The Lancaster County (PA) Wax Museum was opened in the late ‘60s by the owner of the Dutch Wonderland theme park. That theme park is still operating, but the adjacent wax museum closed in 2006. The museum was ambitious—it featured, among other things, a life sized diorama of the burning of the Wrightsville Bridge, an 1863 saving throw against a Confederate Army incursion, but its centerpiece was a tableau of an animated Amish barn-raising.

Most of the museum’s figures were sold off soon after the closing, but the figures from that barn-raising are up for sale now. Per the Philadelphia Inquirer the seller is one Dana DiCicco, whose uncle held on to the figures because the barn-raising was supposed to be reinstalled at Dutch Wonderland, which never came to pass:

“When I went to see them in storage, they definitely looked creepy,” she said. “It looked like a scene from the Gettysburg battlefield.”

DiCicco is putting them up for sale on behalf of her uncle, a longtime manager of the Amish Farm and House, a tourist attraction in Lancaster. The adult figures are going for $350 apiece, the children and dog for $250, and DiCicco said they’d like to sell them as a set.

“He would definitely love to see them used for historical reasons,” DiCicco said.

As is the case with most tourist-trap wax museums, the figures are massively goddamn creepy, and indeed, this sale echoes a sale from two years ago, when a set of forty predictably disturbing wax figures of Amish children were offered to the world. Dangerous Minds’ estimable Martin Schneider told you all about that Village of the Damned nightmare fuel. This sale offers a more diverse crowd—as diverse as an Amish population can get, anyway.

Varying sizes, ages and details on these figures. The wardrobe can be exchanged to suit your historical or theatrical needs. There are 5 female figures, 3 children figures, about 32 male figures and 1 dog. Five of the men are mechanical. The dog is mechanical as well. Varying conditions. The parts are removable and some are disassembled but can be assembled for viewing. $1500 for anamatronic figure, $350-For full-sized adults, $300-Children/Dog. Hoping to sell as a set. Only Reasonable offers and Serious Buyers Please.

 

 

 
More where these came from, after the jump…

 
Someone in the charmingly named town of Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, is overburdened with wax figures of Amish children and is using an ad on Philadelphia Craiglist to unload them. Here’s the ad:
 

I have 28 wax figures. I’m asking $300 EACH. There are 4 mechanical. I’m selling 1 figure with a desk for $300. There out of the weavertown one room school house in bird in hand pa. They were made by dwarfmans in 1969. They were appraised at $450 to $800 each. Would love to sell as a set . If your interested in all please contact me. Please NO low balling. I had several offers that I turned down! I have no problem with offers if you buy the 28 as a set (no low balling) and no scams. I take cash on pick up . I can also take credit card but prefer cash.

 
As Gizmodo’s Katharine Trendacosta figured out, the Weavertown One Room School House is “an authentic one-room school” dating from 1877 in which “life-sized animation brings this interactive classroom to life.” Until May 1969 it was a school for Amish and Mennonite children, but then it became a museum.

One might wonder, what’s up with the museum if all the wax figurines are for sale on Craigslist? A note on the Ultimate Cinema Guide website (??) states that “we are still working on getting the wax figures moving again very soon,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if that note were on the old side. So perhaps they abandoned plans to fix them?

The reasons why and wherefore are secondary. What matters here is that if you can scrape together 8,400 simoleons, you can populate your very own fake Amish classroom—and we won’t even pry all too much as to why you would want to do that…..
 

 

 
Many, many more wax Amish kids, after the jump…...

 
These two were arrested in Millersburg, Ohio in connection with a series of break-ins.

But these weren’t just any break-ins. Nope, these events involved some Amish beard scalping! . As reported in my hometown newspaper The Wheeling News Register and Intelligncer:

[Sheriff’s Timothy] Zimmerly has said men entered a home Oct. 3 and used scissors and battery-powered clippers to cut the beards of the 74-year-old bishop of a mainstream Amish community and his son.

Zimmerly said the men told them, “We’re here for Sam Mullet to get revenge,” and held them down. He said the men then went to a nearby county, where a similar attack happened.

The Amish, known for their simple, modest lifestyle, are a deeply religious group, and their beards carry spiritual significance. Amish men typically grow beards as adults and stop trimming them when they marry. The beards, and women’s long hair, are held in high esteem.

Sam Mullet has said beard-cuttings are in response to criticism from other Amish religious leaders about his leadership practices. He denies ordering beard-cuttings but says he wouldn’t stop them.

Hair-cutting attacks against several people have occurred in recent weeks in the area.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Amish Mugshots

(via J-Walk Blog)

 
Here’s something you don’t see everyday, mugshots of eight Amish guys.

Apparently these rebels without a car were arrested for refusing “to pay fines for failing to affix orange safety triangles to their horse-drawn buggies.”

Read the full story over at the The Smoking Gun.

(via reddit)