The UCM is about 45 minutes north of New Orleans, on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. ![]() Address: Abita Mystery House / UCM Museum, 22275 LA-36, Abita Springs, LA 70420, USA. If you’d like to keep up with updates, check out the Abita Mystery House Facebook page. It inspires lots of grinning and "oh, wow" as you walk around, and we all talked about it for hours after we left. Abita Mystery House (previously UCM Museum) is open from 10 a.m. ![]() There is a joyful quality to the place that's contagious. Oh, the UCM Museum also has, in our opinion, the BEST GIFT SHOP EVER. You can easily walk through the place several times, and notice something new each time. There's Buford the Bassigator-a huge fiberglass fish with a massive alligator head! Throughout all the displays there are thousands of bottle caps arranged as decoration, vintage postcards, random bits of text, a vast collection of paint-by-numbers paintings.I could go on, but you've got to see it. There's an old Airstream trailer with a "flying saucer" crashed into it, and a family of aliens living inside. The ceilings are covered with old circuit and transistor boards, and all sorts of mechanical mobiles hang from them. jazz funerals, "Martian Mardi Gras", juke joints and trailer park tornadoes. There are wonderful dioramas depicting N.O. I don't know how to begin to describe the place for anyone who remembers all the wonderfully goofy roadside attractions you used to see before the interstate highways took over, you get an idea. The UCM Museum is a collection of an old gas station and some small cottages, all connected with covered walkways and paths. ![]() John Preble is an artist and a generous and personable man, happy to spend time talking with visitors. If you're a fan of folk art, "outsider art", old roadside attractions ("see the amazing Bassigator!!!", "witness a marvel of science!", etc) then you HAVE to visit the UCM (pronounced "you see 'em") Museum! My family stopped in one afternoon after taking a swamp tour and ended up spending nearly 2 hours there, walking around and talking with the proprietor John Preble.
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