Little Shop of Horrors

The smiling skull sign beckons the strong of stomach down a rickety flight of stairs. The corridor is lined with open body bags. “You are aware that what you are about to see is very graphic,” a cheerful attendant says. “Are you sure you want to come in?”

The Museum of Death, housed in the basement of a former San Diego funeral home, is reputedly haunted by a suicidal Victorian mortician’s assistant. “Every two months, someone passes out,” says Cathee Shultz, 37, who opened the museum with her husband, J.D. Healy. “We keep smelling salts handy, and always have sodas, juice or bottled water to revive them. I want to design a T-shirt: ‘I fainted in the Museum of Death.’ ”

An oddly bouncy and ebullient pair, neither Cathee nor J.D. cops to seeing anything unwholesome about their morbid curiosity shop, which evolved from an annual exhibit of serial killer art at their Gaslamp Quarter gallery. “It was our most popular show,” says Cathee. As the story goes, they began corresponding with serial killers to discover what makes a monster. “J.D. and I have read a lot of books about serial killers. We write to whoever piques our curiosity: Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy. We show their artwork and their letters, and give a profile of each one, including their MO.”

“I’ve always been fascinated with death,” admits J.D., 38. “Obviously, our public is, too.”

“Some people accuse us of romanticizing murders,” Cathee observes. “We have to walk a fine line between glorifying them and educating people about them. If we can convince one person not to get into a car, or go to a motel room with a stranger, then we’ve done a good job.”

The couple cull their display of crime and accident scene photos, antique mortician tools and taxidermy specimens from medical personnel, antique dealers and coroners’ assistants. A friend recently sent them a tomb rubbing from the grave of Al Capone. “We check up on our sources to make certain everything in the museum is real,” says J.D. “The only replicas on display are the electric chair and the guillotine I built, but it works. It could cut someone’s head off.” Um, OK.

“We do this because we love life!” they tend to say. Oh, sure. “Some people believe that by facing death, they can cheat death somehow, like extreme-sports fanatics,” says J.D. “I don’t even ride roller coasters.”

The museum’s success (“We’re San Diego’s No. 3 tourist attraction, right behind Sea World and the San Diego Zoo!” Cathee jokes) has spurred talk of opening a second location, in Los Angeles, next year. “We’re looking at spaces on Hollywood Boulevard, or Wilshire,” says J.D. “Being located on Museum Row would give us a lot of legitimacy.

“You can’t waste your life worrying about death because it’s inevitable. The point is to enjoy every moment of your life because, basically, there aren’t that many.”

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The Museum of Death, 548 5th Ave., San Diego; (619) 338-8153.