In 2017, Ryan Matthew Cohn and Regina M. Rossi hosted a one-day show highlighting all things rare and macabre at the Brooklyn Bazaar in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. It brought together 70 artists, dealers, and colleagues and was dubbed the Oddities Flea Market. It was an immediate hit. The next year the show expanded to a two-day, ticketed event, and over subsequent years it expanded to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle — all of which include carefully curated vendors and performers.
Photo: David Zeck/SDZ Photography
Dark Treasures: Exploring Some of the World's Most Macabre Antiques in New Book 'The Witches Door'
Their own collection of spooky afterlife antiques, it goes without saying, is impressive. Their empire in the world of ghastly and historic objects recently added a new chapter: Cohn and Rossi’s first book, The Witch’s Door: Oddities and Tales from the Esoteric to the Extreme (Chronicle Prism). The memoir is filled with photos of eye-catching objects, with pages that explore the couple’s lives, collection, true stories of specific artifacts (ornate kapala skull bowls found in a dead missionary’s underwear and wax penises, to name a few), and the subculture in general.
Cohn and Rossi have had a long fascination with the afterlife. Cohn cites interest in the skeletal system since he was a kid, while Rossi says it started with a blinged-out skull Christmas wish. Rossi went on to a career in high-end fashion and curated Brooklyn’s House of Wax with Cohn in 2016. Cohn’s art and curation have been featured in museums, magazines, and movies, and he was a star on the Discover Channel show “Oddities” and currently appears on the Atlas Obscura web series “Antiques and Their Afterlives.” The couple is a match made in heaven (or any other afterlife of your choosing): they were engaged in the Paris Catacombs and the ring was tucked in a skull.
The Witch’s Door: Oddities and Tales from the Esoteric to the Extreme is available for preorder with a publish date of October 1. Below, an excerpt of the prologue for a taste of the book and background on how it got its title.
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Photo: David Zeck/SDZ Photography
WARNING
You are about to enter a realm of the strange and unusual. The death-positive compendium of oddities and curiosities you hold in your hands represents our lifelong fascination with the macabre and the bizarre. While some will find these artifacts to be an affront to good manners and common decency, we see great beauty in the journey our bodies take long after life deserts us. Some of the artifacts you will encounter in these pages stretch the limits of credulity; others are simply shocking. We present them to you with the assurance of our respect for the dead and our gratitude for all they have taught us.
Also, this book may, or may not, be haunted.
Enter at your own risk . . .
PROLOGUE: Old Jef
The first time we laid eyes on the Witch’s Door, we knew it was something special. We’d just acquired the collection of a friend whom we’ll call Nick Parmesan. He was given the moniker because his parents ran a neighborhood deli in Brooklyn that made the best chicken parmesan known to humankind.
Nick was an odd guy. He was a former New York Police Department sergeant who took early leave from the force after 9/11. Some people travel when they retire. Others go to the beach. Nick caught the collecting bug. He did a lot of his collecting online, but he was also a fixture at many of the flea markets and antique shops where we did business. All collectors are secretive, but Nick took it to the extreme and had many enemies. Despite some ups and downs in our long relationship, we considered Nick a friend.
He was also a hoarder.
We’d only been to Nick’s apartment in Brooklyn a handful of times. Although he was proud of his collection, he didn’t like people poking around his stuff. Nick had an incredible eye, but his collection was a mess. It was so vast and disorganized that he didn’t have a way to display it. We didn’t realize how serious his hoarding problem had become until after he passed away.
There’s no other way to put this: Nick’s apartment was a horror show. Boxes and bags were piled up all over the place. The stacks rose from the floor and went all the way up to the ceiling. The place was dark and dangerous and in disrepair. Walking from one room to the next was an adventure because each step required moving piles of Nick’s stuff out of the way.
These obstacles aside, Nick’s collection was jaw-dropping. We couldn’t believe the quality of the stuff he had in there. Suits of armor. A squad of skeletons. Exquisite eighteenth-century Italian figures. Amid the towers of garbage and junk, we found unusual sculptures, boxes of teeth, and antiquities rare enough to be displayed in a museum.
When we acquired Nick’s collection, we agreed to clear out his apartment so that it would be ready for its new occupants to rent. As is usually the case in situations where someone passes away unexpectedly, we didn’t have much time to prepare for the cleanup, and everything had to go. We rented some trucks and enlisted the aid of a full-scale crew, but toward the end of our first day we had to face the truth: We’d underestimated the amount of stuff that Nick had crammed inside his apartment. We’d barely made a dent in it, and we were completely overwhelmed.
As we were getting ready to leave for the day, something caught our attention. We couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like a piece of antique furniture. At first we thought it was a headboard, but it was far too big for that.
After shifting some boxes around, we noticed what looked like a rough wooden door with hand-forged wrought-iron hardware leaning against the wall. It was massive—that’s what caught our attention—but there was too much stuff in front of it to get a good look. Now that our curiosity was piqued, we needed to know exactly what we were looking at.
We kept moving things around until we could see the piece properly. It was definitely a door, and it wasn’t in very good condition. The wood was scratched and scarred. It was obviously very old. Although it was far from beautiful, there was something about the door that called to us.
It was getting late and becoming dark inside the apartment. Our bodies ached from moving Nick’s belongings around all day. We were positive we’d never seen this object in his apartment or heard him talk about it before, which meant one of two things: Either he’d acquired it recently or he’d kept it hidden from us.
Why would he do that?
We didn’t always understand Nick’s impulses, but we trusted his taste. We knew it had to be something.
Once we brought the antique out into the light, we noticed some- thing very unusual. In the upper part of the door someone had carved a figure into the wood. This wasn’t a decorative detail. The carving was ugly and crude, but because it had faded with time it was also easy to miss in the gloom of Nick’s apartment. The door had been defaced with the carving of an image of a sinister-looking woman.
Above the figure, the words old jef had been inscribed, which was an Old English term for the devil.
This carving had been made as a warning to others.
Old Jef lives here.
A she-devil.
A witch.
We looked at each other in amazement. What the hell had Nick found?
Excerpted with permission from The Witch’s Door: Oddities and Tales from the Esoteric to the Extreme (Chronicle Prism) by Ryan Matthew Cohn and Regina M. Rossi. The book releases on October 1, and is available for preorder. 