Oct. 6, 2025

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

Terrifying & True | The Funhouse Mummy: Elmer McCurdy's Horrifying Tale This Halloween
Apple Podcasts podcast player badge
Spotify podcast player badge
Spreaker podcast player badge
Audible podcast player badge
Castro podcast player badge
RSS Feed podcast player badge
Apple Podcasts podcast player icon Spotify podcast player icon Spreaker podcast player icon Audible podcast player icon Castro podcast player icon RSS Feed podcast player icon

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.

If you’re searching funhouse mummy, Elmer McCurdy, Long Beach funhouse corpse, The Pike Laff in the Dark, outlaw mummy Oklahoma, arsenic embalming, sideshow history, or a true crime podcast about real “haunted” carnivals, this episode is your map. Follow and share for spooky-season specials all October.

We’re telling that story tonight.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com
WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.080 --> 00:00:06.360
A carnival dummy wasn't a dummy at all. In nineteen

2
00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:10.839
seventy six, a stunt arm snapped and a real bone

3
00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:16.600
hit the floor. Arsenic in the tissues, a copper bullet jacket,

4
00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:20.399
and a nineteen twenty four penny all pointed to a

5
00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:26.679
dead outlaw, Elmer McCurdy, who toured America for sixty six years.

6
00:00:28.640 --> 00:00:32.320
What you were about to beat you is burd to

7
00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:40.240
be you based on witness accounts, testamties, and public record.

8
00:00:41.640 --> 00:00:47.799
This is terrifying and treat.

9
00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:01.960
Tonight, Long Beach, California, nineteen seventy six, neon wash dark Ride,

10
00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:09.200
a routine shoot until a dead body prop reveals human bone.

11
00:01:09.959 --> 00:01:15.480
Investigators trace arsenic in balmy, a bullet's metal jacket, and

12
00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:22.480
carnival tickets across six decades of exhibitions. Who was this man?

13
00:01:23.280 --> 00:01:28.879
How did an outlaw's body become a sideshow attraction? Our

14
00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:33.280
search leads from a botched Oklahoma train robbery in nineteen

15
00:01:33.319 --> 00:01:38.200
eleven to a concrete sealed grape in nineteen seventy seven.

16
00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:41.879
Join us as we untangle the forensics and the cons

17
00:01:42.599 --> 00:01:58.840
of the funhouse mummy. It sounds like an urban legend,

18
00:01:59.519 --> 00:02:04.319
A cree be Carnival Mannikin turns out to be a

19
00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:11.680
real human corpse. In nineteen seventy six, this myth proved

20
00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:17.280
horrifyingly true. A prop hanging in a Long Beach amusement

21
00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:23.120
park funhouse was discovered to be an actual mummified body,

22
00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:29.240
one that had toured the country for decades. The truth

23
00:02:29.319 --> 00:02:34.800
behind this fun house skeleton is more bizarre and disturbing

24
00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:38.960
than just about any ghost story, made all the more

25
00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:45.759
chilling by the fact that every word is true. In

26
00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:49.520
December of nineteen seventy six, a camera crew for the

27
00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:54.280
television program The Six Million Dollar Man set up at

28
00:02:54.319 --> 00:02:59.560
the Pike, a Seaside amusement park in Long Beach, California.

29
00:02:59.879 --> 00:03:04.439
They were filming inside an old dark ride called Laugh

30
00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:09.280
in the Dark, one of the Pike's vintage haunted house attractions,

31
00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:15.759
filled with glow painted skeletons and spooky props. For decades,

32
00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:19.800
the Pike had been a Coney Island style funfare by

33
00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:24.719
the sea, known for rickety roller coasters, side shows, and

34
00:03:25.319 --> 00:03:30.879
arcades lit by a thousand lights, though by the nineteen

35
00:03:31.039 --> 00:03:37.080
seventies its glory days had faded into seediness. As the

36
00:03:37.159 --> 00:03:42.319
crew arranged their shots amid the cobwebbed scenery, one member

37
00:03:42.479 --> 00:03:48.560
noticed a garish, emaciated dummy dangling from a gallows in

38
00:03:48.599 --> 00:03:53.400
a corner, a figure long assumed to be just another

39
00:03:53.759 --> 00:03:59.120
cheesy prop. While adjusting the set, an art director grabbed

40
00:03:59.159 --> 00:04:04.159
the Mannikin's arm to move it, and the arm snapped

41
00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:10.199
off in his hand. To his horror, the detached limb

42
00:04:10.639 --> 00:04:15.199
wasn't made of plaster or paper mache, but of real

43
00:04:15.319 --> 00:04:21.959
bone and desiccated human tissue. In that chilling moment, the

44
00:04:22.079 --> 00:04:26.560
crew realized this was no Mannikin at all. It was

45
00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:33.279
a mummified human corpse hanging from the noose. The funhouse

46
00:04:33.319 --> 00:04:40.279
prank had become a real life nightmare. Production, of course,

47
00:04:40.600 --> 00:04:44.959
ground to a halt as police and firefighters rushed to

48
00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:50.240
the scene. Paramedics arriving on the set initially thought it

49
00:04:50.319 --> 00:04:57.439
was some morbid prank about severe dehydration, but they quickly

50
00:04:57.480 --> 00:05:02.279
saw the joke was on them. The Los Angeles County

51
00:05:02.360 --> 00:05:07.639
Coroner's Office took custody of the body to determine its identity.

52
00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:13.759
Under the glare of real forensics, the flaking corpse began

53
00:05:14.079 --> 00:05:20.079
giving up its secrets. Medical examiners noted the body was

54
00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:26.439
petrified and shrunken. Once a man of perhaps average build,

55
00:05:26.879 --> 00:05:31.680
now a fifty pound five foot three inch mummy, nearly

56
00:05:31.839 --> 00:05:38.399
skeletal in places. The remains had endured significant wear. The

57
00:05:38.439 --> 00:05:43.600
ears and some fingers and toes were missing, likely broken

58
00:05:43.680 --> 00:05:48.480
off over time, and a gruesome hole had been drilled

59
00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:53.120
through the neck, presumably to hang it on the rope

60
00:05:53.160 --> 00:05:59.560
that still oozed an ugly yellow puss like goo. Inside

61
00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:04.120
the cadet chest, coroners found the apparent cause of death,

62
00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:10.959
a copper jacketed bullet lodged in the tissue, the kind

63
00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.879
of ammunition used in the early nineteen hundreds. Clearly this

64
00:06:16.079 --> 00:06:22.000
person had been dead for a very very long time.

65
00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:27.920
The most telling clues, however, were discovered stuffed in the

66
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:33.199
corpse's mouth. Wedged in the jaw were some old ticket

67
00:06:33.279 --> 00:06:39.879
stubs and a corroded nineteen twenty four penny. One ticket

68
00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:46.120
bore the name Lewis Sonny's Museum of Crime, and another

69
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:51.319
was a ticket for the Pike Amusement Park. These bizarre

70
00:06:51.439 --> 00:06:55.480
artifacts confirmed that the body had been exhibited as a

71
00:06:55.519 --> 00:07:02.040
side show attraction in the past. Investigations were baffled. Who

72
00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:06.480
was this mystery mummy and how had he ended up

73
00:07:06.759 --> 00:07:11.839
painted neon red and strung up in a carnival funhouse.

74
00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:16.879
With these clues on hand, police put out a press

75
00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:23.040
release seeking the public's help in identifying the body. The

76
00:07:23.120 --> 00:07:28.480
news flashed across the country. A real human body had

77
00:07:28.519 --> 00:07:34.399
been found masquerading as a haunted house prop. As macabre

78
00:07:34.439 --> 00:07:39.160
as it sounded, it was all too real. Soon a

79
00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:43.560
group of history buffs over a thousand miles away would

80
00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:48.639
crack the case and finally give this soul a name.

81
00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:55.519
When the truth emerged, the funhouse corpse was identified as

82
00:07:55.680 --> 00:08:02.360
Elmer J. McCurdy, and Oklahoma outlaw, who died in nineteen eleven,

83
00:08:03.160 --> 00:08:09.399
sixty five years earlier. His life was as troubled as

84
00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:15.639
his after life was bizarre. Born on January first, eighteen

85
00:08:15.759 --> 00:08:21.759
eighty in Maine, McCurdy had an unstable upbringing and drifted

86
00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:26.120
west in early adulthood. He worked odd jobs as a

87
00:08:26.199 --> 00:08:32.120
miner and plumber, but chronic alcoholism and misfortune dogged him.

88
00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.559
In nineteen ten, Elmer fell in with a loose gang

89
00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:41.080
of train and bank robbers on the frontiers of Oklahoma

90
00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:48.120
and Kansas. He fancied himself a demolitions expert, having learned

91
00:08:48.159 --> 00:08:52.000
to use nitroglycerin during a brief stint in the army,

92
00:08:52.799 --> 00:08:58.519
but in practice he was utterly inept. McCurdy's short career

93
00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:02.960
as an outlaw turned into a comedy of errors. In

94
00:09:03.039 --> 00:09:08.559
one attempted safe cracking, he used too much nitroglycerin and

95
00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:14.600
obliterated the safe as well as the money inside, fusing

96
00:09:14.759 --> 00:09:20.200
silver coins to the safe's metal floor. In another incident,

97
00:09:20.679 --> 00:09:24.960
he used too little explosive, failing to blow the safe

98
00:09:25.080 --> 00:09:36.679
open at all. His most famous blunder, however, came in

99
00:09:36.759 --> 00:09:42.679
October of nineteen eleven, when McCurdy and some accomplices tried

100
00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:48.240
to rob a train supposedly carrying four hundred thousand dollars

101
00:09:48.279 --> 00:09:54.399
in cash. They stopped the wrong train and instead escaped

102
00:09:54.440 --> 00:09:59.080
with only forty six dollars, two jugs of whiskey, and

103
00:09:59.159 --> 00:10:05.639
a few person items, including the train conductor's comb. It

104
00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:11.919
was a pitiful haul that would soon become McCurdy's final crime.

105
00:10:13.279 --> 00:10:17.279
Elmer McCurdy went on a whiskey bender after that botched heist,

106
00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:21.159
Hiding out in a hay barn in Oklahoma with his

107
00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:27.440
meager lute. At dawn on October seventh, nineteen eleven, he

108
00:10:27.559 --> 00:10:32.120
awoke to the barking of bloodhounds and the realization that

109
00:10:32.159 --> 00:10:37.399
a sheriff's posse had tracked him down. You'll never take

110
00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:43.080
me alive, McCurdy supposedly yelled, a vow that earned him

111
00:10:43.559 --> 00:10:48.480
the posthumous moniker of the Bandit who Wouldn't give Up.

112
00:10:48.960 --> 00:10:53.799
A gunfight erupted and lasted an hour. McCurdy managed to

113
00:10:53.879 --> 00:10:58.159
wound a deputy, but in the end he was killed

114
00:10:58.440 --> 00:11:03.200
by a posseman's bullet in the Osage Hills of Oklahoma.

115
00:11:04.440 --> 00:11:08.360
With no known family or friends to claim his remains,

116
00:11:09.159 --> 00:11:13.120
the Bandit's body was turned over to a local undertaker.

117
00:11:14.039 --> 00:11:19.279
At this point, McCurdy was just another anonymous outlaw who

118
00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:24.159
met a violent end, but his story was about to

119
00:11:24.279 --> 00:11:31.000
take an even more bizarre turn. After his death, no

120
00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:35.759
next of kin came forward for Elmer McCurdy, so his

121
00:11:35.919 --> 00:11:42.519
corpse ended up at Johnson's funeral home in paw Huska, Oklahoma. There,

122
00:11:42.879 --> 00:11:48.480
an industrious undertaker named Joseph Johnson decided to make the

123
00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:55.399
most of McCurdy's notorious corpse using an arsenic based preservation fluid,

124
00:11:55.919 --> 00:12:00.720
a potent embalming method common in that era. Ilmmafied the

125
00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:07.840
body to prevent decay. Mccurty's embalmed features were reportedly so

126
00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:12.960
well preserved that he almost looked alive aside from the

127
00:12:13.399 --> 00:12:21.000
leathery tanned skin. Sensing morbid curiosity from locals, the undertaker

128
00:12:21.080 --> 00:12:24.799
propped the cadaver up in a back room and put

129
00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:30.919
it on display for visitors five cents a look, the

130
00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.919
equivalent to one dollar and seventy cents in twoenty twenty five.

131
00:12:37.320 --> 00:12:41.120
Curious spectators would drop a nickel into the dead man's

132
00:12:41.200 --> 00:12:46.039
mouth in exchange for a gander at the embalmed bandit.

133
00:12:46.519 --> 00:12:52.440
As he was advertised. For five years, mccurty's body stood

134
00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:57.120
in the funeral parlor, wearing street clothes and holding a rifle,

135
00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:03.519
drawing gaping crowds and steadily pocketing coins for the undertaker.

136
00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:09.159
As gruesome as it sounds, displaying corpses of outlaws was

137
00:13:09.639 --> 00:13:14.120
not unheard of at the time, but Elmer's extended post

138
00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:21.200
mortem career was just getting started. In nineteen sixteen, two

139
00:13:21.320 --> 00:13:25.679
men arrived from California, claiming to be Elmer McCurdy's long

140
00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:30.720
lost brothers, wanting to give poor Elmer a proper burial.

141
00:13:31.399 --> 00:13:37.080
In truth, however, they were con men, James and Charles Patterson,

142
00:13:37.639 --> 00:13:42.720
owners of a traveling carnival called the Great Patterson Shows.

143
00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:49.840
The undertaker, likely tired of babysitting a corpse, released McCurdy's

144
00:13:49.879 --> 00:13:56.320
body to these supposed relatives. Within weeks, visitors to a

145
00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:00.440
carnival in West Texas were paying admission to see the

146
00:14:01.039 --> 00:14:08.600
mummified Oklahoma outlaw on display. McCurdy had been effectively kidnapped

147
00:14:08.639 --> 00:14:13.519
by carnees and turned into a money making sideshow attraction.

148
00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:20.279
For several years, Elmer McCurdy's embalmed remains toward the carnival

149
00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:25.000
and County fair circuit. The Bandit who Wouldn't Give Up

150
00:14:25.759 --> 00:14:32.440
was exhibited alongside sword swallowers, so called freaks and curiosities,

151
00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:39.360
a genuine mummy for profit. By the early nineteen twenties,

152
00:14:39.879 --> 00:14:46.200
McCurdy's corpse had changed hands again. A failing carnival pawned

153
00:14:46.279 --> 00:14:50.440
the well traveled cadaver in order to cover a debt,

154
00:14:50.919 --> 00:14:55.000
leaving it as collateral for a loan of five hundred

155
00:14:55.080 --> 00:15:01.639
dollars that went unpaid. The new owner was Lewis Sonny,

156
00:15:02.200 --> 00:15:07.080
a California showman who ran a traveling museum of crime

157
00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:14.559
featuring wax effigies of famous Outlaws. Elmer McCurdy, an actual

158
00:15:14.720 --> 00:15:20.720
preserved outlaw, became Sonny's star exhibit in Lewis Sonny's Traveling

159
00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:26.080
Museum of Crime. Around nineteen twenty two, Sonny dressed the

160
00:15:26.159 --> 00:15:29.960
body in cowboy garb and gave it top billing as

161
00:15:30.039 --> 00:15:35.279
a real Wild West bandit, dubbing it the Outlaw who

162
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:40.559
would Never be captured alive, and then the Embalmed Bandit,

163
00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:46.720
among other colorful names. Patrons paid to gaze at McCurdy's

164
00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:51.799
remains in an ornate coffin while Sonny spun thrilling tales

165
00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:56.879
of gunslinging and mayhem for the crowds. Demand was strong.

166
00:15:57.399 --> 00:16:01.440
People in the nineteen twenties flocked to see morbid curiosities,

167
00:16:01.879 --> 00:16:06.440
and McCurdy's corpse Chris crossed the country, raking in profits

168
00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:12.919
at carnivals, state fairs, and amusement shows. For years, mccurty's

169
00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:17.080
corpse logged more miles dead than he ever had alive.

170
00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:21.519
In nineteen twenty four, it even rode along with the

171
00:16:21.559 --> 00:16:25.840
Great Trans American Foot Race side show, a grueling cross

172
00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:30.159
country race event, and over that decade it popped up

173
00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:35.559
at venues from Los Angeles all the way to Mount Rushmore. Notably,

174
00:16:35.720 --> 00:16:39.759
during a tour through the Midwest, the Outlaw's body returned

175
00:16:39.799 --> 00:16:44.480
to Oklahoma the very state of his demise, as part

176
00:16:44.519 --> 00:16:48.639
of a traveling show. According to one account, the very

177
00:16:48.759 --> 00:16:53.360
lawman who had killed McCurdy in nineteen eleven, Sheriff Bob Fenton,

178
00:16:53.919 --> 00:16:58.360
showed up to quietly view the corpse. He simply stared

179
00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:02.080
at the embalmed body for a moment and walked away

180
00:17:02.919 --> 00:17:14.359
in silence. As the corpse's fame grew, its true identity

181
00:17:14.839 --> 00:17:20.680
sometimes blurred into legend. Carnival promoters were not shy about

182
00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:26.920
fabricating wild stories around the mummy in order to entice audiences.

183
00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:32.680
One sideshow talker claimed the mummy was an ancient bandit

184
00:17:33.079 --> 00:17:37.200
who had drank a magical poison that preserved his body.

185
00:17:38.279 --> 00:17:42.200
Another one promoted it as the remains of a dope

186
00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:48.359
fiend killed by narcotics, whatever sensational tale might fit the

187
00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:53.400
venue's theme. Despite all the hype, those who had known

188
00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:59.160
of McCurdy's history occasionally stumbled upon the exhibit and recognized

189
00:17:59.160 --> 00:18:04.359
it for what it was, correcting the record when they could.

190
00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:10.359
In one amusing incident, the original Undertaker's own son, Luke Johnson,

191
00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:14.240
attended a carnival side show in the late nineteen twenties

192
00:18:14.839 --> 00:18:18.559
and heard the showman pitching a tale about a mummified

193
00:18:18.599 --> 00:18:23.640
outlaw preserved by poison. Luke realized it was McCurdy on

194
00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:29.759
display and set the barker straight. By the nineteen thirties,

195
00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:34.480
old fashioned side shows were waning in popularity, but Elmer

196
00:18:34.599 --> 00:18:39.559
McCurdy still found an audience in new forms of entertainment.

197
00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:46.559
Lewis Sonny moved into filmmaking, producing lurid exploitation films to

198
00:18:46.680 --> 00:18:52.039
cater to the public's continued appetite for the macabre. In

199
00:18:52.119 --> 00:18:56.519
nineteen thirty three, Sonny even lent McCurdy's body to promote

200
00:18:56.599 --> 00:19:03.599
a drugs and crime expose film called Narcotic nineteen thirty three.

201
00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:07.480
Theater goers in Los Angeles that year were greeted by

202
00:19:07.480 --> 00:19:12.240
the sight of McCurdy's withered corpse propped up in lobby displays,

203
00:19:12.839 --> 00:19:17.880
falsely touted as a cautionary example of a criminal dope

204
00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:23.119
addict who met a bad end. By now, the once

205
00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:28.680
intact corpse had visibly mummified and shrunk, and it was

206
00:19:28.920 --> 00:19:33.240
likely coated in wax or paint to appear more lifelike

207
00:19:33.799 --> 00:19:37.960
Under lights. World War II brought an end to the

208
00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:43.039
golden age of freak exhibits, and after Lewis Sunny died

209
00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:48.039
in nineteen forty nine, the Mummy spent long years packed

210
00:19:48.039 --> 00:19:53.839
away in Los Angeles warehouses collecting dust, while ownership passed

211
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:59.759
to Sunny's Sun in the nineteen sixties. Mccurty's corpse emerged

212
00:19:59.759 --> 00:20:03.759
from the mothballs for a brief comeback in nineteen sixty

213
00:20:03.799 --> 00:20:08.359
seven with a cameo in a low budget carnival horror movie,

214
00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:13.720
She Freak nineteen sixty seven. Some would call the film

215
00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:18.240
forgettable schlock, but if you look carefully, you can spot

216
00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:23.200
the gaunt, shriveled face of Elmer McCurdy in a quick

217
00:20:23.319 --> 00:20:29.559
montage a disturbing little Hollywood footnote to his post mortem journey.

218
00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:35.119
By nineteen sixty eight, Sonny's heirs were finally ready to

219
00:20:35.279 --> 00:20:39.920
unload the aging corpse. They sold it, along with a

220
00:20:39.960 --> 00:20:44.559
bunch of old wax figures, to a new owner, reportedly

221
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:51.839
Spoony Singh, founder of the Hollywood Wax Museum. Though Singh

222
00:20:52.079 --> 00:20:57.000
was buying on behalf of two other entrepreneurs, the wax

223
00:20:57.079 --> 00:21:00.920
museum crew may not have realized one of their wax

224
00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:07.440
dummies was an actual human mummy. McCurdy was by then

225
00:21:07.759 --> 00:21:12.960
covered in layers of wax and bright paint. In any case,

226
00:21:13.559 --> 00:21:18.079
the body was deemed too grotesque and decomposed for the

227
00:21:18.079 --> 00:21:23.799
main Hollywood Museum, and was quickly resold to a lesser attraction.

228
00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:27.799
It ended up with a pair of men who ran

229
00:21:27.880 --> 00:21:33.279
a haunted house exhibit at Long Beaches New Pike Amusement Park,

230
00:21:33.799 --> 00:21:38.640
better known simply as The Pike. By nineteen seventy one,

231
00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:43.759
McCurdy's unlucky corpse had been incorporated into the Pike's Laugh

232
00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:48.519
in the Dark ride, literally becoming part of the scenery.

233
00:21:49.759 --> 00:21:54.160
The proprietors painted the mummified body a fluorescent orange red

234
00:21:54.839 --> 00:21:58.279
so that it would glow under black light, mounted it

235
00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:01.920
to a fake coffin with a rig to make it twitch,

236
00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:07.079
and hung it from the rafters as a grizzly gallows prop.

237
00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:11.240
One worker later recalled that when he drilled a hole

238
00:22:11.319 --> 00:22:15.960
in the corpse's foot to secure it, quote, some yellow,

239
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:23.200
almost gooey stuff came out, likely old bodily fluids or

240
00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:29.519
embalming seepage from the decades old cadaver. For about four

241
00:22:29.640 --> 00:22:34.720
or five years, amusement park visitors in Long Beach unknowingly

242
00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:39.960
rode past the real body of Elmer McCurdy, assuming it

243
00:22:40.079 --> 00:22:44.720
was just another cheap scare prop. Little kids on the

244
00:22:44.839 --> 00:22:49.039
ride even brushed against it in the dark, never realizing

245
00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:54.359
the dummy swinging above them was once a living man.

246
00:22:55.759 --> 00:23:00.359
It wasn't until that TV crew's accidental discovery in late

247
00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:05.559
nineteen seventy six that McCurdy's body finally left the carnival

248
00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:11.920
circuit for good. Elmer McCurdy's post mortem odyssey might be

249
00:23:12.119 --> 00:23:17.880
the most infamous, but it's not entirely unique. In the

250
00:23:17.960 --> 00:23:23.039
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America had a lurid

251
00:23:23.079 --> 00:23:29.279
fascination with the display of outlaws, corpses, and mummified curiosities.

252
00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:34.519
The heyday of the Dime Museum saw showmen like P. T.

253
00:23:34.720 --> 00:23:40.160
Barnum and others drawing crowds to see sensational oddities for

254
00:23:40.279 --> 00:23:45.039
a mere ten cent ticket. These low cost museums and

255
00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:52.279
traveling carnivals eagerly catered to the public's morbid curiosity. By

256
00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:56.359
the early nineteen hundreds, it wasn't just freak animals or

257
00:23:56.680 --> 00:24:02.559
faux mermaids on display, crime exhibits and side shows increasingly

258
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:10.000
featured the actual remains of infamous criminals or convincing fakes,

259
00:24:10.559 --> 00:24:18.200
blurring the line between education spectacle and desecration. Carnivals, side

260
00:24:18.200 --> 00:24:23.440
shows and museum of crime exhibits often touted human remains

261
00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:29.240
or mummies as star attractions to boost ticket sales. As

262
00:24:29.319 --> 00:24:34.440
one contemporary newspaper noted in nineteen fifteen, all sorts of

263
00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:39.599
mummies were popular side show attractions at the time. It

264
00:24:39.720 --> 00:24:43.400
wasn't always possible for audiences to tell a real body

265
00:24:43.960 --> 00:24:48.799
from a clever fake. For example, displaying the corpse of

266
00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:54.000
a notorious bandit for paying crowds might sound ghoulish today,

267
00:24:54.759 --> 00:24:58.319
but in the Old West era it wasn't unheard of.

268
00:24:59.119 --> 00:25:04.240
Lawmen and carnival men alike sometimes treated dead outlaws as

269
00:25:04.319 --> 00:25:09.240
public attractions. In fact, when McCurdy was laid to rest

270
00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:14.640
finally in nineteen seventy seven, he was buried near the

271
00:25:14.680 --> 00:25:20.680
grave of Bill Doolin, a famous Oklahoma outlaw shot dead

272
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:25.880
in eighteen ninety six, whose body had been preserved and

273
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:31.759
briefly exhibited for public viewing. This practice of exploiting the

274
00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:36.759
dead had precedent, even if McCurdy's sixty six year tour

275
00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:41.720
was an extreme case, to say the least. Perhaps the

276
00:25:41.839 --> 00:25:47.079
closest rival to McCurdy's Traveling Corpse in American lore was

277
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:53.799
the purported John Wilkes Booth Mummy. Decades after President Lincoln's

278
00:25:53.799 --> 00:25:58.720
assassin was killed in eighteen sixty five, a mummified cadaver

279
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:05.759
surfaced that carnival promoters boldly claimed was Booth's body. Starting

280
00:26:05.799 --> 00:26:09.920
around the nineteen twenties and into the nineteen thirties, this

281
00:26:10.039 --> 00:26:15.079
supposed Booth Mummy toured with carnivals and side shows, drawing

282
00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:20.279
the morbidly curious, even though its true identity as Booth

283
00:26:20.599 --> 00:26:26.440
was highly dubious. In reality, the mummy was widely believed

284
00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:30.480
to be the embalmed remains of an Oklahoma drifter named

285
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:35.000
David E. George, who had committed suicide in nineteen oh

286
00:26:35.039 --> 00:26:46.119
three after allegedly confessing to being Booth under an alias.

287
00:26:46.680 --> 00:26:50.640
The legend of the Booth Mummy grew so popular that

288
00:26:50.759 --> 00:26:54.880
Life magazine ran a feature on it in nineteen thirty eight,

289
00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:59.240
noting that it had changed hands many times and that

290
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:04.279
nearly every every proprietor had suffered financial ruin or worse,

291
00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:09.440
giving rise to the rumors that the Booth Corpse carried

292
00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:14.680
with it a curse. Sideshow customers in the thirties paid

293
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.160
twenty five cents each to gaze upon the shriveled figure

294
00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:24.119
of Quote John Wilkes's booth. While skeptics pointed out there

295
00:27:24.200 --> 00:27:30.039
was no solid evidence of its authenticity, Carney promoter's even

296
00:27:30.119 --> 00:27:35.400
invited examinations. One photo spread showed a sheriff taking the

297
00:27:35.480 --> 00:27:42.079
mummy's fingerprints, but as Life dryly observed, this proved nothing,

298
00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:47.319
since no verified prince of Booth existed for a comparison.

299
00:27:48.519 --> 00:27:52.519
In another instance, the showman's wife displayed X rays of

300
00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:56.279
the mummy's broken leg, hoping to match it to Booth's

301
00:27:56.359 --> 00:28:01.160
known injury, while a surgeon and an optomical tryst publicly

302
00:28:01.279 --> 00:28:05.039
dueled in the press over whether the mummy's facial features

303
00:28:05.480 --> 00:28:09.920
matched Booths. In the end, the Booth Mummy was never

304
00:28:10.079 --> 00:28:14.720
conclusively proven to be the assassin's body, and its trail

305
00:28:14.839 --> 00:28:21.960
eventually disappeared into carnival legend. That sensational tale illustrates how

306
00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:28.440
far showmen would go, even concocting elaborate historical hoaxes in

307
00:28:28.559 --> 00:28:34.960
order to profit from a well preserved corpse. Mccurty's case, however,

308
00:28:35.599 --> 00:28:39.279
stands out. It's one of the few times such a

309
00:28:39.400 --> 00:28:46.599
sideshow mummy was indisputably identified and reclaimed after decades as

310
00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:51.200
a curiosity. Elmer mccurty's body was removed from the circuit

311
00:28:51.759 --> 00:28:56.160
and treated for once, not as an artifact, but as

312
00:28:56.200 --> 00:29:02.240
a human being who deserved to rest in peace. This long,

313
00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:08.119
strange chapter of carnival culture highlights a once common subculture

314
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:14.160
of exploitation. For early twentieth century side shows, nothing seemed

315
00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:20.079
off limits. Even human bodies could become carnival commodities. The

316
00:29:20.119 --> 00:29:25.440
corpses of outlaws were seen as marketable curios. They satisfied

317
00:29:25.480 --> 00:29:30.480
public fascination with the macabre and offered a tangible, albeit

318
00:29:30.599 --> 00:29:37.519
grotesque connection to the Wild West's lurid legends. Sideshow promoters

319
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:42.319
frequently concocted new legends in order to rebrand these remains,

320
00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:48.279
as seen when McCurdy's handlers fabricated those wild stories about

321
00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:52.200
the poised outlaw, the drug addicted bandit, and the one

322
00:29:52.279 --> 00:29:58.400
thousand year old mummy, etc. To keep crowds coming and paying.

323
00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:04.200
Ethical boundaries were scant. By the time McCurdy was hanging

324
00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:08.799
in that Long Beach funhouse, people had literally forgotten that

325
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:14.839
the gaudy, abused object was once a man. The revelation

326
00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:19.200
of the funhouse corpse in nineteen seventy six forced a

327
00:30:19.279 --> 00:30:24.960
modern public to reckon with the ghoulish legacy of these practices,

328
00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:30.200
and it arrived just as attitudes towards such displays were

329
00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:36.160
dramatically changing. Once the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office had

330
00:30:36.240 --> 00:30:41.880
Elmer McCurdy's remains and the clues from his body, investigators

331
00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:49.079
and forensic experts began piecing together his identity. Doctor Joseph Choy,

332
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:54.839
the Department Medical Examiner, conducted an autopsy and confirmed the

333
00:30:54.920 --> 00:30:58.559
body was mail and had died of a gunshot wound

334
00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:03.839
to the chest. While the original bullet had presumably been

335
00:31:03.880 --> 00:31:08.839
removed back in nineteen eleven, Choi found the copper bullet

336
00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:14.680
jacket still lodged in the tissue. Crucially, the jacket had

337
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:19.119
a gas check, a small metal disc on the bullet's

338
00:31:19.119 --> 00:31:24.240
base designed to prevent barrel corrosion, which was a type

339
00:31:24.279 --> 00:31:29.079
of ammunition used only from about nineteen oh five until

340
00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:34.359
nineteen forty. Tests on the tissue, meanwhile revealed high levels

341
00:31:34.359 --> 00:31:38.759
of arsenic, indicating the corpse had been embalmed with an

342
00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:43.160
arsenic based fluid, a practice common before the late nineteen

343
00:31:43.240 --> 00:31:50.519
twenties but discontinued soon after. These clues immediately suggested a

344
00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:56.000
death decades earlier in the early twentieth century, aligning with

345
00:31:56.079 --> 00:31:59.799
the era hinted at by the nineteen twenty four penny

346
00:32:00.519 --> 00:32:05.079
and old ticket stubs found in the body. The penny

347
00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:10.279
and ticket stubs proved to be invaluable in cracking the mystery.

348
00:32:11.000 --> 00:32:16.000
Investigators gently removed the fragile ephemera from the mummy's mouth

349
00:32:16.119 --> 00:32:21.359
and examined them closely. One ticket bore the name Lewis

350
00:32:21.359 --> 00:32:25.839
Sonny's Museum of Crime, which of course rang a bell.

351
00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:30.680
Sonny's Traveling Crime Museum had been fairly well known in

352
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:35.160
the nineteen twenties and thirties, the other ticket being for

353
00:32:35.240 --> 00:32:39.559
the Pike Amusement Park itself. The presence of those stubs

354
00:32:39.680 --> 00:32:42.960
was a strong hint that the body had once been

355
00:32:43.039 --> 00:32:55.319
exhibited in Sonny's side show. Detectives contacted Dan Sonny, Lewis

356
00:32:55.319 --> 00:33:00.359
Sonny's son, who confirmed that years ago his father's show

357
00:33:00.799 --> 00:33:06.599
had indeed featured a mummified outlaw corpse named Elmer McCurdy.

358
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:11.440
This was the first time the name Elmer McCurdy had

359
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:16.839
surfaced as a serious candidate for the anonymous mummy, but

360
00:33:17.079 --> 00:33:24.480
still the authorities needed solid proof. Meanwhile, news of the

361
00:33:24.480 --> 00:33:30.319
Funhouse Mummy made headlines nationwide. Over a thousand miles away

362
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:35.559
in Oklahoma, a group of amateur historians in Guthrie read

363
00:33:35.559 --> 00:33:40.559
the story with astonishment. Among them were Bill Lehman, a

364
00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:45.319
local history buff, and Fred Old's, curator of the Oklahoma

365
00:33:45.480 --> 00:33:50.359
Territorial Museum. They were well versed in the old outlaw

366
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:54.319
tales of their region, and as soon as they heard

367
00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:00.279
about an unidentified, embalmed corpse found in California, had a

368
00:34:00.319 --> 00:34:06.319
strong hunch it was McCurdy, the outlaw whose unburied body

369
00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:12.519
had disappeared from paw Huska in nineteen eleven. Olds contacted

370
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:17.280
the La County Coroner's office and explained the Oklahoma connection.

371
00:34:18.440 --> 00:34:22.079
Eager to help, he and his colleagues offered to assist

372
00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:27.039
in confirming the identity and even ensure the outlaw would

373
00:34:27.079 --> 00:34:32.760
receive a proper burial back in Oklahoma if indeed it

374
00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:37.960
was McCurdy. Before the coroner could release the body, however,

375
00:34:38.679 --> 00:34:42.840
they would need to conclusively verify that the mummy and

376
00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:48.320
Elmer McCurdy were one in the same In early nineteen

377
00:34:48.480 --> 00:34:54.320
seventy seven. A team of forensic specialists from California and Oklahoma,

378
00:34:54.920 --> 00:35:02.079
including renowned forensic anthropologist doctor Clyde Snow, collaborated on the identification.

379
00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:07.440
This was pre DNA era, so they relied on old

380
00:35:07.559 --> 00:35:14.239
fashioned detective work and anatomical analysis. The corpses mandible or

381
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:19.639
lower jaw, was removed for closer study. The team carefully

382
00:35:19.679 --> 00:35:25.800
compared the remains to any record of McCurdy's appearance. Remarkably,

383
00:35:26.199 --> 00:35:31.280
McCurdy's nineteen eleven post mortem photograph taken by the undertaker

384
00:35:31.719 --> 00:35:36.760
before embalming, still existed in archives, as did some of

385
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:42.679
the descriptions of distinguishing marks on his body. Doctor Snow

386
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:47.000
took radiographs or X rays of the mummy's skull and

387
00:35:47.119 --> 00:35:54.039
employed a technique called photographic super imposition, essentially projecting and

388
00:35:54.159 --> 00:35:58.119
scaling the old photo over the X ray to see

389
00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:04.400
if the features aligned. They did. The skulls, contours and

390
00:36:04.599 --> 00:36:11.400
dentitian matched mccurty's portrait perfectly. Beyond that, the medical exam

391
00:36:11.480 --> 00:36:15.760
had noted certain scars and even bunians on the corpse

392
00:36:16.280 --> 00:36:20.079
that corresponded to injuries. McCurdy was known to have had

393
00:36:20.599 --> 00:36:26.000
in life. After cross checking every clue, the bullets era,

394
00:36:26.440 --> 00:36:30.840
the embalming chemicals, the tickets and penny, the physical match

395
00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:36.719
of skull and scars, the investigators were finally satisfied. In

396
00:36:36.840 --> 00:36:41.719
late March nineteen seventy seven, the Los Angeles County Coroner

397
00:36:42.199 --> 00:36:48.119
officially identified the body as Elmer J. McCurdy. The lost

398
00:36:48.199 --> 00:36:55.079
outlaw had finally been found. Mccurty's remains were released to

399
00:36:55.199 --> 00:37:00.280
the Oklahoma group, but the question remained what to do

400
00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:05.760
with him now. This bizarre story had garnered national attention,

401
00:37:06.559 --> 00:37:11.360
and many felt McCurdy deserved a proper burial and that

402
00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:16.079
his grave site should be protected from any future profiteering.

403
00:37:17.159 --> 00:37:22.119
The city of Guthrie, Oklahoma, stepped up. In February nineteen

404
00:37:22.239 --> 00:37:27.280
seventy seven, Guthrie's City council agreed to provide a burial

405
00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:32.119
plot in the local boot Hill section of Summit View Cemetery,

406
00:37:32.840 --> 00:37:36.760
an area where other famed outlaws from the territorial days,

407
00:37:37.239 --> 00:37:41.800
like Bill Doolan, are interred. It was partly a gesture

408
00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:46.239
of respect to finally lay the wanderer to rest, and

409
00:37:46.360 --> 00:37:52.280
partly Guthrie embracing a strange bit of wild West history. However,

410
00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:58.920
belated as its own. On April twenty second, nineteen seventy seven,

411
00:37:59.519 --> 00:38:05.599
Elmer McCurdy was finally buried with full funeral rites in Oklahoma,

412
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:12.159
sixty six years after his death. The Outlaws send off

413
00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:17.159
was as theatrical as anything in his life. A horse

414
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:22.519
drawn nineteenth century hearse carried his pale blue coffin to

415
00:38:22.599 --> 00:38:27.599
the cemetery, followed by a procession of local lawmen and

416
00:38:27.679 --> 00:38:33.880
Western history enthusiasts in period costume. It was a rainy morning,

417
00:38:34.400 --> 00:38:39.559
and some three hundred people attended McCurdy's belated funeral, far

418
00:38:39.639 --> 00:38:45.320
more mourners than he ever had in life. Perhaps they

419
00:38:45.360 --> 00:38:50.039
came out of curiosity, or to pay respects, or simply

420
00:38:50.119 --> 00:38:56.079
to witness the final chapter of this incredible saga. As

421
00:38:56.159 --> 00:39:01.719
one commentator Riley noted, it was likely the most love

422
00:39:01.880 --> 00:39:08.159
Elmer McCurdy ever got in life or death. After the

423
00:39:08.199 --> 00:39:13.400
graveside eulogy, McCurdy's coffin was lowered into the earth next

424
00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:18.159
to the outlaw Bill Doolin and two other Old West bandits,

425
00:39:18.199 --> 00:39:22.480
as if reuniting him with the rogue's gallery of his

426
00:39:22.559 --> 00:39:28.239
own era, to ensure McCurdy's body would never go wandering again,

427
00:39:28.960 --> 00:39:34.280
officials took an unusual precaution. They in teared him under

428
00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:41.599
two feet of concrete, effectively cementing his grave closed. This

429
00:39:41.800 --> 00:39:46.400
concrete cap was intended to deter any would be grave

430
00:39:46.480 --> 00:39:52.039
robbers or enterprising carnies from digging up the embalmed bandit

431
00:39:52.599 --> 00:39:57.559
for display. By the late nineteen seventies, such an extreme

432
00:39:57.679 --> 00:40:02.000
step might not have been necessary. Times had changed, and

433
00:40:02.039 --> 00:40:07.280
so at attitudes toward human remains, But after all McCurdy

434
00:40:07.320 --> 00:40:12.960
had been through, no chances were taken. In truth, the

435
00:40:13.119 --> 00:40:17.679
era that allowed McCurdy's corpse to be trafficked had already

436
00:40:18.039 --> 00:40:28.719
come to an end. By the mid twentieth century, laws

437
00:40:28.760 --> 00:40:34.320
and ethical standards had evolved significantly. The idea of buying

438
00:40:34.480 --> 00:40:39.159
or exhibiting a human cadaver as entertainment had become not

439
00:40:39.239 --> 00:40:45.000
only abhorrent to the public, but largely illegal. Carnival side

440
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:48.960
shows as a whole were a dying breed, and legitimate

441
00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:54.920
museums were re examining how they handled human specimens. For example,

442
00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:59.000
the Denver Museum of Nature and Science took its last

443
00:40:59.079 --> 00:41:04.679
Native American skeleton off display in nineteen seventy out of respect,

444
00:41:05.320 --> 00:41:10.400
and ceased exhibiting human remains in that way entirely. The

445
00:41:10.519 --> 00:41:14.960
McCurdy affair in nineteen seventy six and seventy seven served

446
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:20.559
as a grotesque cautionary tale that underscored the need for oversight.

447
00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:25.559
Many were rightfully astounded that a human body could have

448
00:41:25.599 --> 00:41:29.440
been bought and sold like a prop for six decades

449
00:41:29.960 --> 00:41:36.199
without anyone intervening. In the aftermath, museum curators and amusement

450
00:41:36.280 --> 00:41:42.599
park operators indeed became far more vigilant. They instituted policies

451
00:41:42.639 --> 00:41:47.599
to verify that any dummies or medical specimens on display

452
00:41:48.199 --> 00:41:55.000
were not actual people unless properly authorized for educational purposes.

453
00:41:55.960 --> 00:41:59.480
The abuse of unclaimed bodies, which had waned by the

454
00:41:59.559 --> 00:42:05.800
nineteen seventies, was now firmly condemned. Most states strengthened or

455
00:42:05.920 --> 00:42:11.920
enforced regulation requiring that unclaimed corpses be buried or donated

456
00:42:12.239 --> 00:42:18.199
for scientific and medical use, not kept as sideshow collectibles.

457
00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:25.639
While no specific Elmer McCurdy law was passed, the public

458
00:42:25.719 --> 00:42:33.119
conversation around his case reinforced a modern consensus human remains

459
00:42:33.159 --> 00:42:39.199
deserve dignity, and what happened to McCurdy should never happen again.

460
00:42:40.440 --> 00:42:45.679
Elmer McCurdy's post mortem misadventures had secured him a peculiar

461
00:42:45.840 --> 00:42:51.559
kind of immortality in American pop culture. His story, often

462
00:42:51.679 --> 00:42:56.159
dubbed the Corpse that Wouldn't Quit or the fun house Mummy,

463
00:42:56.800 --> 00:43:00.559
has been retold so many times that its entered the

464
00:43:00.559 --> 00:43:06.039
realm of modern folklore. For years, people swapping spooky stories

465
00:43:06.400 --> 00:43:11.559
around campfires or at slumber parties would insist one time

466
00:43:12.039 --> 00:43:16.079
a real dead body was found in a carnival haunted house.

467
00:43:17.440 --> 00:43:21.239
It's exactly the sort of eerie tale that would be

468
00:43:21.679 --> 00:43:28.000
an urban legend, except in this case it's true. The

469
00:43:28.039 --> 00:43:33.599
tale of McCurdy's wandering corpse has since inspired books, songs,

470
00:43:33.679 --> 00:43:40.280
and screen adaptations. In fact, the strange saga directly influenced

471
00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:44.639
the creation of at least one fictional character in comic books,

472
00:43:45.360 --> 00:43:50.599
Jonah Hex, a DC comic's Western anti hero. In a

473
00:43:50.719 --> 00:43:55.440
nineteen eighties Jonah Hex's storyline, the title character's body is

474
00:43:55.519 --> 00:44:00.079
stolen after his death and carded around as a traveling attraction,

475
00:44:00.960 --> 00:44:06.840
a narrative almost identical to McCurdy's true story. This was

476
00:44:06.920 --> 00:44:12.400
no coincidence. The writers have cited McCurdy's history as inspiration

477
00:44:12.599 --> 00:44:18.960
for Jonah Hex's post mortem exploits. McCurdy's story has also

478
00:44:18.960 --> 00:44:24.039
seeped into Hollywood and theater in other ways. The very

479
00:44:24.159 --> 00:44:28.519
circumstances of his discovery read like a horror movie plot,

480
00:44:29.159 --> 00:44:33.519
and indeed, just a year before the real event, an

481
00:44:33.519 --> 00:44:38.639
episode of Charlie's Angels had featured a nearly identical scenario

482
00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:43.519
of a corpse found in a carnival funhouse at the Pike.

483
00:44:44.639 --> 00:44:49.000
Life imitated art in the creepiest way when McCurdy was

484
00:44:49.039 --> 00:44:53.719
found hanging in the exact same attraction that Charlie's Angels

485
00:44:53.760 --> 00:44:59.440
had used for fiction. In recent years, McCurdy's bizarre tale

486
00:44:59.840 --> 00:45:04.960
was adapted into a stage musical titled Dead Outlaw, which

487
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:10.320
premiered off Broadway in twenty twenty four, turning his life

488
00:45:10.360 --> 00:45:14.760
and after life into a darkly comic piece of theater.

489
00:45:16.199 --> 00:45:22.119
Numerous podcasts, documentaries, and TV segments have recounted the story

490
00:45:22.199 --> 00:45:27.960
as the ultimate truth is Stranger than Fiction caper. Even

491
00:45:28.159 --> 00:45:34.440
Disney's Haunted Mansion Ride famously incorporated real human skeletal remains

492
00:45:35.039 --> 00:45:39.239
in its early days, but that bit of trivia pales

493
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:44.679
next to McCurdy's odyssey. His saga blurs the line between

494
00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:50.000
horror fiction and historical fact in a way few others do.

495
00:45:51.639 --> 00:45:57.039
Beyond these adaptations, the legacy of Elmer mccurty raises enduring

496
00:45:57.159 --> 00:46:02.920
questions and fascinates the public precisely because it forces us

497
00:46:03.280 --> 00:46:08.320
to confront how we deal with death and remembrance. He's

498
00:46:08.360 --> 00:46:13.079
been called America's most famous corpse, a gruesome title he

499
00:46:13.159 --> 00:46:19.880
earned through his long, unwilling tour of carnivals and roadside attractions.

500
00:46:19.920 --> 00:46:25.760
Every Halloween, lists of scary true stories inevitably include the

501
00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:30.159
fun house mummy who turned out to be real. His

502
00:46:30.320 --> 00:46:35.519
story has become a cautionary legend in the haunted attraction industry,

503
00:46:36.440 --> 00:46:41.159
a macabre reminder to propmakers and haunted house operators that

504
00:46:41.320 --> 00:46:46.400
sometimes the dummy in the corner might just be a

505
00:46:46.519 --> 00:46:51.119
real dead body. It also serves as a stark reflection

506
00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:55.679
on how much our society's view of death and human

507
00:46:55.760 --> 00:47:01.559
dignity has evolved. Elmer McCurdy was a man whose difficult

508
00:47:01.639 --> 00:47:07.320
life ended in obscurity, only for his corpse to achieve

509
00:47:07.440 --> 00:47:13.199
an infamy he never knew. In death, he became a spectacle,

510
00:47:13.960 --> 00:47:18.519
and only upon discovery was he finally seen as a

511
00:47:18.559 --> 00:47:24.320
person again in the eyes of the world. In the end,

512
00:47:24.719 --> 00:47:29.159
Elmer McCurdy saga truly feels like a ghost story you'd

513
00:47:29.159 --> 00:47:33.960
hear whispered on a dark night, a restless soul doomed

514
00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:39.559
to wander, his body never at peace until benevolent strangers

515
00:47:39.639 --> 00:47:44.480
finally laid him to rest. The difference here is that

516
00:47:44.639 --> 00:47:48.119
every detail, from the nickel in his mouth to the

517
00:47:48.159 --> 00:47:51.639
neon paint on his skin to the bullet in his

518
00:47:51.840 --> 00:47:57.679
chest really happened. The fun House Skeleton's journey from outlaw

519
00:47:57.920 --> 00:48:02.000
to carnival mummy to TV set decoration remains one of

520
00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:07.960
the most surreal and unsettling true tales in American history.

521
00:48:08.960 --> 00:48:14.079
It stands as a macabre testament to the saying sometimes

522
00:48:14.679 --> 00:48:20.239
truth is not only stranger than fiction, but also far

523
00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:26.480
more horrifying. Terrifying and True is narrated by Enrique Kuto.

524
00:48:26.800 --> 00:48:30.760
It's executive produced by Rob Fields and bobble Topia dot com,

525
00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:34.199
and produced by Dan Wilder, with original theme music by

526
00:48:34.280 --> 00:48:36.800
Ray Mattis. If you have a story you think we

527
00:48:36.840 --> 00:48:39.840
should cover on Terrifying and True, send us an email

528
00:48:39.880 --> 00:48:43.199
at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com, and if you

529
00:48:43.239 --> 00:48:44.960
want to support us for as little as one dollar

530
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:48.280
a month, go to Weeklyspooky dot com. Slash join. Your

531
00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:50.599
support for as little as one dollar a month keeps

532
00:48:50.639 --> 00:48:52.920
the show going. And speaking of I want to say

533
00:48:52.920 --> 00:48:56.119
an extra special thank you to our Patreon podcast boosters,

534
00:48:56.199 --> 00:48:58.000
folks who pay a little bit more to hear their

535
00:48:58.079 --> 00:48:59.760
name at the end of the show. And they are

536
00:49:00.079 --> 00:49:04.880
Johnny Nicks, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller, Mike Escuey, Jenny Green,

537
00:49:05.039 --> 00:49:08.599
Amber Hansford, Karen we Met, Jack Ker and Craig Cohen.

538
00:49:08.639 --> 00:49:10.880
Thank you all so much and thank you for listening.

539
00:49:11.039 --> 00:49:14.519
We'll see you all right here next time on Terrifying

540
00:49:14.639 --> 00:49:15.920
and True