5 Places to See Dead Human Body Parts [video]

See hair in Turkey, skulls in Paris, an Arm in Maryland, several penises in Iceland, and human skin pants in Iceland, really Iceland again? You can even visit a few strange human part themed roadside attractions in my novel I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin.

1. Hair

Avanos Hair Museum in Cappadocia, Turkey contains hair samples, names and addresses from more than 16,000 women from all around the world. The founder, Chez Galip, admits that the hair collection began as a way to increase membership in his pottery workshops.

While visitors to the cave are not required to donate a lock of hair, each year Galip does select 10 locks of hair at random whose owners are awarded with a trip back to his pottery studio and are allowed to stay in his guest house free of charge.

2. Head

The Catacombs of Paris, are essentially underground walls and walls and walls built with human skulls. Why? In the 1700s in Paris a series of forgotten mines buckled under the enormous weight of a series of maybe forgotten cemeteries. The city needed new walls for the mines and the human bones needed new places to conjure up nightmares for children. Therefore, skull walls.

3. Arm

In Boonsboro, Maryland you can visit the Boonsboro Museum of History and be duped into thinking you’re looking at something much cooler than you really are. Despite the Civil War context of the museum, the shriveled arm that’s on display behind glass is most likely not from the civil war at all, but is rather a regular ‘ol medical school specimen, says Museum Curator Doug Bast.

4. Penis

The Icelandic Phallological Museum is home to 215 “down theres” belonging to the various mammals found in Iceland.

5. Legs

The Strandagaldur Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft contains as one of it’s famous exhibits the skin of a male bottom half.

The display isn’t meant only to be creepy, but actually illustrates a macabre Icelandic legend. According to the legend, after a man dies, the non-torso skin can be worn and if a coin, stolen from the man’s widow, is placed into the necropants’ scrotum, that scrotum would produce an endless supply of coins.