Ackermansion

09/04/03

The collection may have been reduced, but Bela Lugosi's cape still hangs at this famous collector's macabre museum.

by Contributor at Citysearch

The Scene
Back in 1958, Forrest J. Ackerman recognized a yin for that wholesome "Ozzie and Harriet" yang--terrifying monsters. His Famous Monsters magazine became fandom's bible, and these days he shares his horrific jumble of memorabilia with residential visitors on scheduled Saturday morning tours.

The Collection
Among the monstrous mementos are life-casts of Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, crusty old stop-motion puppets from "King Kong," a life-size replica of the curvy she-robot from "Metropolis," and a cape and ring once flaunted by Bela Lugosi. Not even the basement and bedrooms are left out of this 18-room horror show, but things get scariest in the claustrophobic labyrinth of bookshelves holding 50,000 tomes. A former pulp-era literary agent, Ackerman usually ends tours hunkered down in an easy chair, sharing a few pun-riddled anecdotes about authors and actors he's known.