PHILADELPHIA -- Growing up in Florida fishing with his dad, Adam Hutter became fascinated by the biodiversity of life everywhere around him.

“It was far more magical than Disney could ever be,” he said. “You never knew what was gonna come up on the hook, what classification it was gonna be, what family it came from, what it ate, and what its tooth structure was like in its skull.”

While his dad filleted the fish for dinner, Hutter studied and logged their skeletal structures and dug into the contents of their stomachs.

“I cataloged insect and marine life while other people played team sports,” he said.

His fascination led him to collect taxonomic specimens, particularly those of animals born with abnormalities like two-headed goats and one-eyed pig fetuses. He said he has “one of the largest collections of deformed animals in private hands in the entire world,” and was eventually able to pivot his hobby into a professional career.

Hutter is the owner and operator of the World Oddities Expo, which began as the Philadelphia Oddities Expo in 2018 and this year will tour 16 U.S. cities, with 27 on the docket for next year.

“It’s blowing up like a weird fungus,” he said.

Hutter also owns the End Times Boutique in Kensington, his brick-and-mortar outlet of oddities that includes everything from a taxidermy tableau of mice watching squirrels conduct an operation on one of their own (like some kind of rodent version of The Gross Clinic), to a jar filled with cicada husks that Hutter and his significant other and store manager, Jheaneil Dixon, collected themselves in Illinois as they “listened to the cicadas scream.”

For Hutter, both his traveling show and his store are the latest evolution of a centuries-old concept — the wunderkammer, a German phrase that translates into “room of wonder” and was also referred to as a cabinet of curiosities in English.

“They were essentially royal treasuries. They would keep their crown jewels there, wealthy families would keep jewelry there … and also strange species, specimens, unique shells, and great artworks would find their way to this room that not a lot of people would get to see,” Hutter said.‘Strange and extravagant’

In a time before museums, photography, the internet, and extensive travel, the wunderkammer was one of the ways people could learn about the wider, weirder world beyond their front door.

In Philadelphia, the concept of the wunderkammer dates back at least to famed Revolutionary-era portrait artist and inventor Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, which was not just for the privileged alone, but was open to the public for ticketed admission. In his museum, Peale displayed his extensive collection of art, archaeological objects, wax figures, fossils, taxidermy animals, a live menagerie (with grizzly bears!), and oddities like a five-legged calf and the trigger finger of a convicted murderer, according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

While what encompasses oddities has changed over time, Hutter said he still sees his job as bringing “that concept of the strange and extravagant items to you wherever you are.”

“Oddities is essentially the great palate of this life. [It has] impassioned aficionados in whatever discipline, whether it’s insects or shells or flowers or pyrography or handmade art; all of it together makes a unique amalgamation that essentially creates a wonder room, the wunderkammer,” he said.The Oddities Expo

Hutter was working in Philly at a warehouse and as a bouncer in 2014 when he started following his true passion by taking his collection of specimens and wonders on the road to flea markets and horror, comic book, and tattoo conventions, where he’d vend under the name the End Times Boutique.

In his downtime, Hutter played Skyrim, an action role-playing video game set in a fantastical world. He loved that game and eventually, it made him realize he wanted to create his own fantasy world — one just as unique and strange — but in the real world.

“And so I put the controller down and started utilizing my time to do more vending and it sort of evolved into the World Oddities Expo that created this microcosm for tens of thousands of people all across the country to come and be a part of the dream of being adventurers in this world together,” Hutter said.

He started small, with the Philadelphia Oddities Expo in 2018, and added more cities in subsequent years, turning it into the World Oddities Expo. Since 2023, the Philly production has become so big it’s been held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

The expo includes vendors specializing in everything from taxidermy to home decor (and taxidermy home decor); artists who perform acts like sword swallowing, burlesque dancing, and fire breathing; and speakers who give talks and teach classes on subjects ranging from entomology to the paranormal.

“We have now curated the wunderkammer and it’s this giant room that we’re taking across the land and we fill it with these unique treasures and art and beauty and science and the macabre,” Hutter said.His spot in Philly

Here in Philly, Hutter’s End Times Boutique at 2152 E. Dauphin St. offers a permanent spot for locals to dive into a world of oddities curated by Hutter. First opened in 2020 under the name Little Devils Curiosities, Hutter rebranded the store earlier this year when his former partner went in another direction and he took over full ownership.

The shop’s lilac-colored walls painted with wide, dark purple vertical stripes give the space a Beetlejuice feel, and a variety of taxidermy animal mounts and a 14-foot Nile crocodile rug that hangs from the ceiling (and is not for sale) give the sense that someone (or something) is always watching.

The objects within the store — some housed in cases with names like “Moist” and “Necropolis Now” — include two-headed snakes Hutter preserved through plastination (a process where water and fat are replaced with a polymer); a taxidermy calf with dwarfism who bears a striking resemblance to current internet celebrity Moo Deng; a two-faced taxidermy kitten; a variety of skulls; a three-legged taxidermy guinea hen; more than a dozen gas masks in all shapes and varieties (though the horse one recently sold); and a taxidermy two-headed duckling.

There are also goods more palatable to the masses, like a self-serve smudge bar (with “free sniffs!”); Guatemalan worry dolls; a drawer of colorfully-dyed rabbit feet; and an opportunity to “smash your own geode” ($3 each or two for $5).

Hutter said the biggest misconception he encounters about the oddities world is when people try to gatekeep it.

“They try to qualify it as, you know, a shrunken head or a Ouija board, but it is art and science and curiosity and more. If it is interesting, we are interested in it,” he said. “Just build what you’re building and try not to smash what somebody else is doing.”

Unless, of course, it’s a smash-your-own geode at the End Times Boutique.

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