Deadtime Stories Books & Gifts

Deadtime Stories Books & Gifts is a weird little shop in Lansing’s REO Town that is probably best described as equal parts bookstore and spider shop.

The store is packed with books both new and old, collectibles, antiques, oddities, and all kinds of strange things that are hard to put into one category. But the spiders are a huge part of what makes Deadtime Stories different. The shop is home to tons of live spiders, with a variety of species on display and available for sale. It’s not every day that someone can walk into a bookstore looking for their next read and leave with a new eight-legged friend. 

Deadtime Stories is owned by local author and podcaster Jenn Carpenter, host of Michigan Monsters and the creator and organizer of Lansing’s A Festival of Oddities. There’s a particular love for horror, true crime, Michigan history, and anything strange or unusual, which makes the spiders feel surprisingly at home among everything else. The whole place has a slightly spooky, offbeat personality without feeling like it’s trying too hard to be one thing.

It’s the kind of shop where someone might come in looking for a book and end up spending half their visit checking out the spiders, digging through collectibles, or finding some bizarre item they didn’t even know existed.

For people who like books, spiders, horror, antiques, collectibles, or just digging through weird stuff, Deadtime Stories is a place worth getting lost in for a while.