The Funhouse Mummy

"The Funhouse Mummy"

The Myth:
A prop at a carnival was discovered not to be made
of the usual combination of papier mache and carni
spit, but human skin and bone. All the little kiddies
at the haunted house had been poking and giggling
at a real, mummified dead body.

The Truth:
Apparently the smell wasn't just coming from the convict
manning the corndog stand. Back in 1976, a camera
crew filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man
began to set up in the haunted house at the Nu-Pike
Amusement Park in Long Beach, Calif.

As they were moving aside a "hanging man" prop, they
accidentally knocked off its arm and discovered human
bones inside. Bionic, this poor sap wasn't.

The story gets stranger. The body was actually that of
criminal mastermind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in
a shootout after robbing a train in 1911. The princely sum
old Elmer got killed for? $46 (and two jugs of whiskey).

McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, and
apparently the guy was so darn pleased with his work
that he propped up the corpse in the funeral home as
evidence of his skills. People were charged 5 cents to
see the corpse, which they paid by dropping a nickel
in the cadaver's mouth. Remember that little bit of history
the next time somebody turns their nose up at you for
liking Hostel 2.

Think it can't get any stranger? Oh, you naïve fool. After
several years of raking in the nickels (how exactly these
coins were retrieved after being dropped into the corpse's
mouth is something probably best left to the imagination)
our enterprising undertaker's scheme was ruined when
McCurdy's brothers showed up to claim him. Of course,
these guys weren't his brothers at all, but wily carnival
promoters. From that point on, McCurdy's mummy went
on a morbid mystery tour all around America, popping up
at carnivals all over the country before finally coming to
rest in Long Beach.

McCurdy is now buried in Oklahoma. Because McCurdy
apparently had the most entertaining corpse in history,
they prevented anyone else from taking him on tour by
dumping concrete on top of the casket. No, really.

******************************************************

"The Curiously Realistic Decoration"

The Legend:
What was thought to be your typically charming Halloween
decoration depicting a lynched woman hanging from a
tree, turns out to be a genuine suicide.

The Truth:
In the town of Frederica, Delaware, a 42-year-old woman,
perhaps distraught by the fact that she lived in Delaware,
hung herself from a tree near a busy road on a Tuesday
night. The body managed to hang there until the next day
and was viewed by many unwitting (or perhaps retarded)
spectators before somebody realized it wasn't a
decoration and finally called the police.

Once again it's the lack of complaints from passers-by
that amaze us. Even if the hanging thing wasn't a body,
it was something that looked exactly like one and would
be considered an extremely distasteful Halloween
decoration (unless she put on a wacky witch's costume
before doing the deed).

With the political correctness these days, you'd have
expected two special city council meetings and 30
letters to the editor within the first ten minutes of
someone seeing it.

We can't help but wonder, if the person who eventually
called the police hadn't bothered, how much longer
would the body have hung there? This happened five
days before Halloween. Add five days of decomposition
to the equation and suddenly you have something a
whole lot more terrifying.

Also, did the woman plan this? She knew what time of year
it was, and intentionally hung herself in a public place. Did
she want her corpse to blend in with the bed sheet ghosts
and stuffed witches around the neighborhood? If so, it
sounds like she may have been a fascinating person.
Received on Tue Jan 29 20:49:50 2008