Unique and Unusual Stores Across America

826 Valencia hides its flagship writing center behind a fully committed Pirate Supply Store, combining books, student publishing, stationery, pirate merchandise, adventuring supplies, and interactive retail absurdity.

A Darkness Lovely combines gothic gifts and curiosities with books, divination, art and jewelry, then adds The Stitching Hour fiber-arts shop inside the same Main Street storefront and serves as the retail base for Haunted Galena tours.

Abita Mystery House pairs an eccentric roadside museum with an active gift shop carrying its own books, prints, postcards, shirts, toys and other offbeat souvenirs.

Afterlife combines taxidermy, wet specimens, antique literature, anatomical curiosities, unusual collectibles, and a private appointment-based tattoo studio.

Alaska Wild Berry Products combines a working candy factory with a large specialty-food and gift store, letting visitors watch sweets being made while browsing wild-berry products, seafood, meats, souvenirs, apparel, and other Alaska goods.

American Oddities Museum combines macabre American history, sideshow and medical material, funerary artifacts and paranormal lore with an expanded gift shop, bookstore and event program at its new Piasa Street home.

Apple Hill Farm combines a working fiber-animal farm with a substantial farm store and separately scheduled guided tours of its animal areas.

Art of Play at 69 Atlantic combines a design-minded game and curiosity store with an intimate concealed theater whose scheduled shows remain separate from ordinary shopping.

Bearded Lady Vintage & Oddities packs Magnolia Boulevard with mounted specimens, occult material, vintage horror, unusual books, antiques, jewelry, mortuary curiosities, and objects that land somewhere between collectible, ritual piece, prop, and museum artifact.

Big Chicken Barn turns a relic of Maine's poultry era into a two-story collecting universe: antiques and household objects below, mountains of books, magazines, newspapers and paper ephemera above.

Black Cat combines new books, themed rooms, interactive environments, gifts, toys, curiosities, events, hidden passages, and a second historic house.

Bowne & Co., Stationers is a museum-operated retail shop and working letterpress destination where visitors can buy paper goods while seeing printing history practiced next door.