Jewelry made out of human hair, seance and dream writings, and a scintillator that looks like a Ghostbusters Proton Pack lay on a table in the archives of History Colorado. Dr. Rachael Storm, the museum’s head curator, inspects the objects. She holds up a small clown doll with a devious, toothy grin.
“We have what we think is probably one of our scariest clowns in the collection,” she said. “He's pretty terrifying. I don't really even like touching him.”
No, these aren’t for a haunted house – they’re historical artifacts, each with its own ominous tale. History Colorado is getting into the spooky season a bit early and pulling out its strangest, most unusual objects for an event it calls Creeporado.
“We always come around to October every year, and people always say to us, ‘What is the weirdest thing in the collection?’” Storm said. “We don't normally have them out on exhibit. So we thought, let's do a night event where we can invite people in, show off our weird stuff.”
There will be several pop-up exhibits around the museum, live music, vendors and a “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll” room for adult content.
More than 500 bizarre items will be on display, and each one was either made or used in the state. Some items reflect spiritual attitudes of the time, like glass Ghost Orbs from the early 20th Century.
“People would hang these outside of their front doors, and the idea is that from the flickering gaslight of their front porch light would reflect around these orbs,” Storm said. “The ghosts would be attracted by that flickering light and go into the orb and thus be caught, so that they would not enter that person's place of residence.”
Other objects explain the rugged and unusual ways Coloradans solved issues. Storm has a triple pistol belt, an elk bowie knife, and an artifact she calls “Mountain Man Dentures.” They were used by Colorado resident Jim Baker in the late 1800s.
“This would have been the bottom of his dentures,” she said. “At some point, he broke them, and he stitched them back together, because he did not have access to a dentist where he was up in the mountains.”
And some are just, well, odd. Storm picked up a porcelain nun doll with eyes that were supposedly closed shut. All of a sudden, they opened.
“They weren't open before, when I had her tilted up, and now they've opened. That wasn’t creepy at all,” she said. “It would have probably been used as a child's plaything, and really enjoyed by whatever child had this. We don't enjoy it so much now.”
The event’s only in its second year, but people LOVE it. The night before the event last year, 200 people had signed up. When they opened the doors a day later, they had almost 900 attendees.
“I've lived in other places, but boy, we Coloradans like our weird, creepy stuff,” Storm said. “I think some of it comes from the fact that the world is a little bit stressful, so one of the things that we use to retreat away from that is to kind of scare ourselves in different ways that aren't going to actually hurt us.”
Most of those 900 attendees had never visited the museum before. Storm hopes visitors realize that history isn’t just for certain types of people or topics.
“That's really the most exciting thing is, when people come in and they're like, ‘That's bonkers. I had no idea this existed, and I love it now,’ right?” she said. “They've found a way to connect with history that they didn't realize they could do.”
The Creeporado event is Friday at 6 p.m. You can buy tickets at History Colorado’s website.
