You can’t believe everything on the internet.  And you definitely can’t believe everything on Craigslist, but this seems kinda-maybe-sorta real-ish.  Honestly, it does seem real.  I think.

Don’t stuff grandma in the freezer! 

By now you’ve probably heard about the Glen Burnie family that stored their 83-year-old grandmother’s dead body in a freezer:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/bal-md.ar.freezer15jul15,0,168200.story. It turns out that no law was broken. 

Yep, dumping a body is legal around here. Health care workers and other professionals are required to report deaths, but ordinary citizens are not. And, apparently, no state law prohibits the burial or storage of a body on private property. 

I’m a laid-off Baltimore-area homeowner. After ten months of unemployment, and the future looking even more grim, I’m willing to consider allowing my backyard to be used for body dumping. Call it private burial if you prefer. 

I could probably take a half-dozen bodies without arousing the attention of neighbors. It wouldn’t hurt to have one under the garden too. 

Me: A discreet Baltimore County homeowner with a half-acre of easily tillable property on a quiet dead-end street. 

You: An individual (not a health care worker or other professional required to report a death!) with the awkward inconvenience of disposing of a deceased relative, friend, colleague or acquaintance. 

You must provide your own trash bags, tarp, quicklime, shovel, etc. I might be available to hold a flashlight, but I won’t do any heavy lifting. 

Accidental deaths or natural causes only. I’m not going to get involved in any shenanigans with Omar wannabes. I will not be a participant in, or an accessory to, any sort of crime. 

This is a limited time offer! Act now before the state legislature changes the law! If and when the law changes (measures failed 10 years ago, after the 1999 incident), you’ll be grandfathered, literally and figuratively. 

Price is negotiable. Serious inquiries only. 

For more info: http://welcometobaltimorehon.com/?p=338 

Here’s a screenshot of the original ad:

Via Obit of the Day:

Edouard Beaupré, known as “The Willow Bunch Giant,” died on July 3, 1904 of complications from tuberculosis while in St. Louis, Missouri for the World’s Fair. Having reached a height of eight feet, three inches Mr. Beaupré was one of the great sideshow attractions in the United States and Canada and was hoping to capitalize on that reputation at the fair.

Born on January 9, 1881, the oldest of twenty children, Mr. Beaupré grew normally until the age of seven when his pituitary gland began overproducing growth hormone. By the age of nine he was six feet tall. At seventeen he eclipsed seven feet.

Quiet, with little formal education, Mr. Beaupré wished to be a cowboy and was a rather accomplished horseman. (A rumor spread that he had to give up horses because his feet dragged the ground when he rode, but it was not true.) His family, in need of money, came first and he decided to use his height to support them financially.

He toured his native Canada not only showing off his stature but his strength, lifting horses on his shoulders and bending iron bars. He eventually joined the Barnum and Bailey Circus and became a star attraction but was known for his melancholy and loneliness. (It was also difficult to accomodate the large star, as hotel staff had to line up storange trunks next to his bed to add a second mattress.)

When Mr. Beaupré died at the age of 23 (still growing), his father traveled to St. Louis to collect his son’s body but he realized he could not cover the fare to ship the young man back to Canada. Instead young Beaupré became the property of the funeral home and the embalmed corpse became it’s own attraction.

Only a year after his death, Mr. Beaupre’s corpse was found in a shed in Montreal, stored there after a circus that had purchased his body had gone bankrupt. The body was sent to the University of Montreal for study. It remained there for 85 years.

In 1975, Mr. Beaupré’s nephew discovered that his uncle’s body was at the university and demanded its return. The university refused, saying that Mr. Beaupré’s remains were still needed for scientific discovery. It took another fifteen years before Mr. Beaupré was returned to his relatives. They cremated the remains and buried him in his home town of Willow Bunch on July 7, 1990.

Sources: Thetallestman.com, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and Wikipedia

(Image of Edouard Beaupré, in 1903, is courtesy of the Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Quebec, via wikimedia.org. Mr. Beaupré’s face was disfigured as a teenager when he was kicked by a horse, breaking the boy’s nose and other facial bones.)