HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN WAX MUSEUM
Lake George,
New York
June 26,
2009
by Ham
The House Of Frankenstein Wax Museum in Lake George, NY is not exactly your typical Wax Museum. I usually enjoy your typical Wax Museum, depending on the subjects and level of Absurdity (the more, the better... obviously). I also wouldn't call it your typical Haunted House. I'm not a big fan of typical "Haunted Houses," wherein you walk down dark hallways and annoying 16 year old kids with hockey masks on jump out and try to scare you. The House Of Frankenstein seems to combine aspects of both a Wax Museum and a Haunted House, thereby thoroughly confusing me while I try to write a review of the place. Let's take a look at the full view of the front of the museum while I think about this a little more.
Before I give my official opinion of this place, let's examine its history a little closer. Plus, it'll give me more time to actually figure out what my opinion is.
According to stories told by former museum employees in the
book Weird New York
Walking in the entrance you are greeted by a couple of odd displays that make you think that this is a bit of a happy, or even goofy, museum. There is nothing to give you the idea that you might be looking at a severed foot in a few minutes.
The museum itself contains horror-themed dioramas, ranging from what you'd typically expect (Frankenstein himself)...
...to some odd things you would not expect (Room Of Rats).
Most of these dioramas include a sign, like the one pictured above, and a button you can push to cause some sort of action within the diorama. I thought most of the dioramas themselves were great, with the majority of them remaining untouched since the museum opened in 1974. Of course, there were a couple of relatively new additions that seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. Or a sore Predator. That doesn't make any sense, does it?
Along with the dioramas, there are a couple of other "Fun House"-like attractions that are featured. There is a hallway with a squishy floor, a "meat packing" room that lights up and makes a lot of noise once you're inside, a room filled with mirrors, and a room surrounded by a spinning tube with dots of light on it (designed to make you sick or lose your balance).
All of those things are ok I guess, but let's get back to some of those dioramas.
This flying ghost thing with the glowing red eyes is actually the first display you see when you walk into the museum. He lets us know that his friends have been dying to meet us. As you can see, these dioramas are all behind bars of glass - which makes picture taking very difficult. No matter what angle you try, the flash from the camera always seemed to bounce off of that damn glass.
You can sort of see a guy driving a stake through a vampire's heart in this picture.
We used the flash on our camera as much as we could until an employee scolded us in her broken English, "Uhh... no uhhh flash". That reminds me of one of the things that annoyed us about this place, but I'll get into that later. Anyway, from then on we tried to take pictures without flash. At least the pictures of the signs usually turned out ok:
(I love how the signs look like they haven't changed since 1974 as well.)
Here's something interesting. This is how the signs actually looked while walking through the museum, glowing red from a light shining on them. But, judging from the pictures taken with flash (see the "Body Snatchers" picture above), the signs are actually green. Ok, maybe it's not that interesting.
Here's another one of the few pictures that actually were visible without flash, a ghost visiting a séance.
This next one is my favorite picture, although probably not one of my favorite dioramas. This just looks really creepy to me. Because it was so dark and only a portion of the diorama can be seen, it almost looks like it could be a picture of a real event. Almost. Here's "Bathtub Murder":
Now I'll get into some of my complaints about the museum. It's too dark. I know haunted houses and the like are supposed to be dark, but many of the dioramas were so dark we could not even see what they were. I don't mind if the hallways are kept pitch black, but light up those damn displays a little bit more! Also annoying was the fact that an employee would precede you throughout the entire museum. It sort of ruined the "scary" effect of the museum to see an impatient employee standing at the end of every hallway, staring at you. I don't know if the employee was there to make sure we didn't cause trouble, or to activate some of the attractions, but you'd think there would be a better way to do either of those things.
So, aside from those complaints, I guess I did really like the museum. If they fixed some of the things I mentioned it would improve the whole experience greatly.
As I mentioned, we couldn't get very many good pictures because of the level of darkness and the glass in front of the displays. I also brought my video camera into the museum and filmed about 25 minutes worth of footage. After I edited the tape down, removing all of the footage that was too dark, I only had about five minutes worth of video. Here are some stills from the video tape that I was able to edit into slightly more visible pictures. First, the "Grave Robbers":
Next, the "Guillotine":
And, of course, Lex Lugar would be proud to see the "Torture Rack":
I swear, that's a guy laying down in the Torture Rack. You can sort of see his head and his arms outstretched over his head. Damn dark displays!
I'll end this post with the edited video I filmed. This gives you a good sense of the displays, and the overall creepiness of this place.
If you are ever in Lake George, I would suggest visiting the House Of Frankenstein Wax Museum. It really is a bit of history. A sort of creepy disturbing history, maybe, but still history. However, if you want to be able to see all of the displays, perhaps a good idea would be to bring a flashlight in with you.
Happy Halloween!
(Posted 10/2009)
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