Mark’s Score 8.7
October finally brought the first cool weather of the season. It was a cool and rainy day, a perfect day for a visit to a ghost museum
The Ghost Museum of Berlin was opened by Alyssa Maloof last June. Alyssa also owns the Mermaid Museum around the corner. She opened the museum in a commercial space that had been empty for a decade. The mission of the museum is to engage patrons in “a respectful and enlightening way,” while educating about the history of supernatural phenomena and the American spiritual movement. I was expecting something spooky, but that is not what I found. In my view, I would classify this museum as a history museum.
To get to the museum, you climb a flight of wooden stairs in a turn of the century office building. The museum is housed in a single large room that looks like it could once have been a danse studio. It is hard to make a danse studio scary. As a person with two left feet, come to think of it, maybe it is a perfect spooky space.
After paying, you make a hard left and you follow a path past a number of exhibits. I hadn’t even reached the first exhibit when I had already made up my mind about this museum. This was my kind of museum, delightfully quirky, a bit haphazard, but educational while being entertaining. In some ways it vaguely reminded me of a high school science fair, but for me, that only added to the museum’s charm.
There are more than a dozen exhibits, but there were several I found to be especially entertaining. I liked the local focus. There were several exhibits dealing with supernatural phenomena in Berlin, Apparently Berlin hits above its weight in the supernatural department. There is the “white lady” that haunts several street corners downtown. There is the little girl that haunts the corridors of the Atlantic Hotel. But most intriguing is the story of the large “elemental” that has been seen haunting a variety of locations throughout the town.
The exhibits on the history of the spiritual movement of the late 1800s and its impact on our current perceptions of the supernatural were very interesting. As were the exhibits that introduced other cultures perceptions and beliefs about the supernatural.
But my favorite exhibit recounted the story of l’Inconnue de la Siene. The l’Inconnue was the body of a woman pulled out of the Seine River in Paris in the late 1800s. She was never identified but her serene visage created a sensation. So much so, the coroner created a death mask. This death mask eventually became the inspiration for the visage used on CPR dummies, making hers the most kissed face in the world.
If you are looking for a frightening experience you might be disappointed by this museum. But if you are interested in learning about the history of spiritualism and the perceptions of the supernatural, you will enjoy this museum as much as I did.
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