In 1976, one of the strangest incidents in forensic science took place in Pike's amusement
park in Long Beach, California. A film crew who had come to shoot a film in a funhouse
soon discovered that one of the exhibits was not what it seemed to be. They had come across
a thin figure hanging from a rope. When a crew member tried to move it, the mannequin's
arm came off in his hands. Sticking out of the elbow was a human bone. When the pathologist
unclothed the mummy, he found a figure covered in wax and red paint. It was as hard as stone,
so petrified that the pathologist needed a chisel to cut through it. By the end of the
autopsy, there was no doubt the mummy hanging in the funhouse was a human being. Historians
believed that the mummy was an outlaw named Elmer McCurdy, shot in a gunfight in 1911.
Using a technique called medial superimposition, scientists compared his picture taken at the
time of his death and the skull of the funhouse mummy. They matched perfectly. After 60 years,
Elmer McCurdy was no longer just an anonymous sideshow attraction in a house of horrors.
Forensic science had given him a name and a face.
Thank you.
A group of kids decided to spend a night inside a fun house, so after the fair closes and
everybody leaves, they break inside.
It's full of the usual thrills and chills and things designed to terrify children and
adults who venture inside.
The macabre maze makes it difficult for the group of kids to get around and, eventually,
among the startling surprises, they come across a hanging corpse.
Suddenly, a prankster in the group shoves one of his friends to scare him and they accidentally
bump into the dead hanging man, knocking its hand off.
The kids pick up the hand off the floor and shake it at each other jokingly, but soon
realize the hand is very old and very real.
The hanging man isn't a prop at all, but a real, dead body.
All the kids run in terror out of the house of horrors.
Afterward, they notify the police and, when detectives came upon the corpse, they knew
then and there that it was real.
The skin was stretched tight across its face as though the person had starved to death.
The corpse was taken to a morgue for an autopsy.
The autopsy results aided the investigation and it was soon discovered that the cadaver
was an early 19th century train robber who was caught in the act and killed in a shootout
with the local town sheriff.
Since no one claimed the body, it was taken to a mortician who then used it to advertise
his business.
He embalmed and preserved the corpse and stood it as a statue in the corner of his workplace
for public display.
When people started coming by just to see the dead man, he began to charge admission.
Some showmen from a freak show got word of the mummy and convinced the mortician that
they were relatives of the dead man.
He reluctantly released the corpse to them who then began to display the corpse in their
show.
It traveled the country as a real dead outlaw but after the freak show disbanded, it was
traded to a pawn shop dealer who then sold it to a props collector.
The props collector offered it to an associate who used it to decorate the fun house.
