![]() ![]() But what really got to me in the Chamber of Horrors were the calm-looking serial murderers in their rooms, which were very realistically done up with all the fine details. ![]() I remember seeing that one in Southend, where one of the exhibits included a man impaled on a hanging hook in screaming agony and another, a moving ‘death by pendulum’ exhibit. There were a few bloody ones as well although many of the real vile exhibits were shipped to other waxworks across the nation including one in Southend on a fake pirate ship. Yes, there were guillotines and other famous characters like Vlad the Impaler and Hitler. The exhibit of John Reginald Christie stuck in my mind the way he was holding a paintbrush in his hand after just burying one of his many victims under the floorboards of the house looking very satisfied with the work he did. Dr Crippen looked decidedly evil much like the image of Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter in the movie, Silence of the Lambs, when the camera pans across into his cell in the basement of the asylum. I still remember vividly the way an effigy of George Joseph Smith calmly looked at his dead wife in the bathtub after drowning her. What made the Chamber of Horrors palpably terrifying was the calm composure of the serial killers within each of the rooms. I remember a labyrinth of exhibits, many enclosed like actual rooms you can see into for example, living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms. It was a very quiet day at Madame Tussauds which made the trip in the Chamber of Horrors that much scarier. I remember my father taking me through the Chamber of Horrors during the early 1980s. There were ample warnings posted on the outside for those with young children or those of a nervous disposition who could bypass the section. But the star attraction at Madame Tussauds has always been the Chamber of Horrors, an underground section where notorious murderers and villains resided. Some are ‘not quite right’ which make them even more creepy, a phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. Many are very real-looking indeed, some of those looking indistinguishable from a real person. Madame Tussauds is known to produce the finest waxworks effigies of world famous (and infamous) characters in our history. Sadly, they have both turned into Disneyesque, overcrowded, over-marketed and commercialised tourist attractions having lost that dark mystique which they once had. They are both wax museums and, if you’ve ever been to a wax museum before, you may recall the eeriness of what it’s like to be in one. On one of those days, I planned to visit the two most infamous and macabre museums in London, at least, that I know of the London Dungeon, and the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. ![]() Some years ago, I went back to London to re-visit some of my old haunts I frequented as a young lad back in the 80s. Shôn Ellerton, JanuFrom the Chamber of Horrors to the London Dungeon, not much can beat the eeriness and spookiness of waxworks museums, but their heydays are gone. Reminiscing on the Creepiness of Waxworks Museums ![]()
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