tuesday-johnson:

ca. 1870-90’s, [composite tintype of three heads superimposed unto painted circus performers]

via Ebay

tuesday-johnson:

ca. 1869-1900, [carte de visite portrait of a clown in costume], Edmund Huther

via Jeffery Kraus, Antique Photographics

legrandcirque:

Sideshow performer Johnny Eck doing his famous one-armed handstand, 1931.

weirdvintage:

Koo Koo the Bird Girl was born Minnie Woolsey in 1880.  She suffered from a rare skeletal disorder called Virchow-Seckel syndrome, which caused her to have a very short stature, a small head, a narrow birdlike face with a beak-like nose, large slanted eyes, a receding jaw, large ears, and mild mental retardation.  She was also bald, toothless, and either completely blind or very short sighted. 

tuesday-johnson:

ca. 1870, [carte de visite portrait of “Armless Wonder” Charles Tripp holding a tea cup], Chapman

via the Syracuse University Library, Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann Photographs

paranormalnight:

Pasqual Pinon (1889–1929), known as The Two-Headed Mexican, was a performer with the Sells-Floto Circus in the early 1900s. A railroad worker from Texas, Pinon was discovered by a sideshow promoter, whose attention had been caught by a large benign cyst or tumor at the top of Pinon’s head. The promoter drafted Pinon into his freak show and had a fake face made of wax to place onto the growth, allowing the claim that Pinon had two heads. (Some reports state that it was made of silver and surgically placed under the skin.) After several years of touring, the circus manager paid to have the growth removed, and Pinon returned to Texas.

fuckyeahthebizarre:

Elmer McCurdy
Back in 1976, a camera crew filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man began to set up in the haunted house at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, Calif.

As they were moving aside a “hanging man” prop, they accidentally knocked off its arm and discovered human bones inside.

The story gets stranger. The body was actually that of criminal mastermind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shootout after robbing a train in 1911. The princely sum old Elmer got killed for? $46 (and two jugs of whiskey).

McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, and apparently the guy was so darn pleased with his work that he propped up the corpse in the funeral home as evidence of his skills. People were charged 5 cents to see the corpse, which they paid by dropping a nickel in the cadaver’s mouth. 

After several years of raking in the nickels, our enterprising undertaker’s scheme was ruined when McCurdy’s brothers showed up to claim him. Of course, these guys weren’t his brothers at all, but wily carnival promoters. From that point on, McCurdy’s mummy went on a morbid mystery tour all around America, popping up at carnivals all over the country before finally coming to rest in Long Beach.

McCurdy is now buried in Oklahoma. Because McCurdy apparently had the most entertaining corpse in history, they prevented anyone else from taking him on tour by dumping concrete on top of the casket.