Every March, a small town in Colorado called Nederland hosts a one-of-a-kind celebration in honor of their most peculiar resident, a man that’s been kept cryogenically frozen for decades. It all started in 1993 when a man named Trygve Bauge brought the frozen corpse of his deceased grandfather to town. The grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, had died in the late 1980s and had been preserved by dry ice and liquid nitrogen ever since.
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While the body was initially kept in San Leandro, California’s Trans Time cryonics facility, Bauge and his mother, Aud, made the decision to build their own cryonics facility in Nederland, Colorado. Unfortunately, Bauge’s visa expired, meaning he had to return to his home country of Norway. As a result, Aud was forced to keep the body in a small shack behind her unfinished home instead.
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Eventually, Aud was evicted for living in an unfinished house with no access to electricity or plumbing, two things that violated local ordinances. It was then that she revealed that her father’s body was on the property out of fear that her leaving would result in him thawing.
The shed that houses the frozen dead guy. Photo Credit: 4Neus.
As privately storing the frozen body of an individual wasn’t against the current municipal code, Nederland quickly made a rule that banned keeping “the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property.” Interestingly enough, the huge amount of publicity brought to the town by the frozen body of Bredo Morstøl also resulted in a grandfather clause which allowed his body to stay around. Today, there’s a company called Delta Tech that helps keep him frozen by regularly delivering dry ice to the facility that houses him.
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While one might assume that residents of Nederland might feel a little uncomfortable knowing there’s a frozen dead guy in their midst, it’s quite the opposite. Every year during an early weekend in March, they host a festival called the Frozen Dead Guy Days, during which there are coffin races, lookalike contests, and a slow-motion parade. They even give tours of the Tuff Shed where Bredo is still frozen.
The running of a coffin race, one of the popular events at the Frozen Day Guy Days festival.
If you’re looking to attend one of the strangest events in the country, the Frozen Dead Guy Days are pretty hard to beat.
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