When done well, wax museums are absolutely incredible. When done poorly, they're the stuff of nightmares.
When done well, wax museums are absolutely incredible. Standing next to your favorite celebrity or historical figure, and feeling like they're completely life-like, has been the draw of Madame Tussauds' museums for decades.
But when wax figures go wrong, they become instant nightmare fuel: and it's very easy for them to go wrong.
Here are 21 creepy photos of waxed figures throughout history.
1
“My dad and grandparents in 1971 at a wax museum posing with Frankenstein's monster. My grandmother had never been to America and sent this photo to her family back home to Korea and they thought the monster was a relative.”
2
Vincent Price in House of Wax premiered April 10, 1953.
3
Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher who founded utilitarianism and died in 1832, requested that his body be preserved. His head didn't mummify very well, so they made a wax copy.
4
A technician works on broken hands from the waxworks of Madame Tussauds, 1950s.
5
An employee of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum working on a waxwork of the model Twiggy, London, 1967.
6
Earl Dorfman, managing director of the National Historical Wax Museum, presenting a model of astronaut Alan Shepard’s head to Philip Hopkins, the director of the National Air Museum, Washington DC, September 15, 1961.
7
The remains of Elena de Hoyos, (1910 - 1931), encased in wax and plaster by her obsessed physician Carl Tanzler, circa 1940.
8
Anton LaVey poses with a wax statue of Rosemary's Baby, 1967.
9
Vincent Price visiting the Movieland Wax Museum, 1967.
10
Alma Reville in the kitchen with a wax figure of husband Alfred Hitchcock’s head in the fridge, 1974.
11
Madame Tussauds, London, unveils the The Beatles rendered in wax; they are the first pop stars to be so honored. 1964.
12
Department store wax mannequins melting during a heatwave in 1929.
13
Workers carrying the seated wax figure of Neville Chamberlain past the standing wax models of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, and Benito Mussolini at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London, 1935.
14
Retired heads of state stand neck and neck with other famous and infamous figures at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum storage. October 1979.
15
“My husband when he was actually 19 at Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, 1989.”
16
The cast of "Star Trek" meeting their wax museum-doppelgängers in the 1970s.
17
John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's wax figures at Potter’s Wax Museum. Augustine, Florida, 2010.
18
Star Wars scene in a Spanish wax museum.
19
The National Presidential Wax Museum.
20
A wax statue in Madame Tussaud’s museum in London resembling a German SS soldier in a gas mask.
