It was a pack of lies; McCurdy was taken from the funeral home and used as a sideshow attraction throughout the Southwest. McCurdy was billed as “The Outlaw Who Went Down – Guns Blazing.” The hapless Yankee was now a mummy on display. Preserved by arsenic, McCurdy began to resemble a slowly decomposing Pharaoh.
Sold and resold, McCurdy went from carnivals to wax museums. Oddly, McCurdy was thought not life-like enough when compared to other wax dummies. At one time McCurdy was billed as the “Thousand Year Old Man”.
In 1976, McCurdy was on display in a Long Beach, California funhouse, called “Laff In The Dark”, at 210 A, West Pike Avenue. Luckless McCurdy had been painted orange and hung by his neck with a rope. Due to shrinkage, the once fearsome man now looked like a small fiberglass dummy as he dangled next to a cargo net.
On December 7, 1976, “The Six Million Dollar Man” television series was shooting an episode entitled, “Carnival of Spies” at the funhouse. McCurdy was part of a background scene, when it was decided by the crew to move the orange dummy to a new location. McCurdy’s arm was manhandled and the limb fell off.
As the set dressers tried to glue the appendage back onto what they thought was a dummy, it was discovered the mannequin’s arm was made up of dried flesh and bone. The constabulary was summoned and they had no idea who the human dummy was or how he had died.
The corpse was examined and an autopsy was performed. As McCurdy was worked on, it was discovered that a.32 caliber bullet had entered the corpse’s hip and lodged itself in the pelvis. Another round, which was determined to be the “kill shot,” was found in McCurdy’s chest. It was noted that the orange mummy had been badly sowed together after its arsenic embalming.
The funhouse body contained two more surprises. Deep in the shrunken mummy’s mouth were a 1924-penny and an old ticket stub.
McCurdy was finally identified. The luckless outlaw was shipped back to Oklahoma and buried with great fan fair, by cowboy garbed grave workers.
McCurdy’s was laid to rest in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, on April 22, 1977. For over sixty years, McCurdy’s mummy did not rest in peace! Next to McCurdy’s plot, lies outlaw Bill Doolin’s grave.
To deter high school prankster from digging up the mummy, concrete was poured over the no luck outlaw’s gravesite. One wonders how many other wax museums or funhouses contain mummies, not dummies?
A different kind of mummy was found in 1932 Wyoming. Its lore is more sinister than bad luck McCurdy’s.
Shoshone, Crow, and Comanche legends, tell of evil dwarves, the Nimerigar or Nunnupi, which had immense strength and warred on mankind. It did not matter what sex or age their human quarry was. With glee these fast creatures would kill their prey with poisonous arrows and then eat the corpse. The tan or gray cannibals, lived in the mountains of Wyoming and Idaho. Other tales have the warrior imps dwelling in the basins of the Bighorn and Wild River areas.
Academia considered the stories of ugly man hunting dwarves, to be modern campfire tales. UFO-ologists thought the legends were how Indians conveyed their encounters with alien beings called “Grays”. According to UFO-ologists, the Grays are emotionless, smallish dark creatures, which abduct humans for medical experiments.
In 1932, sixty miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming, lore became fact. Gold prospectors Cecil Main and Frank Carr; dynamited a bluff in the San Pedro Mountains as they searched for mineral veins. The blast uncovered a hidden cave entrance. Main and Carr curiously entered into the excavation. Before them in a fifteen-by-four foot cave was a seated, mummified, tan dwarf. The carcass had a very evil face and a flattened head. The cross-legged find was taken from the cave and sent to medical laboratories for examination.
The remains were estimated to be anywhere from fourteen to nineteen inches tall. The creature looked like a big nosed man with heavy eyelids. Debunkers ridiculed the relic and judged the discovery to be a mummified fetus.
That was an impossible explanation. The specimen had a full set of canine like teeth and the bones of an adult human. The sinister looking carrion was X- rayed. It was determined the hominid’s flat upper cranium was the result of a vicious blow. Trauma of incredible force, from a blunt object had flattened the creature’s human-like skull.
Further examinations revealed the creature had a broken clavicle and a damaged spine. It was estimated, “The Thing From The Cave”, had died around the age of sixty-five. A goo or brain tissue was found on the top of the dwarf’s crushed head.
Who or what was this humanoid? Where did it come from? Why was the small man killed and then propped up in a sealed cave? What could account for its mummification? The evil-looking being was nicknamed, “The Prairie Mountain Mummy”.
The Wyoming corpse was shown in sideshows throughout the USA. Many people who viewed the grim creature would have to turn away. The humanoid’s continence was of disdain; its cruel face struck fear into the hearts of the curious.
Incredibly in 1950, the small mummy was stolen. Today there is a large reward offered for the eerie corpse. When found, it is hoped the atrophied body will be tested by state-of-the-art technology. The inquest would verify what kind of creature is the evil-looking imp?
Many anthropologists claim the small man was a freak of nature. Through an act of mercy the dwarf was liquidated by a fellow Indian with a blow to the head. Bibliomaniacs attest that northern plains Indians dispatched their lame and practiced infanticide to keep tribes strong.
A broken spine and clavicle, plus a smashed skull is not mercy killing. The mummy’s wounds makes one think it was killed in combat, by blows from a club. Why would the vile-looking biped be put into a sealed cave. What is the significance of that? Indians of Wyoming did not bury their dead in caves.
How could a long-dead creature still have goo like blood atop its crushed head? Could this creature be half human and half alien. Or was it a hoax? Was the imp a genetic human misfit? Was the dwarf a life form from another planet? Lets hope the stolen, “What Is It”, has not been destroyed. Reader, are you not curious what a DNA test would reveal concerning this Wyoming manthing? (3)
THE FOX AND THE FOUR PARACHUTES
(CRIMINAL MASTERMIND)
On Thanksgiving Eve, November 24,1971, Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket at the Portland International Airport. The brown haired man’s destination was the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Erroneously, Cooper was labeled by the media as; D.B. Cooper.
Airports in 1971 did not have metal detectors or luggage inspectors. While in the terminal, Cooper kept to himself. He wore a businessman’s suit and raincoat. Not in a hurry, the loafer-wearing Cooper boarded the plane as the second-to-last man. The non-talkative passenger carried a large briefcase and wore a Hamburg hat. Cooper sat by himself in the back of a Northwest Oriental passenger jet; he looked like a strong harmless fellow.
The flight took off at 4:35 PM. The liner carried thirty-seven passengers, along with three cockpit personnel and two stewardesses. The Thanksgiving holiday and flight time had made for a very small load; nearly two thirds of the jet’s available seats were empty.
Cooper gave the impression, of a fellow who would get queasy at the site of blood. In reality, clean cut Cooper was a Trojan Horse, a silent assassin who had total control over his mind and body. After takeoff, Cooper handed stewardess, Florence Schaffner a note. The stewardess thought the letter was a typical amorous message from a blue-boy passenger, complete with name and hotel number. Schaffner pocketed the bulletin without a glance.
On her way back to the galley, Cooper calmly informed Schaffner his briefcase contained an explosive, she should read her note. Schaffner read the paper and informed the cockpit crew, who radioed the ground tower. Schaffner went back to Cooper,