Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Frozen Dead Guy

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Back in 1994, Nederland, Colorado found out it had a resident it hadn’t accounted for.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome home! Listen to Native Lampod dropping every Thursday on the I Heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave Pretending like she's Dave, she does that a lot, and this is short stuff. That's right, about if... Frozen Body! That's right, exactly. There is no way we could do this without that,

so thank you for clearing it up right out of the gate. I feel like we talked about this festival at some point on maybe it was one of our videos or something. We did an episode on Strange Festival, so I'm sure we mentioned this, but I don't remember the story behind it. So I made the same frozen body joke. Let's get into it.

You can't not. I think that's the town motto. Absolutely. So we're talking about a frozen body of a man who in life was called Brado Morsthol, M-O-R-S-T-O-E-L, and he was from Norway. And when 1989 rolled around, he was a ripe 89 years old. He'd been living in Norway outside of Oslo

for basically his whole life. And his life had been kind of unremarkable. Apparently he designed city parks, which is a pretty cool job, but like he hadn't set the world on fire, and I don't really think he cared about that from what I understand. Although I don't personally know, because I don't know him, but suffice to say that when he died in Norway in 1989, it did not make international news.

How about that? Okay. He had a grandson, and I have no idea how to pronounce this. Trig V. I'm not big on my Norwegian. It's really Trig V. I'm not big on my Norwegian. It's really Trig V. Okay. And he was a really into cryotics and preserving bodies.

And this was in 1989 when that wasn't, and it's still not the most common thing, but it's certainly gained a lot more popularity in recent years. But in 1989, he was kind of, you know, a groundbreaking guy to try to do something like this on his own. And that is try to do this on his own and say, hey, grandad, I think we want to preserve you. And so I am going to build a chronic facility myself. Eventually, I've liked it to be a business, but at least want to get you going because

the clock is ticking. Right. And his grandfather didn't respond because he was dead, but Trig V went ahead with the plans anyway. He had Brato shipped from Oslo to Oakland, that typical route that the dead body follows after you expire. And the reason he ended up in Oakland, California, is because there was an established cryonic facility there called trans time and

For three years that's where Braydo's first final resting place was He was immersed in liquid nitrogen and kept in an extraordinarily cold temperature to preserve him because that's the point I mean we did a whole cryonics episode if I'm not mistaken But this is a brief refresher the point of of cryonics is to preserve the living tissue to the degree that if we ever figure out how to reanimate dead people, you will be intact when they revive you these doctors of the future. That's the key. And that's what that's what Trinkvy wanted to do with his grandfather, Brato.

Yeah. And if you look up one of these facilities today, they'll say, great. You want just the head or the whole body. Yeah. Which is very interesting. So which is speaking of MacGraning, that's also sort of a future Rama reference. Totally. Like Nixon.

That's right. And as a reminder, I saw a head in a bucket once people are talking about that still That is so crazy So over the course of a few years He got the help of his mom odd and said all right I'm building this thing out in Colorado as it turns out a place called neederland And it was a legal thing to do at first, but then he applied for a permit and they said, nah, you can't do that. And he said, well, I'm just gonna keep doing it anyway,

illegally. And in 1993, so this is four-ish years after his granddad had died, they said, all right, I think we're okay. We can move him from Oakland into our own sort of home setup in Niederland, Colorado. It was a decided step down for, um, for Brado. Yeah. He went from the high life immersed in liquid nitrogen to a makeshift wooden

freezer surrounded by foam rubber and dry ice blocks. But apparently it worked. It was good enough for TrigV and odd, uh, his mom. Um, and so that's where Brado set up, starting in 93. They also decided that they were going to build a structure that could not only keep a cryonic body and definitely the structure itself would survive indefinitely. So they built a concrete structure, they build it out with studs, and then they stopped there. And one of the reasons they stopped was because suddenly all of this stuff came to the attention

of the outside authorities. And I say we take a break on that and come back and tell the rest of this crazy, crazy story. What is up with this cable news echo chamber, Tiff? Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello? Yo!

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Welcome! Listen to the WISE with Duane Wade, on the IHREDIA app, Apple Podcast, or whatever you can get your podcast. So in 1993, TIGV's in his new house in a wooden structure out back. Apparently, he was in a blue REI sleeping bag, zipped up, surrounded by foam, foam rubber, all that, and then outside of all that were the bricks of dry ice. And I guess Trig V for future handiness labeled

which end of the sleeping bag was the head, but was later found to have gotten it wrong, which is kind of funny. And they kept it at, I think, a negative 110 degrees Celsius, which is pretty, pretty cold, but from what I read, still inadequate for cryonics, but they kept it that way anyway, and every two weeks, they would have to put new dry ice blocks around them. And they kept doing that and we're planning on doing that indefinitely. And about that time

Immigration officials slipped into this whole fray. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the irony of this whole thing is they were I guess from the naked eye what they thought were preserving him But they weren't preserving him good enough to ever bring him back to life if that were to ever be a thing That's my understanding of it. Yeah, yeah, so Immigration said I'm sorry your visa has run out. You have to leave the country. So, a trig V left in 1994 and said, Mom, you got to take care. Your dad there.

I'm leaving. He got to switch this dry ice out every two weeks and keep that temperature down. And Mom was like, all right, I got it. And the news got out a little bit. This is, you know, Needle then wasn't the biggest place. It probably still isn't the biggest town. And get the feeling that Trigbee was sort of

an eccentric there. Yeah, he started the local polar bear plunge tradition. Awesome, that's fun. Yeah. So when he got deported, there were, you know, there were interviews being done by the local alternative weekly and they got touched with the mom during this interview.

She, I get the feeling sort of accidentally set out loud like I wonder what's going to happen with Dad's remains now. And then the word was out that there was a frozen dead guy in the town. And eventually that would become a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days. Yeah, because very quickly this story got out of Colorado and went around the world and Netterlin decided, hey, we could capitalize on this. Like, yes, this is a really weird story and people think we're weirdos for having a guy who had his dead grandfather frozen out back.

But let's do something with that. And the Chamber of Commerce came up with frozen dead guy days starting in 2002, which is definitely making lemonade out of lemons, I guess you could say. But in the meantime, there was still the matter of what to do with Brado right after it was found out that Brado was out back.

And not only Brado, by the way, Trigvy had gotten his first paying customer. So Brado and a man named Al Campbell shared that makeshift freezer for a little while. But the Netherlands town council said, we actually, we've got something on the books, right? Like this is illegal. What they had in fact, didn't even say Trigvy was a died in the wool libertarian,

the kind of guy who would raise holy heck for arbitrary movements or decisions by the government. And he forced that, no, it was not very clear what the town's position on keeping a frozen dead body of a relative out back in your house was. And so, Brato got grandfathered in even after the town passed a new ordinance saying like you can't do that anymore. No pun intended. Oh grandfathered in yeah it really wasn't is this add thing. I know. So he's there still he's allowed to stay. And so all of a sudden he needs a little help taking care of grandpa.

He puts out an ad and says, I need someone to help me take care. You have to like change up the stri-eyes. Check on them, that kind of thing. And a guy named Bo Schaffer said, I'll do it. And so for, and not only will I do it, he did it for 30 years. He looked over this guy that wasn't even his grandpa, bringing in that fresh stri-eyes, packing them every two weeks, making sure he was okay and checking in on him. And I think it's pretty remarkable. Eventually

that shed needed some work because of a blizzard and the local rock radio station got involved and of course, like local rock radio does, they find some kind of weird thing to get behind for some press. they have does, they find some kind of weird thing to get behind for some press. And they ended up getting tough sheds, the company, which is great, by the way, big fan of tough sheds. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I've got one. They're awesome. And they're awesome because they donated this shed free of charge, also good press for

them. And of course the radio station painted their logo and stuff on the side of it. So now this guy is in the... Wait, wait, wait, wait, not just what their logo and stuff on the side of it. So now this guy is in the... Wait, wait, wait, wait, not just what their logo was. You have to say the words that they also painted on the structure. Well, I think that was their thing. They were classic rock. They painted classic rock on the shed that held Brato's frozen corpse.

Oh, yeah, they had to take advantage of it. So from that point on, it was not much of a story. I mean, they had to take advantage of it. So from that point on, it was, you know, not much of a story. I mean, they had their pros and dead guys festival. Braydo was still there. And in 2020, I imagine because of COVID, the town, Chamber of Commerce went bankrupt. The town kind of fell on harder times. And they sold the rights of that festival

to a private entity. And everyone was like, this thing stinks now. It's just not the same as it used to be. Yeah, it got moved to Estes Park, which is a little ways away. It just lost the edginess of it. It wasn't rough around the edges anymore. And it lost its spirit according to the people

who liked the original version. That was one thing that changed. Another thing that changed around that time is that Tric B started looking for a third final resting place for his grandfather, Brado. And in August of 2023, the town of Netherlands found out that their famous frozen dead guy, Brado, had been moved to Estes Park, like frozen dead guy days, had been moved to S.D.'s park like Frozen Dead Guy days had been to the Stanley Hotel. That Stanley Hotel, the same one that inspired the shining when Stephen King and his family vacation there. So if you ever hear anyone say, you know what the Stanley Hotel is known for, right?

Just kind of throw him off base and say, yeah, they have a cryonics museum and a frozen dead grandpa. Yeah, that's where Brado is. He's in an exhibit sponsored by Al Corwin at the leading cryonics companies. And who knows where his next final resting place will be, but that's where you can find him now. I hope this is it, but I have a feeling it won't be. No way, not in an exhibit at the Stanley Hotel.

He's gonna end up somewhere else. And I, I for one can't wait to see where it is. I wonder if we should raise some money and see if we can take custody. Yeah, like KRFX103.5, the Fox. That's how we'll end it. That's how we'll do it. We're gonna paint classic rock and S.Y.S.K. on,

on whatever we built for him too. I love it. Well, Chuck said, I love it. We can't really end on a better note than that, so short stuff is out. What's the most important thing? Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio,

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