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Watch: Al Capone’s Cell exhibit renovated and relocated at Eastern State

The Capone exhibit was moved one cell over after renovations revealed historically significant findings under layers of paint in the original cell.

Joe Lamberti, Cherry Hill Courier-Post

Who’s in the mood for some summer studies?

School may not quite be back in session yet, but there are museums and educational sites across the region ready to teach you about everything from the Jersey Devil to Jell-O. Want to observe bizarre medical artifacts or a mile of miniatures? We’ve got those, too.

Here are some of the quirky, kooky, creepy, cool and idiosyncratic museums you can visit across New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Happy learning!

The Paranormal Museum, Asbury Park

Local historian Kathy Kelly opened Paranormal Books and Curiosities on Asbury Park, New Jersey’s Cookman Avenue in 2008. The Paranormal Museum followed in 2009, timed to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the third week of January 1909 — when 1,000 sightings of the Jersey Devil were reported across the state.

Preservation of the Jersey Devil mythos, Kelly explained, is crucial for the history and culture of the Garden State.

“We suffer from our stories leaking into New York and leaking into Philly and really only having this kind of attitude identity versus having a historical identity or a cultural identity,” Kelly told the Asbury Park Press in 2019. “And I think something like the Jersey Devil, maybe more than pretty much anything else that I can think of, is a flag in that sand right there, saying, ‘No, this is ours.’ “

Located above Paranormal Books and Curiosities, the Paranormal Museum is home to exhibits on cryptids (including the Jersey Devil), haunted dolls, rituals and the occult, and more.

Private visits are available for hour-long tours or three-hour investigations, and the space can also be rented for private events.

Go: 621 Cookman Ave., Asbury Park; 732-455-3188, paranormalbooksnj.com

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Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia operated as a prison from 1829 to 1971, housing approximately 75,000 inmates, including infamous mobster Al Capone, behind its 30-foot walls. 

These days, Eastern State operates as a National Historic Landmark and educational site, dedicating much of its energies to educating the public on the history and current state of America’s prison system via daylight tours of the site and exhibitions such as “Prisons Today,” which opened in 2016.

“Prisons Today” is a respectful, somber and innovative experience housed in the former workshop space of Eastern State’s Cellblock 4 next to the prison’s old ball field.

Located on the ball field at the base of The Big Graph, a 16-foot-tall steel structure charting the growth in America’s incarceration rates since 1900, Eastern State and Triple Bottom Brewing’s Fair Chance Beer Garden continues the practice of combining activism and advocacy with entertainment and recreation.

The 30th season of Halloween celebrations at Eastern State will feature Halloween Nights, a festival staged in the site’s cellblocks and courtyards with 15 attractions, two haunted houses, four immersive walkthrough experiences, two live performances, four themed bars and lounges, laser shows and video projections.

A self-guided audio tour of the location’s architecture by Steve Buscemi, as well as a guided, flashlight walking tour of the hospital wing and two exhibits on the modern criminal justice system will also be available during Halloween Nights.

“It’s challenging for us, as an organization, to offer programming that is really tackling some very serious issues, talking about mass incarceration, and then to also run an entertainment experience in this building, to run a haunted house, and to balance those two things,” vice president and director of operations Brett Bertolino told the Asbury Park Press in 2018. “And more and more, Eastern State is becoming the national prison museum.

“There is no national prison museum, and there really is no other organization that’s tackling what’s happening now in their programming. For a lot of years, Eastern State’s focused mainly on our programming about what happened in this building while it was open, and we still do that. But … more and more we’re talking about what’s happening in the country now.”

Go: 2027 Fairmount Ave., Philadelphia; 215-236-3300, easternstate.org

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Field Station: Dinosaurs, Leonia

Take a trip back to Paleolithic times at Field Station: Dinosaurs, where massive hand-sculpted dinosaurs created by robotic engineers and paleo-artists loom over the park.

Shows take place in the amphitheater throughout the day, including T-Rex Feeding Frenzy (a musical about what this fierce carnivore ate); Dinosaur Daycare (with baby “dinosaurs” about to hatch); and Dinosaur Dance Party (the name says it all). Spend the day on fossil digs and learning all about when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Go: 3 Overpeck Park Driveway, Leonia; 855-999-9010, jerseydinos.com

Northlandz, Flemington

What began as a Flemington man’s basement hobby 50 years ago is now what the Travel Channel refers to as “a fantasy journey” and a “breathtaking beauty” by the Discovery Channel. 

Northlandz, which is about a mile walk-through, is composed of hundreds of exhibits containing miniature scenes such as a Civil War battle display, the world’s only toothpick farm, a city, a carnival and a plane crash site, all interspersed with 100 running trains. There’s also a doll collection holding more than 200 historic dolls, an 1890s replica steam train and a 2,000-pipe organ, which the founder played on weekends.

All of the scenes were hand-built by founder Bruce Williams Zaccagnino, who has since retired and sold the museum to a new owner.

Go: 495 Route 202, Flemington; 908-782-4022, northlandz.com

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Morris Museum, Morristown

Take a stroll through the Morris Museum and you’ll find it to be pretty standard with beautiful paintings, sculptures and artifacts — until you reach the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection.

This section of the museum has about 150 historic mechanical musical instruments and automata. See life-sized dolls play chess, mini men that write, and whizzing steam-punk constructions at the permanent exhibition.

Go: 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morristown; 973-971-3700, morrismuseum.org

Mütter Museum, Philadelphia

“Are You Ready to Be Disturbingly Informed?” asks the website. Bring it on, say the 183,000 people who annually visit the Mütter Museum, of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Cysts and tumors, skulls, skeletons, the conjoined liver of conjoined twins Chang and Eng, a section of the brain of Charles J. Guiteau, assassin of President Garfield, a gigantic “megacolon” belonging to a victim of terminal constipation, a “soap lady” whose exhumed body was found to be covered by a substance known as “corpse wax,” a piece of thoracic tissue removed from John Wilkes Booth — those are just some of the treats that await you in this 158-year-old museum, created as a teaching aid for medical students.

But the general public has long shown an interest in these pathological oddities, and the museum has found — perhaps a little reluctantly — that it pays to encourage it. The Mütter’s annual picture calendar, featuring a new lesion every month, used to be a best-seller (it has since been discontinued). Not recommended for small children.

Go: 19 S 22nd St, Philadelphia; 215-560-8564, muttermuseum.org

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The evolution of Jell-O recipes

Jell-O Gallery curator Lynne Belluscio talks about the culinary experiments done with the colorful jiggly product. Video by Karen Miltner

File video

Jell-O Museum, Le Roy, N.Y.

There are slick, high-budget museums devoted to famous brands, and then there’s the Jell-O Museum, which tells the story of the product’s conception in Le Roy in 1897 to the time when the brand left the small Western New York town in 1964. 

“We’re not a company museum,” emphasizes Lynne Belluscio, director of the Le Roy Historical Society. “This is a local historical society. The exhibit is small. We cram as much as we can into it.”

Its peak attendance were 10 years ago, when it received 10,000 to 13,000 visitors per year — which is about as much as it can handle. 

“The story of Jell-O is the success of the advertising and marketing,” Belluscio said, and much of the display consists of Jell-O art created by well-known illustrators. You can also learn about Mr. Wiggle, a higher-sugar variety of Jell-O products made in flavors such as bubble gum, cotton candy and candy corn. And a taxidermied giraffe head has a story of its own.  

Everyone who visits gets a bit of personal attention and informational tidbits from the museum staff; people from Utah, for example, are told that Salt Lake City has the highest consumption of lime Jell-O in the country. It also has a fully stocked gift shop that offers Jell-O merchandise.

Go:  23 E. Main St, Le Roy, NY; 585-768-7433, jellogallery.org

Source: Asbury Park

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