Thursday 5 September 2013

Inside the Ripley's Warehouse of Oddities


Apparently both of this elephant's two distinct trunks were fully functioning.
Christopher Elliott
Edward Meyer plays a Tibetan horn, used to call the faithful to prayer.
Christopher Elliott
For most people, Ripley is just another synonym for strange. Since Robert Ripley published his first Ripley's Believe It or Not cartoon nearly a century ago, the company that bears his name has expanded into a major franchise.
One of the company's signature attractions are its museums, which display the pieces from the Ripley collection of bizarre artifacts. Those include a mural made of postage stamps; the taxidermied head of an elephant with two trunks; and the world's most expensive limousine.
While awaiting display at one of the 26 Ripley museum locations around the world, pieces sit in an Orlando, Fla., warehouse about the size of a football field. Christopher Elliott tours this way station of the weird with its keeper, Edward Meyer.