The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Spooky Szn: Elmer McCurdy’s Nine Lives

October 9, 2026·17 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

On Fridays this October, we're surfacing strange, incredible, sometimes haunted and sometimes spooky places. This episode takes us back to1976, when a television crew filming an episode of the show “The Six Million Dollar Man” descended on a rundown funhouse in Long Beach, California. While filming, they accidentally broke the arm off a wax dummy. Except...it wasn't a wax dummy. It was a real body. The body of a notorious train robber from the early 1900s, named Elmer McCurdy. Check out the Atlas entry for Elmer McCurdy’s grave.  For more information on Elmer, we recommend Mark Svenvold’s book “Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw.”  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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