Ripley’s Believe It or Not stops at new Harrisburg-area museum

Jason Haack already has had one brush with Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the decades-old collector of oddities in its 30 museums. Now, he’s about to have another.

Haack, wife Kayla and their 9-year-old daughter, Abby, recently hosted a Ripley’s Believe It or Not representative as he traveled to five stops seeking the strange and unusual.

Ryan Clark, whose day job places him on a college campus, writes features for Ripley’s Believe It or Notcast at Ripleys.com and was a co-host of its retired podcast. He has covered everything from facts about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — each float uses 200 pounds of glitter — to evolution: Is it possible that human hands and fingers evolved from a fish that lived about 380 million years ago?

Last month, Clark visited the Haacks’ business near Harrisburg, Abby Normal’s Museum of the Strange. It had opened a few weeks earlier in June, housing Haack’s collection of curiosities, oddities and collectibles such as animal skeletons, dead-eyed dolls and real-live alligators.

Clark had stumbled across the museum in an online post and scheduled a visit to the museum, one of four sites he visited on this excursion.

Clark traveled with his 13-year-old daughter, Carrington.

“Him and his daughter said our spot was the best of all they’d went to,” Haack said. “Abby gave them the tour, but when he went in a room, I heard him say ‘holy crap,’ and I knew I did something right.”

Reached by phone, Clark agreed.

“He’s living his dream,” Clark said of Haack’s museum. “I hope he can expand it.”

Clark works in media relations with the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences. He lives in Burlington, Kentucky. A former reporter with the Cincinnati Enquirer, he began freelancing for Ripley’s about six years ago.

Of his visit to Abby Normal’s Museum, Clark wrote on Facebook: “Creating one-of-a-kind, custom articulations, they buy, sell and trade repurposed and consignment items that are unique and weird. … The museum and shop is full of exciting new items, dead and alive. Some are even haunted and creepy.”

Clark’s trip also took him to the Wildlife Safari Park in Ashland, Nebraska, and to Fargo, where he saw the actual wood chipper used in the movie “Fargo.”  He visited the Rockmen Guardians of Rockford, Illinois, and a family business in Madison, Wisconsin, that offers special effects for movies.

Ripley’s, which was started in 1918 with a newspaper cartoon featuring sports trivia, today offers 30 museums or “odditoriums” and five aquariums. Its original museum in St. Augustine, Florida, purchased Haack’s skeleton of a flying fox bat. Ripley’s also has hosted several television shows over the years and publishes its collection in book form.

From the moment he entered the Harrisburg museum, Clark knew he was in for something special.

“We just walk in, and we see a dude walking around with an alligator,” Clark said. “The alligator has its mouth taped shut, and he let it down and let it run around like a puppy. I thought, where are we right now? I think the alligator knocked over some stuff. It broke something, and it had to be put back. I was kind of OK with that.”

Clark’s favorite displays at Abby Normal’s Museum were  more static: the two-headed calf, the three-headed bird, the Fiji mermaid.

“That’s totally Ripley’s,” he said. “But one thing that gets it for me is the family aspect. All of them are into it. They buy in; they help by working there. That sets it aside. It gives it more of a soul, if that makes sense.”

Carrington also found the museum to be memorable. She had an unforgettable encounter with one of the dolls, she said.

Haack and her father were to her right, Carrington said. An antique doll seated in a wheelchair was right in front of her.

“I heard like a slight laughter,” she said.

“And it didn’t seem to come from us,” her father reminded her.

Two other things about the museum made the visit special to Clark. One is prosaic: He found packages of collectible trading cards from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and from the movie “Ghostbusters II” that made him, in his words, “geek out.”

He also had issues posting his photos on Instagram. That has never happened before. What should have been images of the Haacks’ shop showed up as nothing more than black squares.

“It made no sense,” Clark said. “I had to delete all of it and then repost it. The second time everything worked out fine. I wonder if one spirit was giving a little goodbye.”

Clark promised Haack that Abby Normal’s Museum will be the top feature when he compiles the information from his trip. That meant a lot to the Sioux Falls man.

“He’s been to all the different Ripley’s, and for him to say my location was notable, that’s kind of a big deal in my eyes,” Haack said.

Since Abby Normal’s Museum opened last month, the response has been nothing but positive. That reassures Haack, who went through several years of difficulties finding a landlord who was willing to rent to him and his collection.

“We haven’t gotten any negative comments or suggestions,” Haack said. “It’s kind of irritating me — there has to be something that I have to fix or change.”

Abby Normal’s Museum now offers online tickets sales for admission.

Harrisburg area’s newest addition: Abby Normal’s Museum of the Strange