The Cult of Weird Twitter account has nearly 11k followers and has been sharing creepy and gruesome stories since 2011, but where you can find an even larger treasure trove of oddities is the Cult of Weird website. This site focuses on all things bizarre, spooky and strange, sharing stories that fall into various categories such as Aliens and UFOs, Weird Art, Cabinet of Curiosities, True Crime, Cryptozoology, From the Grave, Occult, Paranormal, Freak Show, Travel and Weird Book Club.

Visitors to the site can even purchase items to help give their homes the spooky and strange vibe they’re looking for. The site notes that it’s updated frequently with fascinating items of vintage weirdness like medical oddities, skulls, taxidermy, preserved insects, wet specimens, vintage funeral ephemera, Ouija boards and other occult objects. The first item that’s currently on sale at the shop is a “Victorian Child’s Viewing Coffin”. If I didn’t know what it was, I would think it’s just a beautiful piece of woodwork!

To learn more about how Cult of Weird began in the first place, we reached out to the site's creator, Charlie Hintz. We wanted to know where Charlie's fascination for these bizarre topics came from and what inspired him to turn that into Cult of Weird. "I live in Wisconsin, where there is one legend or another around every corner," he shared. "Ghosts, monsters, UFOs. I was raised on these stories. As a child, I lived on a lake in the Kettle Moraine State Forest area near a grouping of Native American burial mounds. My neighbors were divers, and one day they found a skeleton in the lake. Another neighbor would apparently hear phantom drum sounds in the night."

"In the 80s, hikers and horseback riders encountered naked people and the remains of animal sacrifices in the Kettle Moraine," Charlie told Bored Panda. "Apparently, there was a known cult conducting rituals in the woods. In 1988, the first season of Unsolved Mysteries featured the story of a haunted house I drove past frequently (and still do) because I have family in the area. My aunt knows that family."

Charlie went on to share even more examples of the strange occurrences that have happened in Wisconsin. "There’s Goatman and the Beast of Bray Road. Three Wisconsin towns claim to be the 'UFO Capital of the World', and each one has had their share of unexplained occurrences," he noted. "In one town, a retired police officer allegedly died of a mysterious illness just months after being struck by a blast of light from a UFO. In another, a local tavern owner kept a binder full of photos of UFOs photographed from the top of a nearby hill he believed concealed a pyramid."

"Wisconsin resident August Derleth, who published the first collections of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, believed there were 'Cthulhu power zones' of ancient cosmic energy in Wisconsin," Charlie explained. "It’s been written that occultists conducted rituals on the shores of certain Wisconsin lakes in an attempt to awaken the eldritch 'Deep Ones' from their depths."

"So many roads of the strange and unusual lead to Wisconsin," Charlie told Bored Panda. "I eventually became interested in why that was. I launched Cult of Weird in 2010 because it seemed like a good excuse to research the history, legends and folklore that spawned them."

We then asked Charlie what he likes to feature on Cult of Weird and how he decides what to share. "I try to cover the whole range of Fortean subject matter - anything mysterious or difficult to explain, especially if it has cultural or historical connotations," he shared. "I love history, particularly when you can find modern connections to disturbing things that really happened in the past, and I’m a sucker for a good story."