Ripley travelled to 198 countries. Everywhere he went, he scored over his fellow journalists because of his special genius for spotting unusual objects, picking up subjects with reader appeal, and on account of his unique form of delivery through the Believe It or Not!

Ripley’s Banquet: The weirdos at the table with Ripley.

Apart from the subject material, Robert Ripley’s imagination was fired by the curious objects he came across during his travels. The orient particularly fascinated him and he started collecting unusual items and bringing home crates of curious objects from foreign lands— furniture from China and South seas, works of art from Japan, and other exotic items from places like Congo, Nigeria, Lagos and New Guinea. His search was endless and his choice, indiscriminate. Style, period and historical significance had little interest for him. Something neglected, seemingly unimportant, something discarded as "junk" found a place in his boxes. He was seized by a "collector mania" and was bringing home treasures which he never imagined would make him immortal.

Initially, it all started with small personal exhibitions meant for friends curious to see the stuff brought from exotic lands. Hundreds of items lay in his storehouse, items lugged around the world on camels and donkeys, carted in primitive automobiles. Ripley himself had no idea what he had in his warehouse. In 1933, Ripley exhibited his items at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition. He called it "Odditorium". Ripley’s housekeeper recorded the excitement thus: "we opened box after box of weirdest and most beautiful things I had ever seen, and it made me happy to think that now thousands of people would have an opportunity to see this fabulous collection. Mr Ripley himself was working overtime assembling the hundreds of oddities, and as each object was taken from its wrapper, he could not resist recounting some strange or humorous story connected with it." For the Chicago exhibition, it is recorded that as many as 2,470,739 people queued up to see the incredible panorama of shrunken human heads, treasures from Tibet and Fiji, cannibal curios and medieval torture instruments. Public enthusiasm was endless.

Most of the Ripley collection is housed in nine BION (Believe It or Not!) museums. These are in Oregon, Nevada, Florida, California, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Niagara Falls (Canada). After Robert Ripley’s death in 1949, his heirs made serious efforts to bring together all his curios, catalogue them and establish them in museums. Hundreds of interesting, valuable, uncanny objects were thus brought together and shifted to the nine museums. The first permanent home for these objects was at St. Augustine, Florida. Though all museums display the best of Ripley, it is the St. Augustine, museum that tops the list because it was the first one to have been opened.

The St. Augustine Believe It or Not! Museum is housed in an elegant building. At the entrance stand two enormous bronze ‘Guardian of Heaven’ figures with bulging bellies and threatening expressions. The figures represent two Chinese generals, Li Che and King Kang, who lived in the 7th century in the court of Emperor Tai Tsong. You move across these two fearsome art objects only to encounter numerous unbelievables: an impressive coin model of the White House built with 6057 uncirculated 1963 Roosevelt dimes. It weighs 225 pounds. Another memorial is the model of President Lincoln’s log cabin formed out of 9,600 uncirculated Lincoln pennies.

The small model was awarded a citation for the most outstanding exhibit at the California Numismatic convention, 1961. Matchstick art is represented by a 10-foot-long Peterbilt Truck replica, made using 134,412 matchsticks.

The ‘Guardian of Heaven’ figure from China guards the museum.

As we move on, we see in a small glass window some Red-Indian objects. Suddenly, amid an assortment of items you notice a human head as big as a tennis-ball. It is genuine. Something churns in your stomach as you read the citation nearby: it was a real human head of the normal size but was shrunken to its present proportion by a Javaro Indian warrior by boiling it. Such heads used to be mounted on long stones as trophies to announce triumph over an enemy or a rival.

The gallery of "Funny Money" tells you the history of people who bartered human beings for elephant tail. Dog’s teeth was money for New Guinea natives, while whale teeth were prized in Fiji. On the Island of Yap, huge stones, some as big as 12 ft. in diameter, denoted wealth. Metal currencies took the shape of bullets, swords and spades.

‘The Orient’ section exhibits exquisite art objects. Ripley gathered a fabulous collection of antiques and artefacts. In 1925 after his visit to the East — Japan, China, Malaya and the Philippines — Ripley was so fascinated by the Orient that he signed his name as Rip Li. Once he remarked, "If I could be reincarnated, I’d return as a Chinese." Besides the two Guardian of Heaven figures, his oriental collection included a model of a Samurai warrior in full armour, Samurai swords, a Japanese palanquin with an impressive crest of the Tokngawa family and Chinese opium smoking pipes made of anything from jade to human bones. Another exotic object is a tiny model of the "Temple of 72 Gables." It is a beautifully carved and decorated replica of the Peking Palace. Tibet fascinated Ripley. For him it was a land of mystery, awe and beauty. Of the many Tibetan objects exhibited in the Ripley’s BION museums, particularly bizarre are the drums made of human skulls and covered with snake skin.

Compelling, however, is the section displaying the weirdos. There is a wax portrait of a man called Liu Chung who was born with double pupils in each eye. Believe it, this is not fiction but a fact that this man did live. He was a scholar and statesman who was prominently involved in the Chinese politics around 995 AD. He was appointed Governor of Shansi and minister of state.Then there is the man born with a hole in his scalp who would hold a candle in it. The recorded description reads thus: "The Lighthouse Man of Chungking Szechuan Province, China, was a simple fellow who went about the streets at night with a lighted candle, seven or eight inches in length stuck in the vertex of his skull. For years, he delighted and amazed tourists by guiding them down dark and dismal alleys with the light from his built-in headlamp."

Charles Charlesworth of Staffordshire England, born in 1829, grew whiskers at the age of four; by five his face was wizened and his skin shrivelled; at six his voice grew shaky and his posture became like that of a very old man, and by seven he died because of old age.

Life-size wax models of unusually tall and fat men and of a woman born with a beard and a mustache are placed around a table. As you see these freaks, a shiver runs down your spine.

"Primitive" objects collected by Ripley during his travels through Africa have inestimable value today. Human skin masks from Cameroons, voodoo instruments, the ju-ju made of leather, pins, nuts, shells and amulets used by witch doctors to attract spirits (from British West Africa) and some other objects used for magic, religious rites and other special worships tell the history of the tribes. You see a wooden figure of a woman with two children. You wonder if it is a decoration piece, but you soon discover that it is an "African lie detector." The woman is Nasilele, the wife of God Nyabe, who uncovers liars when she blinks. With all the human possibility for love and hate, the "Hate God" represents man’s morbid desire to bring suffering or death to the enemy. The Hate God is a fearsome figure pierced with nails all over his body.

A tour of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum is a trip down human history; it is an exposition of the primitive urges of man; and it is delving into the psyche of homo sapiens. You come out, overwhelmed by the morbid, the uncanny and the weird. When Ripley was collecting his objects, making cartoon strips, he was often challenged to prove his discoveries. He received letters addressed to him as the "World’s Biggest Liar" and he enjoyed the epithet. In the St. Augustine Museum, the exhibit No 1 is Ripley himself in wax, wondering at the incredible work he did.