Terrifying & True | The Funhouse Mummy: Elmer McCurdy's Horrifying Tale This Halloween

This Halloween, jump into the eerie tale of Elmer McCurdy—a true crime deep dive into urban legends and America’s carnival underbelly. In 1976, a seemingly innocuous Halloween haunt took a terrifying turn when a “mannequin” on a Long Beach dark ride wasn’t a prop—it was a real human corpse. In 1976, a TV crew at The Pike’s Laff in the Dark discovered human bone after a stunt arm snapped. Forensics exposed arsenic embalming, a copper bullet jacket, and a 1924 penny with old carnival tickets—breadcrumbs that led to Elmer McCurdy, a bungling Oklahoma train robber killed in 1911. For more than six decades, his body was bought, sold, and exhibited in sideshows and roadside museums, then misfiled as a prop and hung on a ride—until investigators finally confirmed the truth and laid him to rest under concrete in Guthrie (1977).

This is a true-crime deep dive into America’s carnival underbelly, the commodification of death, and how an outlaw became the Funhouse Mummy.

Inside this episode:

• The 1976 discovery at The Pike: the moment the “dummy” bled clues—arsenic, bullet jacket, 1924 penny, tickets.
• McCurdy’s final heist (1911): the botched robbery, the posse’s shot, and an undertaker who wouldn’t release the body.
• The carnival con: how promoters “claimed” the corpse and rebranded it coast-to-coast for decades.
• Forensic ID & burial (1977): the paper trail that ended with concrete sealing a grave in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
• Ethics & aftermath: why outlaw mummies vanished—and what the case says about spectacle vs. dignity.

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