For years, Ren Walker traveled the country collecting stories.

He was a photographer, an author, and someone who loved a good antique.

But then in 2020 due to COVID,

he was forced to kind of settle down, to stick to one place.

It was something that he hadn't done in years.

So Brent stayed put by opening up his own antique shop,

but instead of vintage cookware or designer chairs,

the shop specialized in oddities, the kinds of things you wouldn't even

know where to begin looking for.

Currently I have an executioner store from Africa from the late 1800s in the shop. I've got a

memorial book that was signed by PT Barnum. So I've got these these wonderful

unique things.

Bren's shop is in a two-story house just outside of New Orleans in a small town called

AraBe.

It's an old house from the 1930s made of beige clapboard and covered in funky signs and artwork.

And so the downstairs is dedicated to all of the all of the wonderful things that I find.

And most of those things are just unexpected,

like things people have never seen before, a lot of them.

But upstairs, Brett had another type of collection.

One that he had been building steadily since 2016.

And these items, they were a lot more personal to the people who are giving them away.

I took one of my boxes that my books came in and I cut a slit in it and I wrote on it, share a secret. Basically people just started leaving

...