Death In The Funhouse

## Legend Summary

Elmer McCurdy had more fame in his afterlife than his short-lived outlaw career. Unlike most urban legends and myths, this mummified outlaw story is completely true. In 1976, McCurdy’s mummy was displayed in the “Laff in the Dark” exhibit at The Pike. It was then a film crew from the show The Six Million Dollar Man discovered that the “wax” figure was in fact a dry preserved body after the film crew tried to move the prop and the arm made a dry snap and it was revealed to be muscle instead of wax. According to the article from Ripleys Believe It or Not it states, “ The body had sustained significant wear-and-tear, including wind damage resulting in the loss of several fingers, toes, and most of both ears, though it still maintained some wisps of hair—talk about dead ends. To accommodate the noose, a hole had been drilled through its neck, which seeped an unseemly yellow goo.”

## Legend History

Elmer Mccurdy was an early train robber who was killed in a police shootout in October of 1911 after a not-so-successful robbery in which he only stole two jugs of whiskey, forty-six dollars, a coat, a revolver, and a conductor’s watch. Elmer’s cause of death was a bullet lodged in his chest, his body was taken to undertaker Joseph L. Johnson in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, who embalmed his body with a very strong arsenic to keep his body preserved and identifiable. Most unclaimed bodies would be put up on display in funeral homes until the families claimed it. The mortician dressed him in street clothes, put a rifle in his hand, and put him in the corner of the funeral home where he was named “The Bandit Who Never Gave Up”. He was used as an attraction for 5 years and Joseph would charge visitors five cents to see the mummified attraction. Even worse was that the visitors would pay their fee by putting the nickel in the mummy’s mouth. Joseph refused to sell the body to any carnival promoters until 1916 when two men James and Charles Patterson claimed to be McCurdy’s brothers but featured him in their traveling carnival where the body was named  “The Outlaw Who Could Never Be Caught Alive” until Patterson sold the carnival to Louis Sonney in 1922 who displayed his body in the museum of crime. His body was also showcased in multiple sideshows as well lent for movies like “Narcotic” in 1933 and “She Freak” in 1967 until the body was sold along with other wax figures to Ed Liersch, a co-owner of the amusement park “The Pike” in Long Beach, California. Once the Autopsy was done, the body was identified as the poor outlaw from 1911. After decades of this corpse traveling the world for the entertainment of others, Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest in Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma where he was buried next to fellow outlaw Bill Doolin.

## Adaptations of Legend

The only adaptation of this legend was a musical based on the story called Dead Outlaw that will be predicted to debut in 2024. This is a 14-song musical written by David Yazbek about the mummified outlaw’s death. Greg Evans from Deadline states, “He has been haunted by the McCurdy story for thirty years since first hearing it from a friend. A few years ago, he shared the strange tale with his friend and bandmate Della Penna and The Band’s Visit collaborator Moses. Fascinated by what the tale says about money, ambition, fame, memory, and death, Yazbek and Della Benna began writing songs and Moses a narrative.” This discovery is very surprising as this seems to be a legend that does not get much media coverage in recent years. There are not many adaptations of this story.

## Adaptation Analysis

There are similar stories of bodies being used for things like science because they are unclaimed bodies or the funeral home may mix up the bodies and give the donated body to the grieving family instead of their deceased family member. A similar story that may be an urban legend is about a family that kept their daughter’s body on the couch until her flesh eventually melded into the couch. Another version of this is the rumor of Disney having dead bodies buried in the amusement park as well as the rumor of actual skeletons being used for a haunted amusement ride. A personal adaptation would be something like a family keeping a body preserved. A family in denial of a beloved family member’s passing tries to preserve their body as much as possible while passing it on to outsiders as a strange prop. Once the people who preserved the family member pass away, the body is donated to a theatre that uses the body unbeknownst to the theater crew that it is an actual body.

## Works Cited

Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and Emily Harris. “The Sideshow Corpse Hidden in a Fun House.” Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, 2 Apr. 2020, www.ripleys.com/weird-news/elmer-mccurdy. Accessed 9 Oct 2023

Grim Happenings. ‘’Elmer McCurdy – The “hanging man” in a funhouse that was a real corpse’’Grim Happenings, 30 Jan. 2023 Accessed 9 Oct 2023

Evans, Greg. “ ‘The Band’s Visit’ Writers Set New Project: ‘Dead Outlaw’ Musical Based on Bizarre Story of Carnival Corpse. Deadline, 7 Feb 2022. https://deadline.com/2022/02/dead-outlaw-the-bands-visit-broadway-musical-david-yazbek-itamar-moses-carnival-corpse-elmer-mccurdy-1234927665/ Accessed 8 Oct 2023