Morbid and macabre: Dark obsessions of the world’s most extreme collectors | CNN

Courtesy Andrew Brusso

"While perhaps we aren't the most lighthearted bunch, I'd characterize collectors of the macabre as inveterately curious and inquisitive, iconoclasts and, as a lot, deep thinkers who never receive an answer they don't counter with 'why?'" says Jack Kump, the owner of this shrunken head.

Courtesy Dan Howell

Bones, bones everywhere. Tattoo artist Paul Booth considers himself a "decorator of the macabre." His interest in collecting was sparked by his travels. He would often find strange and unusual items when visiting antique stores and mortuaries in small European cities.

Courtesy CHARLES D. HOWELL, Steve Erenberg & Dan Howell

Steve Erenberg, whose dad is also a collector of morbid curiosities, is particularly interested in early electrical devices, like this bizarre helmet. In the early 20th century, a spa-goer would wear this to receive low-voltage shocks to their entire face.

Courtesy Dan Howell & Steve Prue

"I am an obsessive collector and dealer ... with a concentration on rare, medical, scientific, and anthropologically related antiquities," Cohn says.

These 19th-century fetal skeletons, and the calcified fetus seen on the right, are just a small part of his collection.

Courtesy Felix Meheux & Paul Gambino

Jean-Bernard Gillot owns Librairie Alain Brieux, a shop in Paris where he sells books and medical curiosities. He has a special interest in early medical photography, like this photo of a 1905 chin reconstruction.

Courtesy Dan Howell

Nicole Angemi is a pathologist's assistant with almost a million Instagram followers. She started her collection with old specimens that were being disposed at a hospital's morgue.

Courtesy Steve Prue

The body of this two-headed calf was shipped directly to the taxidermist before it ended up in the home of Connecticut collector Calvin Von Crush.

Courtesy Dan Howell & Steve Prue

Ryan Matthew Cohn started collecting animal bones from the woods near his home as a child. He received his first human skull as a birthday present when he was 15.

Courtesy Dan Howell

These necklaces -- one of bob cat paws, the other of lamb legs -- belong to Danielle Deveroux, an artist and the owner of the Creeper Gallery in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Courtesy Dan HOWELL

Nathan Roberts owns a number of items belonging to criminals, like this "Pogo" painting produced by an imprisoned John Wayne Gacy.

CNN —

Whether it’s comics and sneakers, or books and art, collecting is largely seen as a normal, if occasionally obsessive, pastime. But what can be said about those who collect all things macabre – fetus skeletons, taxidermy mutant farm animals and say, the personal effects of jailed serial killers?

“Morbid Curiosities: Collections of the Uncommon and Bizarre” gives a closer look at these more unconventional collections and the people behind them.

Rather than writing them off as eccentric provocateurs or disturbed misfits, writer Paul Gambino gives insights into their motivations and personalities.

Courtesy Dan Howell & Steve Prue

There’s the tattoo artist inspired by his travels to old European cities, the pathologist’s assistant with almost a million Instagram followers, and the skeptical lapsed Catholic on a quest for a Rattenkönig, and many more.

What unites them in Gambino’s eyes is a passion for history.

“They’re urban archeologists, historians, and, ultimately, scholarly curators of their ever-growing and evolving personal collections,” Gambino writes in the book’s introduction. “Be lucky enough to garner an invitation to view one of these collections and ask a question of origin on any particular piece – then get ready to be educated and entertained.”

Look through the gallery above for a closer look inside some of these bizarre personal collections.

“Morbid Curiosities: Collections of the Uncommon and Bizarre” by Paul Gambino, published by Laurence King, is out now.