Does the concept of cryogenics intrigue you, even just a little bit? The idea of having your body frozen in 2016 and then defrosted in 100 or even 1,000 years…well, it might make your head spin, but in a good way. Unfortunately, though, that’s probably not the dream that 89-year-old Norwegian citizen Bredo Morstoel had in mind when he died. However, he still might get to experience it due to a very bizarre set of circumstances…
This is a photo of Morstoel. He passed away in 1989.
Shortly after his death, Morstoel’s grandson, Trygve Bauge (pictured below), had a weird idea.
He would freeze his grandfather’s body with the hopes of one day bringing him back to life. To accomplish this, Bauge had his grandfather’s body flown to San Francisco, where it was placed in a temporary storage cryogenics facility. Bauge’s plan was to keep his grandfather’s body there while he constructed his own cryogenics facility in Nederland, Colorado.
However, it turns out Bauge wasn’t exactly in the country legally.
In the mid 1990s, Bauge was sent back to Norway for failure to obtain a visa. His mother, who was living with him in Nederland at the time, was forced to move out of town as well. However, by this time Bauge had moved his grandfather’s body into the very basic cryogenics facility he had built so far, which was essentially just a shed full of dry ice. Bauge was forced to leave the body behind when he left.
Luckily, town officials allowed the body to remain in the shed. This gave Bauge time to make arrangements for taking care of the body.
Bauge now pays a man in town to refill the dry ice in his grandfather’s shed once every two weeks. Pictured below is the inside of the freezer that Morstoel’s body is stored in.
It takes 900 to 1,200 pounds of dry ice to fill the casket.
Since then, Morstoel’s body has become the central focus of the town’s annual spring festival called “Frozen Dead Guy Days.”
As you can see in the video below, it’s a pretty popular festival.
(via Atlas Obscura)
Now that’s what I call an awesomely creepy small-town tradition. It’s the weird little things like this that I believe make the United States a wonderful place to live.