Places Ramshackle Wants to Go

The Real LegoLand.

This taxidermic smorgasbord was co-created by an artist poached from the Museum of Natural History.

A Borgesian work of art that may blur the line between fiction and reality a little too convincingly.

Enter the Forest of the Elves.

A cave 150 feet beneath Kansas City is the perfect climate for growing 10,000 delicate orchids.

This abandoned prison castle has become an imposing gallery of graffiti art.

Community bookshelf of 25-foot-tall book spines.

Two hundred tons of pioneer artifacts were painstakingly recovered from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Missouri River.

Final resting place of one of the classic authors of horror literature.

This small section of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is rotten with famous authors' graves.

The world's only international cryptozoology museum is host to an unrivaled collection of mysterious objects.

Tucked away in a corner of a Maine general store there was a museum devoted to an equally beloved and reviled local soft drink.

They call buildings like this "mimetic architecture," but nothing has ever mimicked the taste of Moxie.

This Boston medical museum features the skull of the famous medical case of Phineas Gage.

The oldest operating apothecary in the US has treated everyone from Thomas Edison to Mark Twain.

A hands-on traveling collection of the innovative devices of yesteryear.

Tucked in the back of this amazing antique store is an important piece of medical history.

A New York garbage depot holds a secret collection of weird and wonderful refuse.

A DIY art gallery/music venue/lecture hall dedicated to video game culture.

New York's oldest magic store.

A treasure trove of artifacts, books, and artwork from the "golden age" of exploration.

Where Cusack's record store from the film "High Fidelity" was located.

Chicago's largest cemetery is full of beautiful Victorian monuments and more than a few ghost stories.

This historic hotel invented the chocolate brownie.