Who says you can’t make news when you’re dead? Bredo Morstoel, the body at the center of the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, has been in the headlines this past week.
Bredo, who’s been preserved in a Tuff Shed that houses his crypt of dry ice, has been there since 1993. It was the grand scheme of his grandson Trygve Bauge to put the 89-year-old in a deep freeze after he died of a heart condition in 1989. He’s been paying Bo “The Iceman” Shaffer to deliver and install the dry ice for nearly 20 years. Bauge, who is preserving his grandfather’s body in the hopes of reanimation through future science, was deported to his native Norway in 1994.
Now, because of a contract dispute with Shaffer, Bauge is threatening to move Grandpa to the Cryonics Institute, a membership-based non-profit located in Clinton Township, Michigan. The institute currently holds more than 100 patients in a state of “cryonic suspension,” stopping tissue decay by cooling their bodies to the temperature of liquid nitrogen in hopes that future technology will allow for revival and restoration.
Shaffer’s been asking for a raise for over two years, and Bauge’s been refusing. Bauge tells a slightly different story, citing communications problems and saying Shaffer has not been adding enough dry ice to the freezer holding his grandfather’s sarcophagus.
Morstoel was aware of his grandson’s interest in cryonics, Bauge says, but did not know that he himself would be frozen — “though he once expressed a gut feeling” that he wouldn’t be getting a regular burial, Bauge wrote in an email to reporters.
Freeze The Day for Frozen Dead Guy Days!
The 12th annual Frozen Dead Guy Days, scheduled for March 8-10 in Nederland, includes live music, coffin racing, ice turkey bowling, a parade of hearses and more. Organizers say the festival can live on without him, but unless Bauge and Schaeffer resolve their differences, Frozen Dead Guy Days may lose its star attraction.
Nonetheless, it may not happen until 2015. I participated in 2011 and 2012, bringing The Newly-Dead Game™ there as part of the festivities. More info about The Newly-Dead Game!
Here are some of the top stories:
Boulder Daily Camera (the original story on September 25): Grandson looking to move Nederland’s Frozen Dead Guy to Michigan
CBS News (national): Frozen Dead Guy May Move To Michigan
Michigan Live: Famous ‘frozen dead guy’ may be headed to Michigan, but festival will stay in Colorado
Huffington Post: Colorado “Frozen Dead Guy” Festival To Go On With Or Without Corpse
NY Daily News: Colorado ‘Frozen Dead Guy’ festival to go on with or without corpse
Here’s video from one of the installments of The Newly-Dead Game at Frozen Dead Guy Days 2012:
