Each March, the tiny town of Nederland, Colorado springs to life in celebration of one lingering resident – Bredo Morstøl. Morstøl is unlike any other local, dead since the late 1980s and kept intact via cryopreservation.

In 1989, a Norwegian man named Trygve Bauge shipped the corpse of his grandfather, Bredo Mortsøl, to a cryonics facility in California. From 1990 to 1993, Morstøl was stored in liquid nitrogen at the facility.

Then, in 1993, Morstøl’s frozen corpse was brought to Nederland, Colorado, where Bauge and his mother planned on building their own cryonics facility. Their plan soon caught a snag when Bauge was deported from the country with an expired visa. Now on her own, his mother, Aud, kept the corpse of Morstøl frozen in a backyard shed.

Less than two years later, Aud was evicted for inhabiting a home with no electricity or plumbing. Fearing that her father’s corpse would thaw, she made his presence public. It was ordered that Aud remove the body from the town or face punishment in the form of jail time and fines.

While local laws changed to outlaw the storage of a frozen body, an exception ended up being made for Morstøl. Deported grandson Bauge was allowed to make arrangements to keep his grandfather frozen in Nederland. The corpse of Mortsøl remains frozen in Nederland, tended to by designated caretakers for the past 24 years.

Today, locals celebrate the presence of Morstøl with the “Frozen Dead Guy Days” festival each March. It features a number of macabre happenings, including coffin races and a hearse parade. They also give tours of Morstøl’s dwellings – the Tuff Shed.

Here’s a short video tour of the facility that houses the corpse: