually be relatives of ours…
I may have replied if I weren’t distracted by a series of pots who appeared to be blooming? Seriously though, what is up with the one on the far left?? It’s going to burst!
Two seconds later I got the sensation someone was watching me and when I turned around I found out it was Amelia Earhart. Huh.
Then I started running into the…. randomly probably quite racist items. I don’t even know which minority this is supposed to be offending. It looks like an old Asian dude wearing an Indian feather…?!
Then I found the saddest lion glued to a hot air balloon! I think he was sad because the hunter on the left shot his family…
“Pediophobia is the unwarranted, irrational and persistent fear or worry of dolls.” Why do I mention this? Oh no reason….
There is no word for the rational fear of dolls but I believe there should be. Just look at this doll and tell me there isn’t something a wee bit off there.
Of course dolls don’t always kill people. Sometimes they take out their murderous rage on other dolls. Evidence of this can be seen here. Witness the empty pram, the demonically smiling blonde looking up at the light like she just sacrificed a baby to the gods – OH LOOK! To the lefthand corner we can see the crumpled corpse of an infant! SHE DID. SHE TOTALLY SACRIFICED THAT BABY!
This doll knows something we don’t, maybe he’s next…
A common trick for serial killer dolls is to leave something shiny out for potential victims to be distracted by…Â Oooooo!Â
AHHHH! Those soulless eyes!
No worries, this next one’s asleep – and I am terribly confused by it. Just… why??
Hey look! It’s a me! I’m not for sale though. Sorta like Alice from Alice’s Restaurant. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant, excepting Alice…
“Coulrophobia is the persistent and irrational fear of clowns.”
Coulropediophobia is the persistent and irrational fear of clown dolls. (Also I may have just made that up but it seems like it should be a thing…)
Here’s a cow who has apparently been eating cow flops…. Maybe the doll behind him was bullying him?
The eighties were a weird time when little girls across the country all bounded for joy to have their very own Little Miss Prosti-Tot. Her first name is Trix.
“Look! I found a re-borne! Its heavy! And cute! IT HAS DROOL!” — “Mom, put that down. It looks like it came from the morgue.”
I know this post is getting a little doll heavy but look at these giggling ankle biters…. tell me they won’t haunt your dreams tonight…
I have no idea what’s going on here…. and something tells me I don’t want to… look at that shocked expression in the back corner!
This one just ate someone’s heart, I swear, ripped it right out of their chest. That’s why she’s so gleeful.
OK OK, time to stop staring at the dolls and hope they aren’t like Weeping Angels, you know coming to kill you as soon as you blink. Look! A weird ENORMOUS painting of a moth! And a lock! How manly! It’s art for menly men!
And of course it’s not a real antique store if there isn’t any froofy furniture… I have for you, a chair, the first of many, but don’t worry, I won’t linger like I did with the dolls.
I was actually kind of impressed with this next one. It’s a bird made entirely of seeds. I call it a seedling.
I rubbed it and made three wishes. All that happened is I got thrown out for molesting the lamps.
Never trust a nun. Never trust a nurse. And never trust a cat. (Also never trust someone with too many Doctor Who jokes.)
That last rhyme said nothing of hares…. but this one doesn’t look trustworthy either.
“OK, I need you to make me a butter dish in the shape of a terrified cat…. make sure to add googly eyes.”
I’m at a lack of words for this next one. Well sort of. I mean I have words…. I just don’t think I should use them. A picture is worth a thousand after all…
Shout out to all the Mass girls…
I’m going to kill you thiiiiiiis much!
Here are some Humbolt figurines telling each other stories of lurid debauchery.
“Can’t sleep, clown’s going to eat me. Can’t sleep, clowns going to eat me.”
For a second I forgot this place actually had legitimately not-scary things for sale…
I actually sort of like this lamp…. which makes no sense since dolls and Cherubs freak me out so much…
Bet you didn’t know UnDead dolls were a thing…
PUPPY!!
Yes, if you want your crank phone to work… add wires. Always add wires.
“All the better to strangle you with!”
I found Liberace’s dinnerware…
I am as surprised as you are – granted I don’t have a bottle shoved up my backside… so maybe not.
Two old tribesmen…. fighting over CDs…. (Seriously the label said this was a CD rack…)
My eye was caught by some really sweet purple bottles…. and then I started reading them. This one literally says “2oz Sperm” which had me concerned for a moment before I continued to read “sewing machine oil.”
Unless you collect buttons you have no idea how impressive this is…
HOLY CRAP. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHUNK OF ORANGE… I must be delirious from the heat! (It is actually 94 degrees and muuuuuuuugggggy, so this may be a hallucination. Either way I don’t have $45 or a place to put such a wonder…)
OK, now I am positive I am hallucinating because that wall hanging looks like Wilfred, that crude smack-talking Australian dude in a dog outfit…
PLEASE NOÂ homoerotic displays “DANCING” Coincidentally this sign also reminded me of this scene:
The Doctor: We were talking about dancing.
Captain Jack: It didn’t look like talking.
Rose Tyler: It didn’t feel like dancing.
I’m not going to ask what he’s spitting out.
OH HELL NO. FETCH ME THE FLY SWATTER!! QUICK!!
I found a soulless cocker spaniel. Who knew!
Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? No one, because no one dared…. holy crap is this thing scary!
A tiny doll mink trap!
This doll is not amused by that last joke. She knew another doll whose porcelain ankle was shattered by a doll mink trap once…
My mother, “I had a doll exactly like this once!” Damned if I didn’t know that – her brother bought it for her when they were children and her other brother ripped off its fingers. She kept the fingers in a tiny drawer hoping someday to glue them back on but then the doll got ruined or thrown out or something and all that was left were tiny tiny disembodied fingers…. which I found later. You know what? This could begin to explain my ill ease with dolls…
WHY?!
LOVE the sign behind these two soulless dears. “Visitors of hotel guests MUST LEAVE.” Must be the hotel California.
“Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back to the place I was before ‘Relax’ said the night man, ‘We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like, But you can never leave!'”
There’s too many things in this next work of art that rattle me to the core for me to even begin explaining…
He’s just pissed he’s been stored in a box surrounded on all sides by honky music.
I legitimately thought these were artful renditions of the TARDIS at first…
Another small dead child.
I’m being alerted I haven’t offended enough Asian people in this post soooo…
Look! A jaundiced pig! Who’s up to something.
Anyone remember being read Babushka’s Doll as a child? Also, you know what, my fears of dolls is starting to really make sense now.
Butt nuggets Cookies!!
He’s seen too much.
Uhmmm…. that’s not where salt comes from….
This bitch is too classy for this joint.
What’s that? I also haven’t offended enough black people? OK, we’ll just see what this doll has to say about that!
The only two realistic looking black dolls ARE NOT AMUSED by that last joke. In fact they’re not amused by anything. Whose idea was it to make a series of depressed children’s dolls anyway?
Paradise Lost? “WAKE UP EVE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WAKE UP!”
Did you know Native Americans are devils? Me either.
OK the Viking ship is kind of impressive… though I don’t think wooden sails sounds like such a great idea.
These two little gents got their portrait painted after they murdered the rest of their family and took a break to smoke a pipe. Seriously though, why is the little one smoking a pipe?! And are those really cemetery crosses?!
Ah, that’s better, a pony.
I found this cabinet, which I really liked, buuut I think it’s haunted. No reason, just a swirling feeling in my gut…
Just to be sure I opened it to let the ghosts out.
Remember when I said the first thing I saw was a giant cock? Well, the last thing I saw leaving was two giant cocks. Hope you enjoyed my little jaunt, until next time!
Coming back from the Steampunk Festival I passed by this huge antique place and decided when in Rome…
Immediately upon walking in I was greeted by two stuffed bears. I squealed with glee and was caught by the shopkeep, an enthusiastic teenage boy, who I immediately roped into my madness by asking to take photos of the bear… After I got him laughing sufficiently hard enough I was able to remove the bear’s price tag and take a very realistic looking photo. WIN.
Actually the whole place was a win. It was a HUGE farmhouse with all sorts of winding rooms, each crammed with all sorts of goodies. I got lost in a giant collection of vinyls, having lost my own collection I couldn’t really resist starting a new one for $1 a record. I mean really, a dollar. And they weren’t bad records! Usually these antique stores just have piles of Christmas music and Christian gospel and things people wouldn’t actually admit to owning… This collection lacked a lot of popular rock like back home but had a lovely variety of 60’s folk. No Phil Ochs though. Still looking for that! But hey! If you’re in the area and really really love Neil Sedaka go here! There’s like 50 Neil Sedaka records here smattered throughout. No idea who could have liked him that much but hey! To each their quirky own! $10 later I ended up with some Billy Joel, Byrds, Kinks, Joan Baez, Barry McGuire (Eve of Destruction!), and the Kingsmen (Louie Louie!!)
It was a lovely detour. And of course no antique store would complete without a soul sucking doll and some snazzy furniture. All reasonably priced. I think the doll only cost one soul.
Since I was already in the area cooing at my submersible friends at 
