Terrifying & True | The Funhouse Mummy: Elmer McCurdy’s Horrifying Tale This Halloween

This Halloween, jump into the eerie tale of Elmer McCurdy—a true crime deep dive into urban legends and America’s carnival underbelly. In 1976, a seemingly innocuous Halloween haunt took a terrifying turn when a “mannequin” on a Long Beach dark ride wasn’t a prop—it was a real human corpse. In 1976, a TV crew at The Pike’s Laff in the Dark discovered human bone after a stunt arm snapped. Forensics exposed arsenic embalming, a copper bullet jacket, and a 1924 penny with old carnival tickets—breadcrumbs that led to Elmer McCurdy, a bungling Oklahoma train robber killed in 1911. For more than six decades, his body was bought, sold, and exhibited in sideshows and roadside museums, then misfiled as a prop and hung on a ride—until investigators finally confirmed the truth and laid him to rest under concrete in Guthrie (1977).

This is a true-crime deep dive into America’s carnival underbelly, the commodification of death, and how an outlaw became the Funhouse Mummy.

Inside this episode:

• The 1976 discovery at The Pike: the moment the “dummy” bled clues—arsenic, bullet jacket, 1924 penny, tickets.
• McCurdy’s final heist (1911): the botched robbery, the posse’s shot, and an undertaker who wouldn’t release the body.
• The carnival con: how promoters “claimed” the corpse and rebranded it coast-to-coast for decades.
• Forensic ID & burial (1977): the paper trail that ended with concrete sealing a grave in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
• Ethics & aftermath: why outlaw mummies vanished—and what the case says about spectacle vs. dignity.

If you’re searching funhouse mummy, Elmer McCurdy, Long Beach funhouse corpse, The Pike Laff in the Dark, outlaw mummy Oklahoma, arsenic embalming, sideshow history, or a true crime podcast about real “haunted” carnivals, this episode is your map. Follow and share for spooky-season specials all October.

We’re telling that story tonight.

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🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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