Museum of Death New Orleans — Attraction in New Orleans

First thing's first, I want to say that I have a pretty deep and healthy relationship with death. I'm by no means squeamish. I've always been a fairly morbid and macabre girl. I was so excited to learn something new about death, either from a scientific, cultural, artistic, or even theatrical lense. Instead, I walked away incredibly disappointed. The first room when we walked in was a menagerie of taxidermied animals and various animal skeletons. The horse and alligator skeletons were gorgeous and I was pretty excited initially. Then we went beyond that and that excitement dropped faster than a marble from a skyscraper. The museum is really just a large room with a divider and various poorly organized sections. Two random modern caskets are displayed but there was nothing explaining why they were actually on display. The first section was a serial killer "exhibit" which was just a collection of murderabilia and random news clippings regarding different serial killers, but with no new or interesting details. All of it was the same stuff you see online time and again. The top of these walls were lined with prints from an artist whose name I couldn't make out that portrayed caricature portraits of serial killers with little poems in the A is for..., B is for..., etc format. This was actually cute for a moment til multiple of the poems referred to the killers as f*gs. There was another exhibit about Waco and David Koresh. Again, none of it provided any new insight or information and just had more copies of generic headlines and newspaper clippings. The back leads to what is billed as a theater. Inside were pews facing a tv, a Día de [los] Muertos altar (they forgot the los in the banner somehow), and a gallery wall of more newspaper headlines detailing various Nazi war crimes. The altar was cartoonish and frankly insulting. I'm latina and a bruja and it felt so just needlessly disrespectful. The most egregious part though was the TV and footage. Screening was (what I assume to be) some documentary that showed various black and white images of dead bodies while a narrator spoke in a campfire tale voice using language that was regularly uncouth and sometimes even racist. Many of the images were of mutilated black bodies, including one that was gratuitously focused on the dead man's penis. These were accompanied by images of dead women, many of whom were assaulted according to the narrator. I know the museum itself didn't make this video, but they still watched this and thought it was a good thing to screen on site. Finally, as you make your way to exit the museum, you enter a small section with a shrunken head and a few other items. All of the information in this section felt outdated, incorrect, and (again) pretty racist. There were a few other insulting bits in here, but by the time I was walking through, I was so angry that I rushed to get out. The only displays I found interesting were the collection of funeral home matchbooks and an antique cooling table for body showings. At best, this place is a stomach turning level of cringe. At worst (and if we're being real, in actuality) it was a distasteful and cheap collection of edginess. I had to rewrite this because my initial draft was full of too much vitriol. That's how disappointing my experience here was. Also. As an aside. $20 admission for this is crazy. Literally they used crime scene tape...

This place truly features death. I'm talking D E A T H: When at the front desk, there's a framed photo of a ripped-up body on the side of the road. When we asked what its significance was? The dude behind the counter goes, "No one in particular. We just thought it was beautiful." So please do not come in here if you have a weak stomach or if this offends you. Because you get what you get, and this is what you'll get. You have been warned.

So why am I giving this place 5 stars? If you are into all things morbid, this is a must-see in Nola. It was only $15 to enter, which is pretty low for a museum of any kind in my opinion, and I think there was great value for what you're paying. I'm interested in morbidity and psychology, and this was eye-opening. I don't support serial killings or cults or framing ripped-up body parts in accidents, but I do appreciate the education on the topic, so here I am writing a 5-star review.

I'd also like to say that this is not a lighthearted place AT ALL. In recent weeks I've been recounting my visit to this spot to my friends, and I've realized that the feeling you have when leaving Museum of Death is one of heaviness and dark thoughts. I truly do not recall feeling this way leaving any other establishment in my life, except the one time I visited the 9/11 Museum in NYC a few years ago -- so keep that in mind. It's very dark and depressing, but super interesting. Moving on.

My boyfriend and I visited around 3pm on a warm Thursday in February, and there weren't too many people inside. We were told we couldn't have our phones out once inside, which was kind of refreshing. Once inside, you're hit with so much serial killer and cult leader memorabilia, tiny and large coffins, funeral dresses, and even a dreary theater with a video on a loop of bodies in body bags, blood, and other murder scenes. There's also an entire section with a documentary on 9/11, articles on the Kennedy assassination, and letters from Jeffrey Dahmer that he wrote to his girlfriend before he was killed in prison. All very interesting stuff, and worth paying $15 to me.

I heard a few people complaining inside that they thought it would be more about the education of death, but to be honest, I think seeing all of this is educational. I'm not one to confront others negatively when it comes to their opinions, but I do wonder how else they'd like to see a space like this put together.

If serial killers, true crime, blood, and dark stories are your thing, then please visit the Museum of...

Enter at your own risk. If you’re looking for gore this is the right place for you. I probably should have done a lot of research before coming here, I didn’t realize how gruesome the images would be for me, I kinda blindly showed up thinking it would only be about famous celebs deaths and just brief information not shown in the news and I thought it was gonna be about spooky things not pictures of dismembered bodies from crashes and killings. I had ongoing night terrors since the day that I’ve paid a visit to this museum and I can’t get the images out of my head. Overall, I did learn a lot about deaths that didn’t have much detailed information on tv or online that was right in front of me that gave a more visual detailed information about deaths from the early 1900’s and even had skeletal remains from like A.D so that was interesting. It was a lot to take in. The only thing that would have made the experience a little bit better was the A.C issue. It was 90 degrees inside so everyone was sweating and fanning each other, the box fans wasn’t producing cold air enough especially with the main entry door being open all the time. I honestly had a very interesting visit, my heart was beating very weird, the energy in the museum was thick. I felt weary and a little bit anxious while walking through. The theater is the last room of the museum and as soon as I walked in I felt uncomfortable, the energy was massively thicker than the main room and there was a human skeleton inside the room, People were sitting in front of the television in the theater just watching the very graphic scenes like it’s nothing lol I found that very interesting.

We as humans become very desensitized by gruesome death and I thought I could take it like a champ lol needless to say I had to go up the street to St. Jude and grab some holy water because the energy in that place was so bad. Just he very mindful of these things when going here, if you are interested in experiencing these things then this is the right place for you.

The A.C was the only bad thing, the museum did it’s job right lol I only should have done my research before blindly visiting a death museum 😂

Oh and don’t take pictures! I took this picture before I read the sign upon...