Around the glass case at the front of the shop, a man who goes by Sam, who manages The Little Leviathan, jokes that the store gets its items for sale through immaculate conception. The store is filled with oddities and antiques, including Victorian top hats, a “mermaid” statue that is a blend of a miniature human skeleton with a fish tail and lamps featuring the painted visages of famous serial killers, providing a wide range of unique items for anyone with a love of the unusual to purchase.
The owner, who is addressed as Mr. Rod Sterling, though Sterling is not his last name, opened The Little Leviathan in 2012 at the Raleigh Flea Market while attending school full time for architecture and working two jobs. The store takes its name from the creature in Job 41 in the Bible, according to its website.
Sterling has been collecting odd and unusual things for about 20 to 30 years, a hobby that started during his teenage years.
“At a very young age I had an interest in reading all manner of obscure things, whatever I could get my hands on,” Sterling said. “Not much of a fiction fan, but my grandfather was a tinkerer and he taught me how things worked and how to take things apart and analyze them and try to understand how most everything works, functions and interacts with other things that are around me.”
According to Sterling, The Little Leviathan is a validation for those that are curious about things that exist somewhat outside the mainstream. He said he thinks the shop is a reminder for what else is out there in the world. It’s a safe haven of sorts for the weird and unusual.
“There are a lot of people I would say, better than half of the society, living in the simple mindset and rut of existing in what’s around them and that becomes their microcosm,” Sterling said. “There’s so much more to the world than people interact with on a daily social basis.”
Sterling said that they get all kinds of weird objects in the shop, but he thinks weird is relative to the individual. He mentioned the people that he and Sam call “runners,” people who come in just looking for a fright.
“Runners are people that come in and they’re normally the people that expect to be scared and expect to be frightened and they’ll come in the door, and sometimes they make it across the lobby before they run out,” Sterling said.
Sam agreed and said he has seen people run and slam into the front door because it did not open fast enough. Though the shop is filled with all kinds of antiques, oddities and macabre items, Sterling does have a limit for what he will sell.
“I find anything having to do with sick children and dead children to be in terrible taste for myself. I do not carry them in the store. That’s simply a matter of personal preference,” Sterling said.
Items in the store can range from human skulls to taxi-dermic vampire bunnies to old medical textbooks and tools. Though some of the objects in the store may surprise a few people, such as taxi-dermic ducklings with name tags or letters from John Wayne Gacy, Sterling and Sam insist they are respectful of laws and religion.
“There are a lot of people that would say we are doing things that are wrong or immoral or…I can’t really contend against weird, but we did and do religiously contact the wildlife folks; we follow letter of the law as best we can, and if we have a question before we do something, we contact the appropriate authority and ask them,” Sterling said. “We are aware of the religious climate that we exist in and try to be respectful of that as best we can.”
Though, according to Sam, people may see all of the medical tools and skulls and begin to worry that The Little Leviathan is more like Frankenstein’s laboratory. The things they carry resemble what is in the back room of a science museum. Sterling confirmed that the shop carries more copies of the Bible than any other individual book, but science and religion have constantly clashed throughout history.
Sterling attests that the items in the shop end up there because the objects find their way to The Little Leviathan and use it as a temporary resting place until they get to where they are supposed to be. Sam said they are more or less the caretakers of the things in the shop. According to Sterling, he has a handful of pickers across the nation that know what he likes, sending him a text, a picture or both to ask what he thinks about an item and how much money he wants to put on it, as well as if the item is fake or real.
“I’ve got an invaluable resource in Sam here. He used to run a very large antiques business in Charlotte. And I get the benefit of his resources and his knowledge, which is extremely large,” Sterling said.
The store is not for everyone, as the runners have shown, but Sterling regards The Little Leviathan as sort of a mental playground for those that like to expand their minds. The prices can range from $3 for a little bug marble to $25,000 for the larger and more unique items in the shop, such as some of Thomas Kuebler’s statues while he was in North Carolina. The good news is that they allow layaway and haggling.
“If you come in and you’re somebody that’s got a real penchant for whatever we have, not to be trite, but it is a lot like the movie Needful Things. If there’s something that I have that you want, if you can trade me something out or provide me something of interest to me, we’ll make it happen,” Sterling said.
The number of people coming to look around the shop, located at 212 Powell Drive suite 126, varies from weekend to weekend, though Sterling insists that the number of people coming in is not what matters.
“We can have a weekend that is completely dead based on what’s going on, and the next weekend the door doesn’t ever shut. But we aren’t a Wal-Mart industry where money is made or business is done in volume. You need that one collector to walk through the door and recognize a good piece as a good piece and take it home as part of their collection. That’s what we look for. It’s nothing to do with volume,” Sam said.
The hours are listed as noon to 6 p.m., but Sam insists there is “always an –ish attached to that,” as they are flexible. Both he and Sterling attest that it is less about the volume of people coming in during their open hours and more about the right customer coming in.
“We’ve had weekends open Friday, Sunday, Saturday noon to six, and had somebody come in 10 minutes to six on Sunday and drop $8,000 and that was the only sale all weekend,” Sterling said.
According to Sterling, the location of the shop was intentional. He said they want to eventually end up with something that is larger and has more foot traffic.
“We enjoy making money, but a lot of the fun part for me is seeing somebody come in and light up and go ‘oh my God, I haven’t seen that since my great grandmother’s house,’ and ‘where did you get that?’” Sterling said.
Much to the annoyance of Sterling and Sam, The Little Leviathan has been thought of often as just a Halloween shop, which it is not. The store is open year round.
“The neat thing about this shop is you can’t come in and blow through it once and see everything that’s in here. You have to come in here and look over and over and over again –it’s like treasure hunting. But for the right-minded person, it pays off,” Sterling said.
Sterling and Sam are hopeful for The Little Leviathan, and want more technically and scientifically minded people to drop in and have a look around. They encourage those with curious minds to come by and see what the shop has to offer, and hopefully find a piece they love and appreciate.
The Little Leviathan is home to a wide assortment of items such as taxidermic animals, fascinating art pieces, vintage medical equipment, and some artifacts that you would have to see to believe. The Little Leviathan is open year-round, Friday through Sunday from Noon-6 PM. Photo by Ben Salama.
