Some years ago my father had a temporary obsession with death. He read every book he could find on mummification, other embalming procedures, religious/philosophical and scientific theories on the end of human life, and pretty much any other non-fiction work about dead people. Then one Day he found an article in the Dallas Morning News about the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.
At this point, my mother, brother, and I knew our fate. Sure enough, two months later, Dad drug us two hundred miles to Houston for a "family vacation". He made us some lame excuse about wanting to go to Astroworld, but we knew the truth. The trip was entirely motivated by his desire to visit the death museum.
We showed up at the office building complex which held the museum on a Sunday afternoon and found it mostly abandoned. We entered the reception area when where a strangely pale man with a strangely expressionless face motioned us to sign the guest registry book (which looked exactly like one you would see at a funeral, appropriately). I noticed as I was signing the book that I was approximately the tenth person to do so in seven days. Dad couldn't figure out why more people wouldn't want to see this place.
Then, the pale man led us down a long corridor as he asked us creepy questions like "How did you find out about us?" (think about how Dracula would say that and you'll get the picture). Dad chatted with the guy obliviously, but I later found out that my mother and my brother were just as freaked out about this as I was.
At the end of the hall we arrived at one enormous room where all of the exhibits were found. There was every type of hearse on display you could imagine from a Rolls Royce hearse to a small, wooden, very decorative, Brazilian horse-drawn hearse for children.
We also saw a wide selection of coffins. The most interesting of which was this enormous coffin for three people. The coffin was ordered by a couple who was so heartbroken by the death of their child that they planned to commit suicide and be buried with their son in this big coffin. However, by the time the coffin was completed they had changed their mind, so now it sits in a museum.
There were also, among other things, various displays of embalming equipment from different periods in American history and videos (fortunately not too graphic) explaining how they work and the history of the mortuary arts.
We saw one other guest during our visit. He asked my father, almost rhetorically, "So, are you in the trade" and was surprised when my father said that he wasn't an undertaker. He was just a death junkie.
Do I recommend the National Museum of Funeral History? Well, it certainly is interesting. Whether that's good or bad is up to you I guess. Definitely not for a first date.