By popular demand, Deadtime Stories gets a sequel

Deadtime Stories wasn’t made with a sequel in mind.

“Owning a small business is not for the weak, especially these days,” owner Jenn Carpenter said. “So, there was no point at which I ever thought, ‘You know what? I should double my workload.’”

However, she recently chose to do just that, opening Deadtime Stories: The Sequel on June 7.

Her decision to open a second store took an offer she couldn’t refuse from a location she was willing to put in the work for: Charlotte’s Courthouse Square Museum.

“It’s probably not something I would have said yes to anywhere else,” she said. “It was just the opportunity to be in this building.”

Built in the late 1800s, the courthouse has its own chapter in Carpenter’s book “Haunted Lansing.” It served as Eaton County’s courthouse for nearly a century before being restored and repurposed into a museum.

“There was a different courthouse on the property before this one was built,” Carpenter said, “and the first woman ever convicted of murder in Michigan was convicted there. There have been so many historic cases and trials, and the building has just got such a history that it’s easy to look at and say it’s haunted.”

The courthouse museum was a destination in the Demented Mitten paranormal tours that Carpenter formerly led. Then it became a chapter in her book. Then it became the home of the Festival of Oddities, an annual celebration of the strange that she runs.

“It’s been such a great relationship, so I’m excited to evolve it this way,” she said.

While the merchandise is similar to the REO Town location, from books about crime and spooky history to gothic gifts, there are a few differences.

“The vibes are a bit different,” Carpenter said. “The old store has a bloody mannequin leg in an old bathtub and portraits from horror movies. In the new location, we did kind of a pastel goth theme, so it’s very sophisticated and pretty looking, but that’s juxtaposed with all this strange, weird, fun stuff.”

Carpenter is excited to have a physical storefront for the festival.

“For the most part, people who come to the festival have been in before and know who we are, but there are always some people who have never heard of us,” she said. “It’ll be nice to be able to say, ‘There’s a location right behind you.’”

The shop is open Thursday through Sunday. Carpenter said those are summer hours, a consequence of limited manpower, and she plans to change them as she gets “a feel for the community.”

“At the Lansing location, Saturdays and Sundays are our busiest days, but I’ve been warned that Sundays are pretty dead in Charlotte,” she said. “That proved to be true our first weekend.”

She said the shop opened on a Saturday with “a line down the block” but served only seven customers the next day.

“It’s all brand new,” she said.

Deadtime Stories may have gotten a sequel, but fans shouldn’t expect it to turn into a trilogy any time soon. The courthouse museum was a special case, and Carpenter has enough on her plate already. That said, there’s always a chance.

“There are no plans for a third location,” she said, “but we’ll see. I wasn’t expecting a second one, so who knows?”