Nearly half a century ago, a crew member on a film shoot was horrified to discover that a spooky corpse hanging in a Long Beach fun house was not made of plastic, but real flesh and bone.
How did the corpse wind up there? Dylan Thuras, co-founder and creative director of Atlas Obscura, explains:
“I think the best place to start this story is at the end. The year is 1977, and you are a crew member shooting an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man.
You're on set inside a place called the House of Horrors in Long Beach, California. It’s the kind of place where you sit in one of those little cars, and it takes you around, and then things jump out at you. There are wax mannequins, and skeletons, and demons. And a little train goes clunk clunk clunk as we drive around.
So you're getting ready to shoot Steve Austin going around on this silly ride. And as you make your way to the end of this little trip, you look up and there's a final attraction: a man hanging from a noose.
This orange, waxy face is staring down at you. And you’ve got to get this space ready to go. It's time to get this crummy, hanging mannequin out of the way. You reach up, and you grab the hand of this hanging man and you give a hard tug.
And instead of pulling down the mannequin, the whole arm comes off.
And it's kind of funny, everybody laughs. But then you look at the arm you're holding. And it's not some plastic molded thing. It is a human bone in real clothes.
The ride is called ‘Laff In The Dark.’ But it just got a lot less funny.
So you call the LA coroner, and they come and they examine this strange, ancient-seeming corpse. And the story just gets weirder. In his mouth is a corroded penny dated to 1924. The body is riddled with gunshot wounds, but the bullets are over 70 years old. And, irony of ironies, in his pockets are ticket stubs to a wax museum.
This is Elmer McCurdy.
Elmer McCurdy was born on New Year's Day in 1880, but he did not lead a particularly charmed life. He was born in rural Maine to a 17-year-old mom, and he was raised by his uncle. He had no idea who his mother was until he was a much older child. And he grew up to be an alcoholic.
He got arrested a lot, mostly for public drunkenness. And in 1907, when he was still just 27 years old, he joined the United States Army, where he actually did okay. He was honorably discharged after three years, and in the army, Elmer learned a useful skill. He learned how to use nitroglycerin. Elmer decided to use that knowledge to try and rob banks and trains.
Elmer’s luck was terrible. Almost every robbery went terribly wrong. In one robbery, he blew up the safe with all the money. In another robbery, he couldn't get the explosives to go, and so he had to run away with just coins. And in a third robbery, he sets himself up to rob this train with supposedly $400,000 on it, but they stopped the wrong train and end up stealing 46 bucks, some whiskey, and the train conductor’s comb.
Elmer is disappointed. He goes back to drink whiskey in a hay shed, and he's woken up in the morning by the barking of bloodhounds. Sheriffs surround him, and Elmer makes his last stand. He shoots the sheriff. They shoot back, and after an hour the shooting stops.
No one came to claim his body. No friends, no fellow train robbers. So he's embalmed, and he's embalmed using a special recipe meant to last an extra long time, in the cases where it might be months or years before anyone shows up to claim the body.
The embalmer says, ‘Okay, this is fine work. Let me show it off.’ So he props Elmer up in the lobby of his funeral home. And for just a small coin, you could come and see this lonely, unloved bandit for yourself. To pay, you put the coin right in Elmer’s mouth.
Eventually, two men do call up the funeral office. They say, ‘Hello, we're Elmer’s long-lost brothers. And what have you done to him? Oh my God, give me this body so I can show him some respect.’
Elmer did not have any long-lost brothers. The brothers are James and Charles Patterson. They own Great Patterson Carnival shows. And they just got themselves a new exhibit.
The corpse of Elmer McCurdy travels across the country in a traveling museum of crime. In 1933, Elmer’s acquired by the maker of an exploitation film about drugs. The corpse is placed in the lobby of theaters, shown to be a dead dope fiend whom the director claimed had been killed after he had robbed a drugstore.
By this point, the body has shrunk. It has mummified. And Elmer’s corpse spends almost 20 years in a warehouse. It then makes random appearances in low-budget horror films. It's bought by the Hollywood Wax Museum, but Elmer’s caught in a windstorm while part of the wax museum, and he loses his ears, fingers, toes and becomes an attraction too ugly to exhibit.
It’s sold to a basement buyer: the operator of the ‘Laff In The Dark’ ride in Long Beach, California.
After being discovered by The Six Million Dollar Man crew, an investigation is launched. And eventually they figure out the story of this mummy: this man who suffered humiliation in life and in death.
And on April 22, 1977, Elmer McCurdy was brought to the Boot Hill section of the cemetery in Oklahoma. He was buried under two feet of concrete to make sure no one would ever steal or exhibit him again. But Elmer finally got some respect. When he was buried, over 300 people came to the funeral.
It was undoubtedly the single most love Elmer McCurdy ever got in life or death.”
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.