At an oddities and curiosities event in Austin, Andrea Hernandez, owner of Triple Six Coffee Social, bought her first oddity, a baby pig with a real heart on it. Now for over a decade, Hernandez has collected about 20 oddities.

“I collect a lot of mummified remains of animals, and it took me a while because, coming from a Hispanic background you grow up kind of being like, no stay away from it,” Hernandez said. “And then, about 15 years ago, I told myself, ‘I love this, stop holding back.’ So, I just got extra creepy… I just embraced it.”

Oddities consist of things like strange antiques, bones, taxidermy or preserved animal remains and creative work. Hernandez’s favorite type of oddity to collect is mummified remains of animals.

Hernandez started collecting oddities because she believes there is beauty in death. She was always fascinated with the history of old post-mortem photos and the way autopsies used to be conducted leading to her interest in collecting oddities.

“This might sound morbid, but I think there’s a beauty to death,” Reyes said. “I went to school to be a nurse, and I started off as a patient tech… so after a patient died… I would go in there and wash them. That was like, what they still do in hospitals [is] what they used to do[for] post-mortem photos, but it’s just the whole beauty to death and respecting the body and realizing that that was a life at one point.”

Sydney Reyes, founder of Para-chicks Paranormal, began collecting oddities three years ago after her friend, who is a paranormal investigator, acquired some haunted dolls while working on a case.

“He gave me a call, and he was like, ‘Hey, do you want a doll?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ He was like, ‘It’s a haunted doll’ and I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ So, we met up… and I originally was only going to get Sarah… and right next to her was Esme, so I told him I [needed] both,” Reyes said.