House of Frankenstein Wax Museum

While we were in Lake George, after (devastatingly) discovering the Magic Forest had already closed for the season, I opened my Roadside America app and started searching for something else to see. I settled on the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum because it was close to where we were, looked sufficiently weird enough and, most importantly, was open. It was pretty cheap as far as attractions go (under $10/person) and promised 52 exhibits of strange and macabre delights.

It's hard to explain the feeling we had as we walked out of the wax museum, and photos don't really do it justice since the lighting was almost nonexistent, but it was definitely strange, absolutely macabre and totally worth the visit.

There were exhibits that followed well-known stories—Edgar Allan Poe, Freddy Krueger, The Curse of the Mummy, etc.—as well as more general themes such as the Fortune Teller, Room of Rats or the Mad Scientist. I'm not sure how long the museum has been in operation, but from the looks of the beautiful hand-painted plaques at each exhibit, it's been open for a while. The whole place had a vintage, old-timey feel to it, which fit in perfectly with the rest of Lake George.

The most unnerving scenes in the museum were the ones that depicted scenarios that were a little too close to real life, even for me. There were a few like the Starving Prisoner that were just kind of sad, and then there was the Electric Chair. I'm not even sure if I can accurately describe the Electric Chair tableau except to say that you're responsible for "pulling" the switch and the results are nothing short of terrifying.

While it's called a wax museum, a majority of the exhibits at the House of Frankenstein move in someway or another—a blade swings back and forth, a sarcophagus opens and closes—but the Electric Chair exhibit featured such violent and realistic shocks, combined with a chilling soundtrack that actually made me a bit uneasy. Not so uneasy that we didn't watch it a few more times, but still it was weird and it's not often that I see something that catches me off-guard and truly creeps me out. I suppose that is the highest compliment that I can pay to the House of Frankenstein—don't say I didn't warn you.