Museum of Death

On Saturday March 5, during the afternoon, my friends and I were driving around Los Angeles going to get coffee at one of our favorite coffee shops, I would write about it,but I already wrote about Blue Bottle Coffee, so instead this post is about something interesting I saw while driving through Hollywood. While driving down Hollywood Boulevard I saw a giant skull on the side of a small building and then looked up to see in giant letters “Museum of Death,” I was definitely intrigued. So when I got home I instantly researched and found out that the museum was originally founded in San Diego in 1995 in what was believed to be the city’s first mortuary. The founders are J. D. Healy and Catherine Shultz who had an oddly strong interest in serial killers and over the years their collection of death related objects and exhibits grew until they had enough to create the museum. They were evicted from their location in San Diego and moved to their location on Hollywood Boulevard where it still sits since 1999.

Healy and Shultz believed that there was a lack of education about death, so they decided to make it their life’s work to spreading information about death around the country. The museum houses the world’s largest collection of serial murder artwork and many other things related to death from execution devices to a collection of coffins. I really want to go to the museum now and I find it so interesting how they got evicted from their location in San Diego and of course their first thought is to move the museum to Los Angeles, because as Los Angeles has grown and developed as a city, it welcomes anybody and anything into its walls. Los Angeles has represented a place or rebirth and a new beginning for the American people and even the world and although its past has taken this privilege away from people, it is great to see how it welcomes all beliefs, cultures, and ideas to its great expanse in the modern age.