Woolly Mammoth Chicago Antiques & Oddities

11/05/2023

If I was Father Time and this whole daylight savings situation was up to me, I’d be like, “Knot on my watch”!

11/02/2023

Before I rearrange half the shop to wedge this very old ceremonial Oddfellow casket and mâché skeleton in, let me know if anyone out there is interested via DM.
I’m not mad that it’s a pain to squeeze it in, but I will be if I do all that work, and then someone wants to immediately buy it.

11/01/2023

Woolly fan flexing some serious photoshop skills!
I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to find this in my inbox. It was too good not to share.
Marrying our witches from yesterday’s post with the post of when Krampus stopped by last year is nothing short of brilliant!
Keep that s**t up!

10/31/2023

HAPPY HALLOWEEN WITCHES!

10/29/2023

Tip of the hat to the aerobics instructor at my gym who led her class wearing a scream mask the other day. That was some serious commitment.

10/27/2023

This person died 110 years ago today.

10/25/2023

Maybe it’s because we are both cheeseheads, or maybe it’s because my parents had a book about Gein in our house growing up, and I used to pour over the grizzly photos highlighted in the pages. ( I liked that book so much that I used to bring it to school)…whatever the reason, Ed Gein has always been my favorite ghoul.
That being said, I was thrilled to find this rare copy of Weird Trips from 1978, which features a Gein exposé.

Did you know Gein was the inspiration for Psyco, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Hannibal Lecter?

The last pic is me at Gein’s gravesite about 10 years ago. Those are his parents and his brother’s headstone. Gein’s headstone was stolen, his grave is the blank spot to my right, between his mother and his brother.

10/23/2023

This happened exactly one year ago.

10/20/2023

This is the biggest raccoon skull I have ever seen!

10/16/2023

SWIPE LEFT!
True Story: a friend of mine saw a unique piece of taxidermy that he once owned in the background of a profile pic of a girl on Tinder. Eventually, he had sold the piece to me, which I then resold. I don’t remember if I sold it to the girl, or if she wound up with it by some other means. (I had this piece years ago) But the funny part was my friend and the girl weren’t even a match, lol!

10/15/2023

FIRE and ICE!
Joan Tovar was born in Manchester, England in 1936, and relocated to northern, IL in the 50’s. These vintage paintings may look familiar, because she was copying Frank Frazetta’s ‘Silver Warrior’ and Boris Vallejo’s ‘The Underworld’. The Fantasy Art genre is a pretty severe departure from the work Tovar is known for, which include subjects like flowers and other pretty things.
These babies can be yours, DM for deets!

10/13/2023

Try not to get axe murdered today.

10/10/2023

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!
- a set of four, 19th century, French, winged hourglass crypt markers. These are kind of like an equivalent to an “At Rest” plaque. The hourglass is one of the most ubiquitous symbols of death in European culture, representing the passage of time, while the wings constitute the journey to the afterlife. As far as we understand, these would mark a resting place within a mausoleum.
While I dislike the idea of breaking up the set, we will sell them individually for $300, or the entire box for $1000.

10/09/2023

Day off, shmay off. Our work is never done!
Open 12-5

10/06/2023

TWO TURTLES, ONE SHELL!
Yes, they’re real. I call the Tim and Buck, aka-
The Tim-Buck-Two.

10/02/2023

A Happy Reunion-The Boomerang Cat:
I got Mittens, The Mummy Cat about 10 years ago. I meticulously cleaned her, even used q-tips to get in all the crooks and and crannies. Then I shellacked her, and built this custom glass case, and sold her. Last week, I bought her back!
I know she belonged to at least 2 collectors in the city before Mittens came home.
She looks as good as the day she left, about a decade ago!
…I’m pretty sure she was found mummified in a barn, and I bought her from the farmers granddaughter. She was dirty and gross. (Mittens, not the granddaughter)

09/28/2023

This one is closer to my heart than my rib cage. is fu***ng fantastic organization, and it’s where we adopted Phil. Phil (aka, The Velvet Potato) is our little golden pittie, Melvin is his old-man black and white big brother, who we also adopted, but that rescue no longer exists (it was like 12 years ago).
Anyhoo, show the doggos some love this Saturday, at 2250 W. Diversey!!

09/26/2023

THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD
is a cryptid monster that lurks the farmland surrounding the town of Elkhorn, in South-eastern Wisconsin, about 90 miles from Chicago.
Sightings go back to the mid-1930’s, but most occurred in the 1980’s and 90’s. It has been described as a Manwolf, Bearwolf, Dogman, Wendigo, Bigfoot and Werewolf.
Animal mutilations and property damage around Bray Road have been attributed to the beast. Typically spotted as a biped, but sometimes on all fours, usually in pursuit of a deer, or eating an animal carcass or something.
Explanations for the beast include: it’s a wolf, large dog, or a black bear with mange. However, my cousin grew up about 10 miles from Bray Rd (I have family all over that area) and she told me it was “a kid in a suit”, and she’s really smart, soo…
There’s a low-budget horror film from 2005 called The Beast of Bray Road. The beast in the movie looks like the love-child of The Grinch and Krampus. It’s not a great movie, but I’ve seen worse…
It’s streaming for free on Plex.
Also, if you want to go up there and pose for goofy photos like this one, you should know that there’s only 2 signs for Bray Road. One is in the middle of a 4-lane highway, and the one in this pic, which is on the corner of a busy county highway, mounted about 10 feet high on a telephone pole. I’m guessing the municipality got tired of replacing all the stolen Bray Road signs?
So, anyone ever see it??…or have a stolen Bray Road sign they want to sell?

09/25/2023

Not asleep.

09/23/2023

09/21/2023

SUPER INTERESTING:
There’s an Ojibwe cemetery near our cabin in Northern, MN that we frequently visit. We’ve been coming for years, and were always unsure if it was abandoned….so, we were quite surprised when we rolled in one morning to find a fresh grave had been dug! We had been there 2 days prior, and it looked the same as it always does. For the next 3 mornings we came by, so this series of photos is over those days.
First day was a hole with a bunch of lumber laying around.
The second day there was a plywood burial vault/casket installed in the hole. The lid for the casket was leaning on another grave, and had the nails set and ready to pound in place.
The third day the hole was filled, with a tarp over the dirt mound.
The little houses in the cemetery are called spirit houses, which is a traditional practice among the Ojibwe people in the area. The spirit houses built on top of graves provide offerings and materials for the spirits’ journey for the afterlife. Most of the cemeteries near the cabin are part traditional Ojibwe and include spirit houses, and typical Christian-with headstones and crosses, etc…
But I really love how this grave sort of circumvented the traditional funeral industry and instead DIY’d the casket. I have no idea if this is typical up here or an outlier. Either way it’s fascinating.

09/18/2023

CAN YOU FIND ME?
One of these figures is a real taxidermy giraffe, the other is not. Can you tell the difference???

09/16/2023

There was a lot of talk in the last post about how much the fused tacks resembled an antique baked good….which seemed like a natural segue to remind y’all that we actually do have an antique baked good! This piece of FUNERAL CAKE was baked in the mid-19th century, (which makes it even older than the fused tacks) and was served at the author of the letter’s great-grandmother’s funeral!
…still probably less stale than Starbucks’ biscotti…

09/13/2023

FUSED TACKS found in the ashes of THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE of 1871 are a pretty incredible addition to our collection IMO. They were found by Edward Caldwell, and I’m wondering if it is the same Caldwell that Caldwell Ave. and Caldwell Woods are named after?
The Chicago History Museum has a handful of melted tacks just like ours on display, did they all come of the location? (I included a few pics from museum and marked them accordingly)
The most famous/infamous legend around the origin of the fire was that Mrs. O’Leary was milking her cow, and the cow kicked over the lantern, which sparked the conflagration….always blaming the Irish, smh…
The fact that the city rebuilt itself is how Chicago earned the moniker “The Second City”.
Lots of fascinating stuff around the fire’s legends and lore-I’ll post more another time….

09/11/2023

SOME CONTEXT: for whoever doesn’t know, Mr. Pickles is a nickname I gave a friend of ours, who is a very eccentric neighborhood fixture, who is forever showering me with “gifts” that he finds at the bus stop, alley, etc…most famously, he presented me with an industrial bag of loose pickle spears a couple years ago.

09/08/2023

My friend found this green stash-box in the drop ceiling in her basement filled with scales, sifters, vials, tiny spoons, a small mirror, a book about co***ne, a tiny glass funnel, razor blades, etc…
I guess the previous home owner was either Scarface or into science experiments or something?….

Moral of the story: check your ceilings y’all!
***ne

09/04/2023

See all tomorrow, enjoy the holiday…
Xoxo

08/31/2023

My ole pal ENIGMA stopped in to scare the crap out of me today!
You can see Enigma as well as some of my other friends perform this weekend, Friday and Saturday night at in Lincoln Square!

08/31/2023

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOTTLE?!
Heyo, I’m trying to help the person
who sold us this vodoun prayer bottle years ago to locate it. They are looking for it in order to resolve some “very urgent spiritual and psychological problems” they have been experiencing. This is the only pic we have of it, which is from 2018, which is also around the time we sold it. If you have it, or know where it is, please contact us!
-xoxo

08/27/2023

Look at this beauty!…oh, and check out the hair wreath too!

08/25/2023

time for: STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT THE DANGERS OF DRUGS:
This is Darrin. In the first pic we see normal Darrin when his diet consists of carrots, with maybe the occasional Saturday night radish when out with friends.
One day an unsavory jack-rabbit convinced Darrin that he needed weeds to be hoppier.
The second pic is Darrin 20 minutes after trying the weeds.
Don’t be Darrin.

08/23/2023

We finally went and checked out DEATH: LIFE’S GREATEST MYSTERY at the Field Museum. While I’m glad we went, because we learned about some things we were unfamiliar with, the exhibit felt restrained. If the topic of Death was an overcooked meatloaf, this exhibit grazed the top of the loaf with a feather, where I was hoping it would jab it with a rusty fork and drag it through the dried out hamburger and ketchup. I suppose we are a bit biased because we surround ourselves with metaphorical meatloaf literally all the time, but I was just hoping for more. I hadn’t been to the Field since the Voodoo exhibit a few years ago, which I loved!….Has anyone else seen it? What did you think???
P.S.-I LOVE the Field Museum, still one of my absolute favorite places in the city. No disrespect. -xoxo

08/21/2023

Time to clear some space, therefore, we’re offering this antique Victorian Oddfellow casket to the first $375! The inscription on the back of the lid explains that it was “presented” to the Gas City, IN Oddfellow lodge on Nov. 27, 1889….this is the perfect accessory for the co**se in your life!…don’t let it slip away!

08/18/2023

BEHOLD the DEMON HOOF!
Obviously a 5-hoofed cloven foot could only come from a demon, right? Not sure which demon this belonged to, my best guess is Beelzebubba.
……or, it’s a deformed pig.

08/16/2023

I was recently interviewed by future Pulitzer Prize recipient, Klaus for the latest edition of KLAUS-O-GRAPHIC! In this issue, Klaus investigated real first-hand paranormal accounts in Chicago. I was honored to be the featured as the “exclusive interview”! Klaus-O-Graphic, volume 5, is not for the faint of heart, Klaus did some hardcore investigative reporting and uncovered some truly terrifying stuff!…[shudder]…He sent me a couple copies in the mail, and even included a thank you drawing of our shrunken head! So scary!!!
Thank you Klaus!!! I love it!!!

P.S.- When he came in for the interview, he carried a notepad and had a pencil tucked behind his ear, lol! The cuteness overload almost killed me.

08/14/2023

TALK TO THE DEAD with this 1939 FALCON VOODOO TIPPING TABLE!!
Tipping tables were typically a precursor to ouija/talking boards. The table itself worked kind of like a planchette, participants put their fingers on the table, and “spirits” would knock in response to questions. Basically, antique poltergeist Bluetooth….or should I Bootooth?

08/11/2023

BREAKING NEWS: We just sealed the deal on a brand new old Woolly-mobile!
Just think of the shear volume of raccoon skulls we can fit in here!

Thanks for the deal !

08/10/2023

When gars perform oral s*x, do they refer to it as “garlick”?

08/08/2023

This Two Faced Freak was originally from the Great Dime Museum in Brooklyn, New York, circa 1890’s. I love this piece so much, that I asked for its hand in marriage. So until the divorce, NFS.

08/04/2023

I’m bad at guessing kid ages, but I’d say she was about 6.