Plans in the works to move the Frozen Dead Guy from Nederland to Stanley Hotel: "I'd better call the mayor on this one"
Frozen Dead Guy Days kicks off in its new home this St. Patrick's Day weekend in Estes Park. The festival was a creation in Nederland where the stresses on a town of 1,500 for a festival that attracted -- at the time -- more than 20,000 people got too great and the Colorado mountain community and the owners of the festival parted ways.
Into the void stepped the owner of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, John Cullen. Cullen bought the festival and set it up in the fairgrounds with other events throughout the weekend in town.
But he had other plans, too.
Over a beer, with a friend from Nederland, he decided the festival was not only a good idea, but bringing the body of the man for whom it is named was a good idea, too.
"And my friend goes, 'Oh I've seen that face before on you. What are you thinking and what do I have to do?'" Cullen said. "So I had that one more beer and I said, 'I'd better call the mayor on this one.'"
And he had to get the approval of the family, too.
"And I think I've got to go to Oslo to figure out this body thing," he said.
The body of Norwegian Bredo Moerstol has been in a shed in Nederland since the 1990s when his grandson Trygve tried to open a cryogenics lab. Grandpa had died of natural causes in Norway and Trygve hoped that maybe one day he could be brought back to life, later reassessing the possibility and settling for perhaps preserving grandpa's DNA for possible cloning.
The town wasn't fond of the idea, but eventually grandfathered the keeping of Bredo in a shed on dry ice. It made international news. A few years later, town leaders came up with the idea of a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days, playing off the fame it had gained from the incident.
While getting the approval of Trygve in Norway, Cullen had to get local officials to like the idea as well.
"I said 'Well you're bringing the festival, you're not bringing the dead guy right?'" said Estes Park Mayor Wendy Koenig. "And I said 'Well I don't know about that one, John.'"
Doing some figuring, Cullen points out that there are already bodies kept above ground in town.
"Some of the town's founders are sitting in a mausoleum just a mile away from here. So I'm not exactly blazing new paths. This will be the first one in the first nitrogen 200 degrees below zero suspension," he said.
Cullen plans to use the currently unused ice house on the hotel property, where ice was kept for refrigeration years ago, as a resting place for grandpa. He is creating a nonprofit for a small museum, utilizing the expertise of an Arizona-based cryogenics group that will keep the body. For years in Nederland, the body has remained on dry ice regularly brought in to keep it cold. But nowhere near 200 below zero. Cullen says he's getting support and, given time, Grandpa Bredo will be on his way.
"This is a very experiential world. And to be in this room here sometime in the next year there will be Grandpa Bredo, but most importantly the story of cryogenics."
It's an additional attraction for the Stanley Hotel, which draws people in who are still fascinated by the book and movie "The Shining," which were inspired by a Stephen King visit to the hotel as well as reports of supernatural activity.
"Don't be surprised if there isn't a hearse parade bringing the escort of Bredo from Nederland to Estes Park… The Denver Funeral Society thinks that they can have 100 to 200 cars as an escort of Bredo to his new resting spot," he said.
LINK: Frozen Dead Guy Days
