Frozen Dead Guys Is Moving, and Grandpa Bredo May Move, Too

The cancellation of Frozen Dead Guy Days seemed to be another nail in the coffin of keeping Colorado weird. For close to twenty years, Nederland had celebrated its resident frozen dead guy, Bredo Morstoel, with a quirky festival that kicked off with a Blue Ball party and continued into the weekend with coffin races, frozen slushy brain-freeze contests, icy turkey bowling, frozen T-shirt competitions and polar plunges.

But despite massive turnouts and considerable media attention, on November 2 Sarah Moseley Martin, co-owner of FDGD with Amanda MacDonald, posted a notice announcing the cancellation of the 2023 event.

The festival got its start in 2002, when the Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce needed a March event to attract tourists during a traditionally slow time of year. The booster group decided to capitalize on the most widely known fact about Nederland: that it was the home of a famous frozen dead guy, Bredo Morstoel.

Morstoel, known affectionately as Grandpa Bredo, lived a rather unremarkable life in a coastal suburb of Oslo until he passed away during a nap in November 1989. His grandson, Trygve Bauge, was and still is passionate about life extension, and saw his grandfather's death as an opportunity to experiment with cryogenic preservation. He shipped the body to Nederland, where he was then living, and built an (illegal) shed to house Grandpa Bredo under blocks of dry ice until the day scientists developed the technology to reanimate him.

For many years, Grandpa Bredo's frozen body remained a secret in the sleepy mountain town. But in 1994, Bauge was deported for visa issues; his mother, Aud, who was living with him, had her permit to stay on the property denied. What would happen to the dead body, she wondered...aloud.

Upon learning of Grandpa Bredo's presence, the town council passed an ordinance stating that it is illegal to have “the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property.” But because of pressure from the Bauges and cryogenic enthusiasts, coupled with the logistical challenge of shipping a frozen body back to Norway, Grandpa Bredo was grandfathered in as a Nederland resident. Today, a local is paid to drive up the mountain every two weeks to visit the Tuff Shed, where he loads Grandpa Bredo with half a ton of dry ice.

So when it came time to decide on the focus of a festival that would draw attention to Nederland, the answer was obvious. “I was the one who pushed for the name,” recalls Teresa Crush Warren, who was president of the chamber at the time. “If you were from Nederland and you went on vacation and someone would ask you where you are from and you would say ‘Nederland, Colorado,’ they would say, ‘Oh! Isn’t that where that frozen dead guy is?’”
Frozen Dead Guy Days was successful from the start, drawing 600 people its first year and steadily growing to crowds of 10,000 to 15,000; it broke even year after year. But in 2011, the chamber went broke and needed to sell off its assets, including the rights to Frozen Dead Guy Days.

Amanda MacDonald, a former event coordinator for the chamber who'd run the festival in 2005, purchased the rights. But with the change from public to private ownership came problems. “In the past, the town had been really supportive,” MacDonald explains. “It was a town effort."

Now, though, the town increased the usage fee for the park where the festival was held and charged for a police presence. The pressure mounted to increase revenue to keep up with escalating costs, and the event ballooned in size and scope: Admission remained free, but there were now multiple beer tents, more tents for 34 bands, a VIP program and more offerings.

The risks of holding an outdoor event in March in Colorado remained constant, however. “My first year, 2012, there were 90 mph winds during the weekend. We lost all that revenue, and that’s the year [the finances] went into the hole. The next year it snowed a foot and a half. ... I ended up putting a lot of debt on credit cards,” MacDonald remembers. “We always came out of the festival in debt.”

MacDonald was overwhelmed. In 2019, friend and longtime volunteer Sarah Moseley Martin purchased 60 percent of the business to add financial heft to the partnership.

Then came the pandemic. Two days before the 2020 Frozen Dead Guys festival was slated to start, Boulder County shut down all events.
Even without COVID, Martin thinks that Frozen Dead Guy Days was on its last legs, a victim of its own success. Every year brought more and more people to the tiny mountain town. And almost every year brought a new town administrator with different rules and attitudes toward the festival. MacDonald was spending most of her time battling the town. "She spent a third of her production time dealing with minutiae with the town,” Martin recalls.

At least Martin was able to secure a grant to help with the 2022 event, and the co-owners were hopeful that the first in-person fest in two years would be both a reset and a time for the town to come together. But the security and logistics needed to run large events had doubled during COVID, and expenses had risen, too. McDonald recalls some of the expenses: a $14,000 deposit for the park; $22,000 for police presence (with the bill presented to the fest a month in advance); $30,000 for additional security; and tent rentals increasing from $30,000 to $70,000 — cash up front. Meanwhile, many of the vendors they had worked with had gone out of business during the pandemic.

MacDonald, Martin and their crew of dedicated volunteers pushed on and made the fest happen — the town of 1,500 saw over 44,000 people come through over the three-day event — but at a steep cost. The pressures of putting on the event got to everybody, and the longstanding friendship between MacDonald and Martin fractured to the point that they are still not on speaking terms.

And the town of Nederland was done with the festival. Administrators were tired of fielding complaints from residents and businesses about the crowd, and set impossible-to-meet standards for the 2023 event — essentially signing its death warrant.

On November 2, after she announced the cancellation, Martin was interviewed by CBS4 about a festival inspired by a man attempting to cheat death that could not postpone its own death any longer.

The next day, though, she got a text message from John Cullen, owner of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. He was interested in buying the rights to Frozen Dead Guy Days.

Cullen founded the Grand Heritage Hotel Group, which currently manages or owns 22 luxury hotels and resorts across the world. But he views the Stanley as the crown jewel. Before he purchased the hotel, it had gone through a string of owners. It was in complete physical and financial disarray when he purchased it out of bankruptcy court for $3.14 million in 1995.
He has spent more than $31 million renovating the circa 1909 hotel, adding a wellness and film center as well as residential condos. He slowly gave up his ownership in the other Grand Heritage hotels (he remains president of the company, however, and runs it out of the Stanley) in order to turn this historic property into a luxury four-star cultural destination for the horror enthusiast. In 2013, he founded the Stanley Film Festival, now known as the “Sundance of horror.”

It was a match made in heaven (or cryogenic limbo): The owners of Frozen Dead Guy Days needed an angel buyer, and the macabre nature of the festival matched the Stanley’s branding and vibe.

From there, things progressed rapidly. Visit Estes Park, that town's tourism group, got involved, and within a few days, MacDonald and Martin were signing offer letters. Sources close to Cullen say the proposed purchase price is about $250,000 — enough to pay off the debts of the co-owners, with a little left over.

“You have to have a real civic-minded blueprint. That’s what Estes Park brings, a blueprint, to deal with large crowds and safety. That's a win, win, win,” Martin says.

Still, the parting has been bittersweet for MacDonald. “Hindsight is 20/20, and fifteen years is a long time,” she says. “I have to let it go, though. It’s outgrown me, and I really hope the spirit does live on.”

Although the final documents have not yet been signed, the plan calls for holding the 2023 Frozen Dead Guy Days in Estes Park over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, March 17 to 19.

And perhaps more than the festival will be moving to Estes Park. A few weekends ago, Cullen traveled to Norway to visit Trygve Bauge, in an effort to persuade him to move Grandpa Bredo. Rumors are swirling that his final resting place might be a historic ice shed on the Stanley’s property — a morbid attraction adding to the hotel’s mystique and keeping him close to his namesake, Frozen Dead Guy Days.