A dead Norwegian man becomes a small town’s most lively civic booster.

The residents of Nederland, Colorado, are living proof of the old adage “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Only, in this case, life handed them not tart citrus fruit, but the frozen corpse of an elderly Norwegian gentleman. From this grisly discovery the locals created a publicity bonanza that’s put this town just outside Denver on the map—at least for one weekend each winter, when it hosts a macabre but memorable little soiree called Frozen Dead Guy Days.

It all began on a decidedly less festive note, back in Norway on November 6, 1989. That’s when lifelong resident Bredo Morstoel died quietly in his sleep at the age of eighty-eight. Instead of laying the body to rest, his grandson, Trygve Bauge (who had lived in Boulder, Colorado, since 1980), decided to have him preserved with an eye toward reviving him at some point in the future. So the corpse was packed in dry ice and shipped to a company in Oakland, California, where poor Morstoel was placed in a steel coffin and immersed in bitterly cold liquid nitrogen for nearly four years. Then, in 1993, he was moved from Oakland to Nederland.

Bauge, who was interested in the field of cryonics (freezing dead people in hopes of someday resurrecting them), wanted to open his own facility there and had purchased some land for the purpose. Grandpa was to be the first client. But shortly after the corpse was moved to a metal shed on the property, Bauge, who was in the United States on an expired visa, was deported back to Norway. Not long afterward, his mother, Aud, was evicted from the Nederland property and, because she also carried an expired visa, sent home. But before departing, she told a local reporter about the dead body and her fears that in her absence it would be allowed to thaw.

When local authorities visited the site, they found not one but two corpses, the other being that of an individual identified only as “Al,” who was apparently the second client of Bauge’s budding cryonics company. When Al’s family members were informed, the body was shipped out and buried.

The temporary resting place of “Grandpa” Bredo Morstoel.

Which left only Grandpa. According to the local paper, the Daily Camera, when Nederland mayor Bryan Brown learned of the discovery, he said, “I feel like I’m in a David Lynch movie.”

Plenty of news organizations agreed. The situation ignited a blaze of publicity back in 1994, when media from around the world descended on the tiny town. The horrified residents quickly passed an ordinance making it illegal to keep dead humans or parts of dead humans on one’s property. However, because Morstoel was already there, he was granted a grandfather clause that allowed him to stay. Indeed, he became an unofficial mascot of sorts. The rickety shed he was kept in was replaced with a sturdier structure. Every four or five weeks, a technician replenishes the dry ice that keeps the steel coffin chilled. The roughly $700-a-month price tag is covered by the ever-faithful Trygve and Aud.

Nederland’s annual festival brings in thousands of visitors for everything from coffin races to a dance. Yes, there are souvenir T-shirts.

It wasn’t until eight years after the original discovery, however, that the Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce decided they could turn the frozen corpse in their midst into a public relations gold mine. Deciding it was time to reanimate the story of Grandpa, they inaugurated Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2002, a late-winter festival in March that draws around eight thousand people. “Festivities” include coffin races, a painful-sounding variant of the wet T-shirt contest called the frozen T-shirt contest, a Grandpa look-alike pageant (presumably premortem), a champagne tour of the shed housing the postanimate (if you’re a pessimist) or preanimate (if you’re an optimist) remains of Bredo Morstoel, and a not-the-least-bit-disrespectful-sounding dance called Grandpa’s Blue Ball. “It’s like one of those things that never goes away, like a mole,” local resident Teresa Warren told the Daily Camera. “People now associated Nederland with a frozen dead guy, and we can’t make it disappear, so why not create an economic opportunity for our town?”

Why not, indeed. If you think about it, perhaps not too deeply, is it any stranger than the festival in nearby Fruita, Colorado, honoring Mike the Headless Chicken, an unfortunate rooster who survived for years after having his head chopped off? Well, perhaps it’s just a shade stranger, when you throw in the fact that the town installed viewing stands around the shed so folks could get a better look at Grandpa. Or that the chamber of commerce website offers a full line of Frozen Dead Guy souvenirs, from hats to posters to T-shirts.

But that’s okay. Capitalism is capitalism, and you’ve got to do whatever it takes to grease the wheels of commerce. The town of Nederland may be hopping during Frozen Dead Guy Days, but the rest of the year it’s pretty much dead—just like its most famous resident.