Bredo Morstoel, or as he is known around here, Grandpa in the Tuff Shed, was born in Norway in 1900. He stopped breathing in 1989, but is currently awaiting re-animation at some undetermined time in the future. This is the Life Extension Concept: Grandpa is not truly dead, he’s just waiting until they can fix him and bring him back to life. The concept of cryogenics has been around for a few years.

Bredo and Trygve

Grandpa Bredo died in Norway, was cryogenically prepared and frozen in Los Angeles, and currently resides in Nederland, in a Tuff Shed emblazoned with the logo of the Denver radio station 103.5 The Fox that arranged for the shed to be donated. The shed sits next to a partially finished, concrete covered, earthquake proof, fire proof, bomb proof metal supported structure that was intended to be the main building of the Life Extension Institute. The main building was to connect underground with the vault where the cryogenic capsules were to be stored. This was the intention of Bredo’s Grandson, Trygve Bauge.

Trygve financed the land and buildings on a slim budget, always intending to get a couple of “paying customers” fairly fast to help defray expenses. The cryogenic vault was a tin garden shed and the Dewar flasks for the liquid nitrogen were not in the budget yet. Trygve was keeping the cryonic facility operating on a shoestring, using dry ice to keep things at a relatively warm—cryonically speaking—but somewhat frosty –109°F.

Things were progressing slow but steady towards the full Institute concept, since there were now two bodies in the cryonic “vault,” when Trygve ran afoul of the Law. Trygve always felt that he was a citizen of the world and he didn’t have to show them no stinking Green Card. Even this would have probably been tolerated except that every time he could, Trygve would call attention to his plight, using the media and making the INS out to be idiots. You can break their rules, but don’t call them stupid!

It became necessary for INS to do their duty, and this they promptly did by snatching Trygve and hustling his butt off to Norway. ’Nuff said.

Unfortunately, during the media brouhaha surrounding Trygve’s deportation and abandonment of his elderly mother, Aud Morstoel (Bredo’s daughter), she happened to mention to a reporter that she just didn’t know how she was going to take care of the two bodies in the shed. Up until this time, there were probably only a half dozen people in the whole world that had any idea of what was coming into being on the property in Nederland. Certainly none of the media nor the quickly summoned police knew anything at all about cryogenically preserved bodies.

Once the furor had died down and everybody realized there was no crime, the locals decided that it bloody well ought to be a crime to have dead bodies lying about, and decided to fix that little loophole in local ordinances. Thus, Nederland, Colorado has one of the few laws in the books regarding the keeping of corpses on private property. It is strictly verboten, but due to the vagaries of the law, one cannot make a current situation illegal, and therefore Grandpa Bredo was grandfathered in, and is allowed to remain as a resident alien. Once his family heard about all the ruckus, Grandpa’s roommate, Al, had to go back to Chicago where his family stuck him in the ground.

When Trygve left, he prevailed on some friends to continue to keep Bredo’s body as cold as possible with dry ice, in hopes of someday returning to continue his plan for a proper cryogenic facility. After his deportation, Trygve searched the world for a company that could temporarily sustain his dream.

After looking for over a year, Trygve was able to obtain the specialized services of a company called Delta Tech to ensure environmental continuity in the maintenance of the only do-it-yourself cryogenic life extension facility in the world. The planetary ecologists at Delta have maintained Grandpa Bredo’s environment for over seven years.

During this time, the old tin shed was blown to pieces and a timely radio promotion stunt got Bredo a brand new, bigger shed just in the nick of time.

Psychics have been consulted several times, to try to contact Bredo. Every TV station in the area has done their version of the Grandpa story. Grandpa has been in every local newspaper. He’s been in The National Enquirer. National Geographic Magazine did a portion of a cryonics special on Grandpa. TV personality A. Whitney Brown interviewed Grandpa using psychics for a special news report. Inside Edition, Strange Universe and Globo have all done TV specials. There was even a short documentary feature done by a promising local director.

Grandpa Bredo appears to be more famous dead than most of us ever are alive. But he’s not dead. Really. He’s just awaiting re-animation. It is extremely important to maintain his environment, because if it fails, he will be killed.

Two years ago a US Census taker came to the facility. When he was told what the situation was, he became quite pale and stuttered, “I’m putting down no one’s home!” and promptly left.

In 2001, the Delta staff and Fox Radio gave Grandpa a New Millennium Birthday Party… He was 101.

A slice of cake was put in with Grandpa to keep until the next millennium.