The forces of good and evil stir within Ryan Graveface. We’re in the basement of Graveface Records & Curiosities, his storefront on Milwaukee Avenue in Bucktown, where the bespectacled 43-year-old is discussing his life’s work: the study of lurid histories. His dusty brown hair pulled back into a small ponytail, Graveface is wearing a T-shirt bearing a John Wayne Gacy painting of Pogo and Patches — the two clown alter egos, resembling the dueling comedy and tragedy masks, that the serial killer used when performing at kids’ parties. It’s a fitting look for someone who has devoted himself to combing through materials that most people would deem unconscionable to obsess over.

Upstairs, visitors drawn into the modest shop move through the two front rooms, chock-full of old horror movie soundtracks and Blu-rays, taxidermy squirrels with middle fingers outstretched, and other esoteric objects for sale. But for the adventurous, $10 grants access behind the (literal) velvet rope, into a museum space in back. Beyond a curtain that gives the impression you’re entering through a devil’s grin, a throwback to old-school traveling carnivals, is a hallway crammed full of framed photographs, telling tales of hundred-plus-year-old sideshow acts and former cult leaders. Venture farther, and you find a stuffed two-headed calf as well as perhaps the most surreal part of this archive: a recreation of Gacy’s prison cell, overrun with his paintings, correspondence, and court documents.

Graveface acquired the materials from Gacy’s sister Karen Kuzma, who told him she had burned much of what was left behind but was entrusting him with the remainder because she wanted everything kept together and presented with seriousness and care. It’s a strange thing, knowing that this material, a chilling part of Chicago’s legacy, lives on an otherwise nondescript stretch of Milwaukee Avenue just north of the 606.

Opened in 2022, the Bucktown shop is another location of the store and museum that Graveface started in Savannah, Georgia, where he moved after a 2010 basement flood destroyed much of the inventory of the semi-successful record label he founded here a decade earlier. While he now splits his time between the two cities, it’s the twisted history of ours that drives much of his work. “Chicago is perfect in so many ways for me, yet it’s rotten to the core,” Graveface says. “That dichotomy is super fascinating.”

From an early age, Graveface (who changed his last name after this moniker came to him in a dream over a decade ago) was drawn to the darkness. Growing up in Ohio and Michigan, he discovered that his family history was overrun with tragedy. When he was 8, he learned that his great-aunt was institutionalized after seeing her father killed in front of her. (An upcoming exhibition at Graveface will examine insane asylums and their architecture.) It got him thinking about how throughout history those seen as monsters often came from ordinary backgrounds.

“Something about the normalcy intrigues me, because obviously, most horrible humans have had families, and some even came from two-parent households and, like, ‘normal Midwestern society,’ whatever that is,” Graveface says. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a psychologist, and seeing how off the rails these individuals can end up, and what their reasons are for it, is just utterly fascinating.”

Graveface considered studying psychology in college, but he soon fell into other overlapping careers. He started the label — Graveface Records, which he still operates — while living in Chicago in 2002. He has put out more than 100 albums from several dozen artists, including well-known indie acts like Xiu Xiu and Jason Molina (as well as, fittingly, an annual Halloween album he records under the name the Marshmallow Ghosts). Graveface also issues old low-budget horror movies and their soundtracks under the label Terror Vision, named for a campy 1986 cult classic film.

While his retail operations keep the lights on, it’s the museum that keeps me coming back. And it’s not out of morbid curiosity. In the careful display of these disturbing objects, supplemented by tours given by store employees, I feel the allure of the uncomfortable truths they reveal. On one wall are artifacts from various cults, including the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas, and Aum Shinrikyo, which was responsible for a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. The latter drew my attention because I had read novelist Haruki Murakami’s Underground, an oral history of that incident, in which he seeks to understand how a group of idealistic, spiritual people could carry out such a deadly deed. “Most people who join cults are not abnormal; they’re not disadvantaged; they’re not eccentrics,” he writes. “They are the people who live average lives (and maybe from the outside, more than average lives), who live in my neighborhood. And in yours.”

It’s a haunting thought: How could such normality produce such cruelty? Yet rather than forcing us to examine our own vulnerabilities, the rise of true-crime podcasts, docuseries, and Netflix dramas has lent these brutal histories a faint aura of glamour. It’s a trend that troubles Graveface. Currently at work on his own Gacy docuseries, he says his project foregrounds the lives of the people Gacy hurt: those killed and the families left to make sense of the loss. By emphasizing their stories and refusing to treat Gacy as an exceptional figure, by situating him instead in a wider social network that enabled his ghastly behavior, Graveface is attempting to put a fresh spin on this history.

Graveface surmises that his collection of nearly 70,000 sideshow-related pieces is the largest in the world. (He hopes to eventually open a dedicated sideshow museum in Gibsonton, Florida, where many of the performers wintered.) The photos near the entrance were taken at the 1933 World’s Fair and depict performers who drew in curious viewers eager to gawk at their “freakish” deformities, traits we’d understand today through the lens of physical disability.

“When you get digging into so many of these performers’ individual lives and experiences, they have incredibly impactful stories that really should be shared and preserved, and they often happen to not be negative,” Graveface says. “Collectively thinking of sideshow performers as one unit takes away their individuality, and our goal in this exhibit is to bring their stories to the forefront.”

Likewise, there’s more nuance to the tales of serial killers than just lurid details. Graveface acknowledges that his efforts ride the wave of the broader culture’s fascination with such matters, attracting those now accustomed to seeing these stories on TV. But these histories, bathed in shadows and secrecy, are a reminder that a darkness lingers inside us all.

It reminds me of the Sufjan Stevens song about Gacy from his album Illinois. After singing about Gacy’s childhood and how “the neighbors, they adored him,” Stevens ends by warning: “And in my best behavior, I am really just like him / look beneath the floorboards, for the secrets I have hid.” Refusing to run from the unruly humanity — the normality — at the center of these stories is Graveface’s attempt to offer a new perspective, one that isn’t afraid to stare straight into the darkness.