Velvet & Venom Brings Oddities, Taxidermy and the Macabre to Anastasia Boulevard

Before opening shop on a recent weekday, Leneah Hearn makes the rounds, switching on an array of lights, adjusting items on display, and in general, giving the place a once-over to make sure everything pleases her eye.

That also includes checking in on Boris the Tarantula who Leneah spies burrowed under a piece of bark at the corner of its glass cage. The 11-year-old spider (they can live up to nearly 30 years) was a welcome gift from Ripley's Believe It or Not! in town which also loaned them a shrunken head from their collection.

"It's Halloween all the time here," says Leneah, co-proprietor of Velvet & Venom which she launched with husband Rick on Aug. 1.

The 1,600-square-foot space at 110 Anastasia Blvd. is a sprawling assemblage of all things macabre, eerie and downright bizarre.

Take the steampunk plague doctor that serves as an unofficial greeter at the entrance to the store. Beyond there, the walls and shelves are full of creepy baby dolls, Jason masks, menacing clowns, voodoo dolls, omens of black magic and other oddities displayed amongst antique furniture, clocks and light fixtures.

Then there are even more gawk-worthy objects like lamps made entirely of animal bones, exhibits of bison scrotum, and the phallus of a raccoon (yes, you read that right).

Some of the stuff they've acquired online, others at estate sales.

"We love treasure hunting," adds Rick.

More recently, they've had folks come to them offering up items for consignment or sale.

Marilyn Sacasa is one of Velvet & Venom's regular vendors. She specializes in post-mortem photography, capturing images of the dead (as was en vogue centuries ago) and incorporating them -- "respectfully," she points out -- into her designs.

Having a place to display Leneah's own artwork was also part of the couple's inspiration in establishing the business. Beyond mounted heads of various wildlife decorating the shop's interior, Leneah's own taxidermy projects turn the concept of art on its head, elevating it to something beyond death.

One she is in the middle of features a white rat that Leneah will adorn with a trick-or-treating bag in time for Halloween.

Another, a stuffed red fox, sets on a carved wooden throne, his arm on the armrest -- "You can pose him in different positions," adds Leneah with a grin.

Leneah, who is self-taught in taxidermy, is quick to point out that the animals used in her projects are ethically sourced, meaning that they have died naturally before she sets about preserving them.

Marilyn, who also creates artistic taxidermical pieces, sees it as a way to memorialize an animal that once walked the earth.

"It's about respecting things that have passed and finding beauty and art in them," says Marilyn.

A trip to Velvet & Venom wouldn't be complete without a look at the "wet specimen" collection the Hearns purchased from a hobbyist in Alabama (we'll let you guess what's in the jars).

Leneah is also working on a wall that highlights local ghost stories such as the reported visages of three young girls who died in a 1873 drowning near the St. Augustine Lighthouse, lending a sense of place to the shop, fitting they believe for the Ancient City.

"We've heard it's the third haunted city in America -- so we hear, it always changes (on national lists)," Rick says.

The couple is excited to engage with the community, perhaps even challenging visitors to reimagine how they see things.

"I want people to be inspired, to think outside the box -- not everything has to be a square," says Leneah.

To Marilyn's mind, people are naturally drawn to the weird, the morbid, the curious.

"It's always there, it's never not been there," she says. "Where there is life, there's death. We just come at it from a different perspective, making it beautiful."