Date: 23 April 2023, with additional openings days on 28 and 29 April (same hours)
Time: 11h-18h
Location: House of Mysteries, Jan Botermanstraat 2, 9000 Ghent
Entrance: free
Continuous exhibition for all ages "Otherworldly things and animals" ("Dieren en dingen uit een andere wereld")
The funfair used to be a travelling exhibition with objects and animals from an alien world. There was the wax museum that presented lifelike bodies in semi-darkness. Thanks to the new possibilities of taxidermy, visitors could admire exotic animals that may or may not have really existed. Magic lanterns set painted animals in motion as if they stepped into ours from another world.
Audience favourites included the Jenny Haniver (the modified carcass of a ray or a skate resembling a mummified fictional demon or dragon), a two-headed calf, monsters on formaldehyde, and other fables. The apparitions were bizarre, magical, transcendental and allowed visitors to push the limits of what they thought they knew. Fakirs, magicians and other showmen behaved like shamans, breathing life into the objects before a live audience.
In an authentic mirror tent at House of Mysteries, audiences can relive this ancient Christmas tradition.
Welcome to this unique exhibition as part of Erfgoeddag (Heritage Day) 2023.
Read the Dutch version of this text on the House of Mysteries website.
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Exhibition poster -
Exhibition overview -
Exhibition overview -
Krampus figure (collection Coolen family) -
Two-headed calf, ca. 1920-1930 (collection Coolen family) -
Box of Egyptian antiquities (for "Malediction" performance, Surnateum collection) -
Irma (Surnateum collection) -
La fontaine du diable (Antre-Cave archives, Paris)
