Eerie and occult Wilde Collection in Houston
On this spookiest of days, when ghosts and evil spirits walk among the living, it seems appropriate to share with you an eerie shop that my daughter and I stumbled upon in Houston — The Wilde Collection. Occult, odd, and mysterious items, artfully arranged on shelves and Victorian cases, pack Goth-decorated rooms, where Frankensteined taxidermy animals like this flying monkey leer overhead.
On the walls, portraits of stern Victorians seem to track you with their eyes. Macabre displays, creepy-crawly bugs preserved in cases, skeletons, supposedly haunted objects, and books on the occult are arranged with dramatic flair, setting a claustrophic and darkly romantic mood a la Bram Stoker or Borgin and Burkes.
In a funereally draped bassinet, a vampire-fanged doll appears to be sleeping…
…after feeding from a bottle of blood!
The creepiest display awaited us in a dimly lit back room, where a man-sized, sheep-headed figure wearing Prince’s wardrobe stood before a skull-adorned altar.
Not today, Satan. Not today.
Not every shopper is lucky enough to escape unscathed.
After about an hour of fascinated poking around, we think we dodged any curses, but time will tell. It’s a fun place to explore if you’re not easily spooked (or even if you are). Happy Halloween, all you ghouls!
Update: The Wilde Collection was heavily damaged in an arson attack in 2019 and remains closed.
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Definitely weird. Interesting but also disturbing. The goat-headed devil-worshiper and the vampire baby actually bothered me less than the taxidermy animals.
Enjoy Halloween, Pam!
Happy Halloween, Kris! The goat dude is part taxidermy too, which I think is why he creeped me out. Well, plus goats. It’s an odd place. I wish I’d taken more pictures.
I think I misidentified that satanic figure as goat headed. But it’s actually a bighorn sheep head?
BOO!
This was a creepy place.
Quite creepy. But memorable!
Let’s hope the shop wasn’t a franchise of “Needful Things”. There wasn’t anything there that just attached itself to your heart that you absolutely HAD to buy, was there? You didn’t see the shopkeeper eat any rats in the backroom per chance? If you start planting only prickly, spiky, thorny, evil black plants, we may need to perform a-hem “an intervention”. Happy Halloween from The Grim Hoe-r of 2018!
Uh-oh, my plant collection IS rather prickly, spiky, and thorny…
This is elegant creepiness at it’s finest . As I was looking at your photos my mind drifted off to John Fowles ‘The Magus’ ,a book read mutiple times in my 20’s. It was A Thing !
I don’t know that book so will have to go look it up. I don’t want to miss a Thing.
What an awesome shop after my own heart! I love the vampire baby.
Right out of Rosemary’s Baby, right?