Imagine this. You're scrolling through social media or flipping through pages after Googling information about local businesses near you. You come across a business that sells items like human skulls, human eyeballs, human hearts, and various other human body parts. Also up for grabs are animal skulls, taxidermied animals, and antique medical equipment. Sounds like equal parts something off the dark web/black market, incredibly illegal, and a storyline from Criminal Minds, right?

Completely understandable. And also completely wrong. Because that business does exist, it's not a storyline ripped from a true-crime show (based on true events or made up), and it's actually 100% legal (at least in Maine and other surrounding states.)

Sharon McCutcheon
Sharon McCutcheon
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Distinctively Different Oddities & Curiosities

Christina Brunson runs Distinctively Different Oddities & Curiosities out of her home in Orrington, Maine. According to the description she wrote up of her business on its Facebook page, Christina claims that "antique medical, human specimens, taxidermy, no matter what you're looking for, I can help you find it!"

On the Distinctively Different Oddities & Curiosities Facebook page, Christina constantly shows off brand new items she gets in for sale, which can be anything from human skulls and taxidermied squirrels to human testicles (which, fun fact, sell for $5,000 according to a write up on Christina in Bangor Daily News) and a taxidermied zebra foot.

Meta Zahren
Meta Zahren
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According to the above-referenced BDN article, "it is completely legal to buy, sell, and collect human body parts in Maine." Christina herself gets even more detailed in the description of the Distinctively Different Oddities & Curiosities page on Facebook, citing, "Human parts are legal to own/buy/sell in all but Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana." And believe it or not, this is completely held up by an article by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository.

While anyone can purchase anything for sale from Christina's shop, she definitely noted that there's a "type" of customer when talking to BDN, mentioning that generally anyone who is into the gothic aesthetic is usually the type of person that is into collecting the items she sells.

Camilo Jimenez
Camilo Jimenez
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To see pictures of some of the items that Christina sells as well as inquiring about any you may want to buy, check out the Distinctively Different Oddities & Curiosities page on Facebook. Maybe a brand new hobby awaits?

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