Frozen Dead Guy Days

A Colorado town that learned it was home to a frozen Norwegian grandfather, created a festival to celebrate him.

Bredo Morstoel is not your average dead body. For many years, he was frozen in liquid nitrogen in California. However, in 1993 his wife and son moved to the town of Nederland in Colorado, ostensibly to open a cryonic facility.

Unbeknownst to the town, they brought Morstoel's body with them.

This was discovered when the wife went into the town to fight an eviction. While his wife and a grandson have since been deported on visa violations, they still pay a caretaker to haul 2,400 pounds of dry ice every month to preserve Morstoel's frozen body.

You can read more of the details in a recent FOX News article titled "Colorado town's Frozen Dead Guy Days festival salutes chilly corpse."

If this story was not already strange enough, the town has an annual festival to celebrate its unique body called Frozen Dead Guy Days. The festival includes a coffin race, costume ball and a feast.

It is not known what the town might do, if Morstoel's family no longer provides funds to preserve his body.

While this particular story is strange, cryogenics is becoming an increasingly popular method of postmortem disposition of human remains.

Despite lack of any scientific basis for it many people believe that, if they have their bodies frozen, someday doctors will be able to unfreeze them and cure whatever disease killed them.

If you are someone who is interested in that, you might want to check with an estate lawyer and make plans so your body does not end up in a small town as part of a festival.

For more information about estate planning in Orlando, FL (and throughout the rest of Central Florida), visit our estate planning website and be sure to subscribe to our complimentary estate planning e-newsletter while you are there.

Reference: FOX News (March 10, 2017) "Colorado town's Frozen Dead Guy Days festival salutes chilly corpse."