The Tale of Elmer McCurdy
There are countless funfair urban legends, but the tale of Elmer McCurdy is one of the most famous - and horrible! Worst of all, this grisly tale is completely true! You'll never look at a macabre prop on a ghost train once you've heard about how Elmer McCurdy met his end - and what happened afterwards.
Elmer McCurdy was born in Maine, USA on January 1st, 1880. He grew up to be a soldier, and was trained in the use of nitroglycerin for explosives. After leaving the army and becoming an alcoholic, he became an outlaw and criminal, taking part in a series of daring train robberies that saw him using his army skills to pilfer silver and money from banks and trains in Oklahoma and Kansas.
After a few somewhat-successful heists, Elmer McCurdy met his end in 1911 in a botched train robbery. After picking the wrong train, McCurdy and his gang only managed to get away with a few dollars, some bottles of whiskey, and the personal possessions of the passengers. A few days later, detectives traced McCurdy to a hay shed and waited for him to emerge. The outlaw spotted the detectives and started shooting at them, but the officers returned fire, and killed him with a gunshot to the chest.
While this story is adrenaline-pumping enough, the true grisly facts are still to come! McCurdy's body lay unclaimed and unwanted, and the undertaker refused to bury him until he had been paid for his services. He embalmed the corpse to keep it fresh, and then in a flash of macabre entrepreneurship, he opted to charge people to view the dead body, calling him "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up."
One day, a man appeared at the undertaker claiming to be McCurdy's brother. He paid the fee and recovered the body. However, this man was actually part of the Great Patterson Carnival Shows, and they continued displaying McCurdy's body in their travelling show, taking the corpse across the country for spectators to gawp at.
The travelling carnival was sold to a new owner, and eventually McCurdy's cadaver appeared alongside wax figures in the Museum of Crime. It may be around this point that confusion began to emerge as to whether the corpse was real or not - and over time, the body appeared in films, at other waxwork exhibitions and even at a show at Mount Rushmore. Eventually, its owners decided it was too gruesome and 'not lifelike-enough', so they sold it off again.
Eventually, McCurdy's corpse arrived at a California amusement centre, where it was displayed in a fun house, hanging from some gallows. We Are Tricycle note that this sounds like an exceptionally-scary funhouse! Ours typically have more kid-friendly designs!
McCurdy's real identity was discovered in 1976, when staff from The Six Million Dollar Man were filming at the amusement centre. They moved the corpse, breaking its arm off, and discovered that it was not made of wax, but was instead real human flesh! A coroner examined the body and made a horrifying discovery - a 1924 penny, plus ticket stubs to the side Show and to the Museum of Crime were found inside its mouth!
Investigators eventually managed to identify the corpse and he was laid to rest in a grave in Oklahoma. Cement was poured over the gravesite to ensure that Elmer McCurdy never appears at a funfair again.
But the legend lives on! Some think this is just an urban legend - but this is the true tale of when a corpse was mistaken for a waxwork and displayed at a fairground funhouse.
