In the near-middle of that trapezium-like state of Connecticut is the city of Middletown and near that near-middle city is a world unto its own. I’m talking about Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Store, which is home to many many things – as in piles of piles of things and boxes of things stacked on stacks of stuff, leaning against walls made from containers full of objects. I mean this place has it all – one of everything.

And some things which are the only one of their kind, in this case the World’s Largest Jack-in-the-Box, a 600-pound behemoth of a head mounted on a log housed inside a giant brick silo. When this thing emerges it floats more than 30 feet off the ground, yet manages less to terrorize and more to strike awe and inspiration into all who see it! Perhaps because the only reason you would be at Wild Bill’s is because you know how freaky and strange this world already is, and a giant floating head is simply a punctuation mark on something already understood.


Originally a traveling sideshow item, the head was retrofitted to live in the silo:

the mounting mechanism:

the 600-pound counterweight! including antlers and hopefully-dead bullet rounds!

more photos of Wild Bill’s at my Flickr