Oddities & curiosities in New Orleans
Oddity shops, curiosity cabinets and taxidermy counters: 9 of the strangest small storefronts in New Orleans, Boutique du Vampyre, The Mortuary and New Orleans Pharmacy Museum among them. The kind of quirky, offbeat retail you leave with a story and a jar of something. They spread across French Quarter, Mid-City, Marigny, Lower Ninth Ward and 1 more area, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. Every entry is hand-vetted against real sources — not scraped off a top-ten list or averaged out of crowd ratings.
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Boutique du Vampyre
Opened in 2003, this is billed as one of the world's first vampire-themed boutiques, tucked into a half-address slip of the French Quarter. Most stock is handmade and frequently one-of-a-kind, from stained-glass bats and gargoyles to capes, Gothic jewelry, and custom-fitted fangs. Its signature fortune candles are poured in-house with pewter charms hidden inside that emerge as the wax burns down.
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The Mortuary
An 1872 Grand Victorian mansion that the P.J. McMahon & Sons undertaking firm ran as a funeral home from 1923 until 2004 — more than 20,000 funerals passed through its parlors — complete with an embalming and autopsy room and a crematorium in the basement catacombs. It sits at the edge of Mid-City's Canal Street 'Cities of the Dead,' ringed by some of the densest cemeteries in America, where tombs are stacked like a skyline. Since 2007 it has operated as a haunted attraction and event venue, but the bones of a real funeral parlor are still in the building.
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New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
Set in an 1823 apothecary built for Louis Dufilho Jr., often cited as America's first licensed pharmacist, this two-story museum keeps its original rose-and-black Italian marble soda fountain from 1855 and rows of hand-labeled drawers and bottles. Among the cures are gris-gris voodoo potions Dufilho reportedly learned to make from a local priestess and sold by number under the counter, plus a white ceramic jar labeled "Leeches" holding live specimens. The collection runs to bloodletting tools, opium tinctures and 19th-century surgical instruments.
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Museum of Death
The New Orleans branch of the cult Los Angeles original packs an unflinching collection into a handful of rooms: serial-killer artwork and correspondence, shrunken heads, mortician equipment, coffins, and the Jack Kevorkian suicide machine. A back room screens real autopsy and death footage in its 'Theater of Death.' Photography is banned and most visitors get through it in about 45 minutes, often faster than they expected.
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Dark Matter Oddities & Artisan Collective
A French Quarter shop where full-sized taxidermy, articulated skeletons, and wet specimens share shelves with Victorian memento mori, post-mortem photography, antique medical devices, and fossils. Owners Josh Gates and Chrystal Nause lean on ethically sourced and vintage mounts, and stock locally made bone jewelry, preserved insects, and handmade rubber masks alongside the antiques. It functions as both an oddities store and an artisan collective for local makers.
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The Shop: Oddities at Unique NOLA
A cluttered French Quarter store that's part hoodoo supply, part taxidermy-as-art, part jumble of random ephemera. Cases hold taxidermy and wet specimens (bats, bugs, frogs) next to a large stash of antique radium glass and what's billed as the city's largest tarot selection. Dressed candles, voodoo dolls, and vintage glassware fill out the shelves.
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The Bywater Museum of Unnatural History
A tiny, one-of-a-kind cabinet-of-curiosities museum (it kept its old Bywater name after relocating to Mandeville Street in the Marigny) packed with taxidermy, psychedelic dioramas, Victorian curios, mummifications and creepy dolls. Among the odder pieces are a miniature carousel horse and a gumball machine filled with wedding-cake figurines, leaning more whimsical than macabre. It is essentially a personal collection turned public, which is why it keeps idiosyncratic hours.
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House of Dance & Feathers
A backyard museum of New Orleans street culture founded in 2003 by Ronald W. Lewis, documenting Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs, and Skull & Bone gangs through one man's decades of participation. The small structure holds beaded and feathered suits, masks, photographs, books and parade artifacts assembled by Lewis himself. After Lewis died of COVID-19 in March 2020, his wife Minnie Lewis reopened the museum in late 2022.
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St. Roch Chapel and Ex-Voto Room
Inside this 1870s shrine, built after a priest's congregation survived yellow fever, a small side room sits behind an iron gate with brick floors and peeling walls. Generations of the faithful have left plaster and plastic body parts as thanks for healings: feet, hands, hearts, brains, plus polio leg braces, glass eyes, dental plates, and oddities like a can of corn and a small Ronald McDonald doll. During a recent restoration the room was deliberately left untouched, dust and all, so the offerings remain exactly as the cured left them.
Oddities & curiosities in New Orleans — FAQ
Which oddity shops & curiosities in New Orleans are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Boutique du Vampyre, Museum of Death and Dark Matter Oddities & Artisan Collective. Boutique du Vampyre — Opened in 2003, this is billed as one of the world's first vampire-themed boutiques, tucked into a half-address slip of the French Quarter.
Where in New Orleans are they?
Across French Quarter, Mid-City, Marigny, Lower Ninth Ward and St. Roch / Faubourg Marigny. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Is this a good weird date in New Orleans?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Boutique du Vampyre, for instance: Get fitted for matching custom fangs, then pick out a fortune candle to burn at home and see which hidden charms surface.
How were these oddity shops & curiosities chosen?
An agentic research system digs for the genuinely obscure — the spots even locals miss — and every one is verified against real sources before it makes the list. We deliberately skip the landmarks already on every New Orleans guide.