Convergence. At Roadside America, we relish the moments when the capricious ley lines of tourism intersect, creating something strange and new. And involving three disparate oddball roadside attractions.
So it was recently when John Cullen, owner of the eerie Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado —- where Steven King was inspired to write The Shining —- announced that he was partnering with Alcor Cryonics — which gives tours of its deep-freeze facility of “corpsical” humans in Scottsdale, Arizona — to relocate famous Frozen Dead Guy “Grandpa” Bredo Morstoel from his long-time storage shed in Nederland, Colorado, to the Stanley Hotel’s ice house – and then open it as tourist attraction.
Well, well, and well.
Cullen has said that at some point in 2023 he hopes to have a hearse parade to escort Grandpa Bredo, who’s been dead since 1989, from Nederland to Estes Park. He’s also said that Bredo’s new ice house home will be “experiential” for tourists — a pledge that has us shivering with its possibilities — as well as a place to keep Grandpa frozen in liquid nitrogen at 200 degrees below zero.
Cullen flew to Oslo, Norway to get the approval of Trygve Bauge, Grandpa’s grandson. Bauge reportedly approved, and said that the goal of keeping Grandpa frozen was not to bring him back from the dead, but to keep him viable until future science can resurrect Bredo as a younger version of himself.
That may take awhile, so a long-term future for the Frozen Dead Guy as an attraction seems promising.
