| Photo: Alexandra Charitan A man who has been cheating on his wife with the babysitter discovers a macabre dinner surprise. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan Each diorama has a hand-painted sign. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan The Wax Workshop. The entrance to the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum. Before exiting the museum, visitors are encouraged to strike a going-over-the-falls pose on their own-without risking more than a bit of dignity. But the museum definitely saves the best for last with an interactive photo op: A framed photo of former Mayor Mike O’Laughlin saying “See You Later” on a simulated trip in a barrel over Niagara Falls hangs adjacent to the actual barrel prop. Related Niagara Falls, New York, is hoping to bring tourists back downtownĪ recreation of a barber shop features a wax figure of Abraham Lincoln alongside the actual chair where the President “received tonsorial work” when he visited Niagara Falls. Niagara Wax Museum of HistoryĪ sign in the Niagara Wax Museum of History’s entryway promises dozens of life size wax figures, including “explorers, pioneers, and statesmen prominent in the history of the frontier.” Visitors to the museum, which opened in 1968, may be surprised to also see Princess Diana, Julia Roberts, Mother Teresa, and other disparate celebrities (or close-ish approximations), each chosen for their sometimes tenuous connection to the region’s famous waterfalls signs explain how each person either visited the area or simply “exemplified the beauty and grace of the falls.”

Open since 1963, the dimly-lit museum also features hand-painted signs, creaky wooden steps, and crude animatronics.įormer Niagara Falls Mayor Mike O’Laughlin. After Brown was captured and tried for treason, murder, and inciting a rebellion, he was found guilty on all counts and hanged.įew historical figures have a wax museum exclusively devoted to telling their story (Jesus has several) the John Brown Wax Museum, located in a Harpers Ferry building that existed during Brown’s raid, contains 87 life-size figures in various displays depicting the controversial figure’s life and death.

In 1856, Brown and his supporters killed five pro-slavery settlers in the Pottawatomie massacre in Kansas, but he’s best known for leading a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now a part of West Virginia), in 1859. John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed that armed rebellion was the best way to overturn slavery. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan John Brown at the gallows. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan A massacre in wax. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan Soldiers and a bloodied Brown. Upper floors celebrate the positive contributions and achievements of prominent civil rights leaders, celebrities, musicians, scholars, explorers, sports stars, and their allies, including Marylander Frederick Douglass, Barack Obama, singer Mahalia Jackson, abolitionist John Brown, and the Pullman Porters. The first, and most comprehensive, museum of its kind includes a ship depicting harrowing scenes of the transatlantic slave trade and a lower-level lynching exhibit. Related At Baltimore’s National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, knowledge is power

With 150 figures currently on display, the museum illustrates the African American experience from its roots in Africa through slavery and into the present day. National Great Blacks in Wax Museumįounded by husband and wife educators in the early 1980s, the 17,500-square-foot National Great Blacks in Wax Museum now spans several refashioned row homes along East North Avenue in East Baltimore. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan The museum has 150 figures on display. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan The museum’s founders were adamant about not “whitewashing” history. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan Directional signage on the slave ship. | Photo: Alexandra Charitan Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Frederick Douglass is one of the museum’s newest additions.

Wax museum