Some museums are built to preserve the past. Others, like the Graveface Museum in Savannah, seem designed to challenge how we look at it.

After a two hour drive from Charleston down through the moss draped backroads of the Lowcountry  we found ourselves at the edge of Savannah’s historic riverfront staring up at a devil’s mouth mounted above a brick archway. That’s the entrance. No neon sign, no velvet rope. Just a painted demon head, wide open and grinning, daring you to walk inside.

It felt like the start of a haunted house but the experience turned out to be something far stranger and a must visit when in Savannah.

Not Your Typical Museum

The Graveface Museum is the brainchild of Ryan Graveface a record label owner and longtime collector of the odd, the unsettling, and the almost forgotten. What he’s built here isn’t a gimmick. It’s part roadside attraction, part gallery, part cultural reckoning.

The first floor is pure sensory overload. Vintage sideshow relics, taxidermy experiments, old funhouse pieces, newspaper clippings, and morbid art installations that feel like time capsules from another dimension. One corner has a collection of deformed animals and classic freak show banners. Another showcases old school arcade machines and occult pamphlets from America’s stranger religious fringes.

Yet, it never feels chaotic. Everything has its place, and every piece has a story sometimes funny, often uncomfortable, always fascinating.

The True Crime Room

Things get heavier upstairs.

A full room is dedicated to true crime artifacts not in a glorified, sensational way, but in a way that invites you to question why these objects exist, and what they say about our culture. There are paintings by John Wayne Gacy. There’s a piece of Charles Manson’s guitar. There are letters, clothes, and legal documents that belonged to some of the most notorious criminals in modern history.

It’s disturbing. But it’s also educational. And unlike anything else we’ve seen in the South.

The curation is intentional: you’re not just gawking at serial killer memorabilia. You’re considering the line between infamy and fascination—and how that line gets blurred more often than we’d like to admit.

Some Light in the Dark

After all that intensity the museum gives you a reprieve: a retro horror themed pinball arcade scattered throughout. Pinball is included in the price of admission and doubles as a nice buffer from all the relics. Machines themed after Elvira, The Addams Family, and vintage B-movie monsters line the walls. The clangs, buzzes, and flashing lights feel oddly therapeutic after soaking in so much darkness.

We played a few rounds grabbed a few souvenirs from the little gift shop near the entrance (think VHS tapes, horror soundtracks, and Graveface Records merch), and wandered out feeling… changed, in the best possible way.

More Than a Freak Show

The Graveface Museum isn’t about jump scares or cheap thrills. It’s about preservation of the weird, the fringe, and the forgotten. It’s about the history that doesn’t fit neatly into textbooks. And it’s about how human curiosity often pulls us toward the strange and the macabre, whether we want to admit it or not.

If you’re visiting Savannahcit’s worth carving out time for this place. And if you’re coming from Charleston the drive is easy and more than worth it.

Just don’t expect a normal museum experience. Expect something that sticks with you. 

Check out more from the Graveface Museum and purchase tickets here!