During a recent interview, Von Freeman’s phone hardly stopped buzzing. Calls, texts, and notifications from his team kept cutting into the conversation as the Frozen Dead Guy Days coordinator talked through the logistics of bringing one of Colorado’s strangest festivals back to Estes Park. The interruptions felt fitting for an event that now stretches across multiple venues, draws tens of thousands of visitors and requires what Freeman describes as an enormous team behind the scenes.
“It takes hundreds and hundreds of people to produce Frozen Dead Guy Days,” Freeman said. “I know you hear my phone dinging; it’s just non-stop. It takes an army. It’s not just me. I’m a caretaker. I’m almost like a conductor, and I hire the best producers in the world to help me run this festival.”
That work comes to a head the weekend of March 27-29, when Frozen Dead Guy Days returns to Estes Park with its signature coffin races, live music, costume culture, games, art and side events stretching from downtown bars to The Stanley Hotel.
The main festival takes place Saturday, March 28, with general admission priced at $55 for adults and $30 for children ages 2 to 12. Children younger than 2 get in free. Along with the Saturday centerpiece, the weekend includes the Frozen Dead Guy Days Bar Crawl on Friday, March 27, the Royal Blue Ball that night at The Stanley Concert Hall, the Cannibal Chase 8K on Saturday morning, the Polar Plunge on Sunday, March 29, and a Bands & Bloody’s Brunch hosted at locations around town.
For Estes Park, the festival is more than an offbeat spectacle. It is a driver of winter tourism, a branding tool and an increasingly significant piece of the local economy.
“I think it sets Estes Park sets Estes Park apart from some of the other Colorado communities and mountain towns,” says Sarah Leonard, CEO of Visit Estes Park. “Frozen Dead Guy Days strengthens the Estes Park brand and sets us apart, which aids in marketing to potential visitors to come and spend more time supporting local businesses and developing an affinity for Estes Park.”
From cryonics to coffin races
The festival’s unlikely origin story still centers on Bredo Morstøl, known as Grandpa Bredo, a Norwegian man who died in 1989 and was placed in cryonic preservation instead of being buried. After several years at a facility in California, his body was moved to Nederland in 1993, where his family hoped to establish a cryonics operation.
His presence — stored in a shed and kept cool with dry ice — prompted a local ordinance prohibiting the storage of human remains, though Bredo was grandfathered in and thus permitted to remain. Over time, his story drew international attention and inspired the creation of Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2002.
In 2023, both the festival and Grandpa Bredo relocated to Estes Park. He is now housed at The Stanley Hotel’s former ice house, now the International Cryonics Museum, where he remains preserved in liquid nitrogen.
“Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the cryonics company that froze Grandpa Bredo and brought him from Nederland to the Stanley,” Freeman said. “They’re sponsoring our game stage and their scientists come put on a science fair. They talk about how things are frozen, and they do a little demo of the coffin race to show how they got Grandpa Bredo from Nederland to Estes Park really quickly, so that’s kind of cool.”
Freeman, who began producing the event the year it relocated to Estes Park before taking on a larger ownership role in 2025, says his connection to the area made the transition feel personal.
“I’m just basically carrying on the tradition,” he says. “I really love the festival, and I love Estes Park.”
A festival in transition
Since arriving in Estes Park, Frozen Dead Guy Days has continued to grow, both in size and ambition. That growth has come with questions about how the event should be funded and managed moving forward.
Visit Estes Park currently operates under a three-year sponsorship agreement with Freeman’s company, Bosco Productions, which runs through 2028. The agreement includes direct funding for the event as well as marketing support. A proposed five-year contract that would have shifted more promotional responsibility to the producer — while increasing upfront costs — prompted concern from some Town Board members last year.
Ultimately, the board opted to keep the existing contract while significantly reducing advertising spending over the next three years. Eve n amid those debates, there is broad agreement that the festival fills an important role in the shoulder season.
“Frozen Dead Guy Days isn’t just that weekend,” board member Deb Gibson said during discussions. “It’s what it does to promote winter in Estes Park.”
Freeman argues the numbers back that up. He says the 2025 festival generated about $3.1 million in economic impact, with a majority of attendees coming from outside the area and more than half staying overnight.
“That’s a winner,” Freeman says. “We’re gaining new fans, and that’s the lifeblood of any community, especially one like Estes, which is built on summer tourism.”
What’s new in 2025
This year’s event builds on the core elements that made the festival famous while expanding its scope.
The coffin races remain the centerpiece. Teams of seven construct their own coffins, with six “pallbearers” racing while a seventh teammate rides inside as the “corpse” before jumping out to complete a challenge mid-course. Freeman says about 30 teams — roughly 300 participants — are expected to compete.
“The corpse is Grandpa Bredo, and it’s a nod to the Flugtag or the Soapbox Derby, where they have to make their own coffin,” Freeman said. “It’s very crafty in that way, and it has to be light enough to carry. They also do cosplay, so they have themes for their teams. That’s the essence of everything that we do. It’s just the most creative thing I’ve seen in a festival: these people that decorate themselves and come out and celebrate Grandpa Bredo in a coffin race.”
Around that, organizers are adding more structured programming for families, including games, prizes and interactive demonstrations tied to Alcor Cryonics, the company that now maintains Grandpa Bredo.
Music also remains a major draw. This year’s lineup includes Andy Frasco and the U.N., Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Gasoline Lollipops, the Rick Lewis Project and Polkanauts, along with a Colorado 150 drone show scheduled for Saturday night.
New this year is an expanded focus on visual art. Freeman says dozens of artists are contributing work for a dedicated installation space within the festival, part of a longer-term vision to grow Frozen Dead Guy Days as an arts-forward event.
“Since the inception, I’ve always had this dream of having Frozen Dead Guy Days art,” he says. “I think the ripples are starting. Eventually, I see us having a whole venue just for art.”
Looking ahead
For Visit Estes Park, the success of the festival will ultimately be measured in data collected after the crowds leave town.
“When people stay longer, they’re spending more money in the community,” Leonard says. “That’s part of our core responsibility: to attract travelers who support local businesses. Frozen Dead Guy Days is a great way to accomplish that.”
For Freeman, the focus is on sustaining momentum without overextending. Festivals across the country have struggled in recent years with rising production costs, and he says careful growth is essential. His long-term vision includes expanding the event’s footprint, deepening its arts programming and continuing to position it as a destination experience rather than a one-day novelty.
“I’m going to continue to elevate,” he says. “I pride myself on going to the next level, always. You have to do it in steps so you don’t overspend and kill the whole thing. You see a lot of festivals closing these days, and I don’t want that to happen to anything I’m involved with, or especially Estes Park.”
For now, though, the goal is simpler: fill the streets, pack the venues, and give visitors a reason to see Estes Park in a different season. After all, Freeman says, there is nothing quite like it.
“There’s nothing else on Earth like this festival,” he says. “And Estes Park has it. I can tell you that a lot of people in Nederland are quite sad that they don’t have it anymore. It’s not their fault; it just got too big for them. We’re thrilled to have it in Estes because it’s a one-of-a-kind festival that no one else has anything close to.”
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