A man whose body was frozen 30 years ago is finally being moved after it was shipped to the US.
Bredo Morstøl, born in 1900, worked as a director of parks and recreation in a county near Oslo, Norway, for over 30 years.
He had a daughter, and he enjoyed painting, skiing, and fishing. His death at 89, following years of cardiovascular issues, was peaceful.
But it was his afterlife that would turn into a story fit for science fiction, as detailed by Popular Mechanics.
Nicknamed "Grandpa Bredo," Morstøl has spent the past three decades frozen in a makeshift cryonics set-up inside a Tuff shed in Nederland, Colorado.
His body became part of a bizarre experiment, thanks to his grandson, Trygve Bauge, who was determined to explore the possibility of human immortality through cryonics.
Cryonics, a controversial and experimental process that involves freezing human corpses in hopes of future revival, remains on the cutting edge of science.
There are no guarantees that Grandpa Bredo - or the hundreds of others who have undergone cryopreservation - will ever be brought back to life.
In fact, Grandpa Bredo’s circumstances were far from ideal. He was stored without liquid nitrogen or advanced technology, and crucially, he did not give consent before his death.
In 1993, Bauge moved to Nederland, Colorado, bringing his frozen grandfather with him.
In a makeshift arrangement, he stored Morstøl’s body in a shed behind his home, packed in dry ice. However, when Bauge’s visa expired, he was deported from the U.S., leaving his grandfather’s frozen body behind.
Local authorities soon discovered the preserved corpse and initially planned to have it removed due to local laws prohibiting the storage of "the whole or any part of the person, body, or carcass of a human being or animal" on private property.
However, Bauge, fighting from Norway, along with support from Nederland residents, managed to secure permission for the body to remain where it was.
By 2002, Morstøl, affectionately referred to as “Grandpa Bredo,” had become a central figure in the town’s quirky tourism scene, inspiring the creation of the annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival.
Despite its popularity, financial challenges have threatened the continuation of the festival.
The owner of the Stanley Hotel in nearby Estes Park saw an opportunity. Famous for inspiring Stephen King’s novel The Shining, the hotel seemed a fitting location for a festival connected to a "frozen dead guy."
His preservation now follows a more conventional cryonics process, involving a bath of liquid nitrogen.
The move was overseen by James Arrowood, president and CEO of Alcor, a nonprofit cryonics lab in Scottsdale, Arizona. Alcor, which has handled over 230 bodies since 1972, took charge of the process.
According to Arrowood, his team, including former Navy SEALs, moved the body at around 4:00AM, carefully transferring Grandpa Bredo from his storage box into a van.
He was quickly repacked and safely transported through the mountains to his new home at the hotel.
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