Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, inside a donated Tuff Shed, a Norwegian grandfather named Bredo Morstøl has been lying on dry ice since 1993. He died in 1989. A designated caretaker hauls three-quarters of a ton of dry ice up the mountain once a month to keep him frozen. And every March, 25,000 people show up to race coffins down a hill in his honor.

This is not a horror movie. This is Nederland, Colorado — population 1,500 — and this is the true story of how a small mountain town tried to outlaw a frozen corpse, failed, and decided to throw a party instead.

The Grandson With a Plan

Bredo Morstøl was born in Isfjorden, Norway, in 1900. He was a parks and recreation director, a painter, a fisherman — by all accounts, a perfectly ordinary man. What happened after he died was anything but.

His grandson, Trygve Bauge, had moved to Colorado in 1980, partly — as he told reporters — "to be safe from nuclear war."[1] Trygve was a character: he founded the Boulder Polar Bear Club, got arrested for joking about hijacking a plane at Stapleton Airport, and was convinced that bathing in ice water would extend his life.[2] When Bredo died in November 1989, Trygve had him immediately packed in ice, shipped to a cryonics facility in San Leandro, California, and stored in liquid nitrogen.[3]

The plan was immortality — or at least a shot at it. Trygve wanted to build his own cryonics facility in the mountains. In 1993, he moved Grandpa's body to Nederland and stashed him in a garden shed next to an unfinished, disaster-proof house he was building with his mother, Aud.

Everything Falls Apart (Except Grandpa)

Trygve's visa expired. He was deported back to Norway in 1994, leaving Aud alone with a frozen grandfather, no electricity, no plumbing, and an unfinished concrete bunker of a house.[3] When the town evicted her for code violations, Aud panicked. If she left, who would keep Grandpa frozen?

She did the only thing she could think of: she told a local reporter.

The reporter told city hall. City hall told the police. The mayor, cops, and press raced to the property, lights flashing. They opened the shed. Inside: Bredo Morstøl, frozen stiff in a homemade aluminum casket packed with dry ice, right next to a second frozen body — a man named Al Campbell from Chicago, whose family had contracted with Trygve for the same service.[2]

Within 24 hours, it was international news.

The Grandfather Clause (Literally)

Nederland held an emergency town meeting and passed a new ordinance — Section 7-34 of the Municipal Code — making it illegal to keep "the whole or any part of the person, body, or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive" on any property.[3]

They ordered Aud to remove the body by March 6, 1995, or face ten days in jail and a $600 fine.[4]

But here's where it gets weird — weirder. Trygve, now an ocean away, launched an aggressive internet campaign from Norway, posting on cryonics forums and emailing journalists. The publicity snowballed. Suddenly Nederland wasn't just a town with a frozen body problem — it was a town with a brand. The council buckled and added an exception to their own ordinance. A literal grandfather clause, for an actual grandfather.[2]

Al Campbell's family reclaimed his body and had him cremated. But Bredo stayed.

The Party Starts

By 2002, Nederland had done what any self-respecting quirky mountain town would do: turned the whole thing into a festival.[3] Frozen Dead Guy Days became an annual celebration held every March, featuring coffin races — teams of seven "pallbearers" building makeshift coffins and sprinting through obstacle courses carrying a teammate inside — plus a hearse parade, a "Grandpa" lookalike contest, a polar plunge into frozen water, snow sculpture contests, and a dance called "Grandpa's Blue Ball."[3]

The local Glacier Ice Cream company even created a flavor for the occasion: "Frozen Dead Guy" — blue ice cream with crushed Oreos and sour gummy worms.[3]

By 2019, the festival was drawing an estimated 25,000 visitors to a town of 1,500.[5] In 2023, after a falling out between organizers and the town, the festival relocated to nearby Estes Park. And Grandpa moved too — to the Stanley Hotel (yes, the one that inspired The Shining), where the Alcor Life Extension Foundation helped set up a proper cryonic chamber. The hotel now calls it the "International Cryonics Museum" and charges for tours.[6]

Why It Matters

Bredo Morstøl has now been dead for 37 years and frozen for 33 of them. His caretaker still delivers dry ice once a month. His grandson still believes science will one day bring him back.

But the real story isn't about cryonics — it's about what happens when a community encounters something genuinely bizarre and decides to embrace it rather than fight it. Nederland tried the fight. They passed the law, issued the fines, ordered the eviction. None of it worked. So they threw a festival instead. And in doing so, they turned a dead man in a shed into something no one expected: a beloved local institution.

Sources

  1. The Frozen Dead Guy – Grandpa Bredo — Legends of America
  2. Grandpa Bredo Full History — Legends of America
  3. Frozen Dead Guy Days — Wikipedia
  4. The Story of Bredo Morstøl, Colorado's Frozen Dead Guy — Denver Gazette
  5. Frostivarians Unite: Frozen Dead Guy Days Ushers in 19th Year — Boulder Daily Camera
  6. Story — Frozen Dead Guy Days Official Site