- Hi, I'm Mickey.

- And I'm Ryan.

- And this is "Hiseerie."

- This is "Hiseerie."

(suspenseful music) - [Mickey] All throughout history, different cultures have believed in the paranormal.

Divine gods, spirits, alien, shaman, witchcraft, and divination, just to name a few.

Supernatural occurrences are reported all around the world and have become ingrained into pop culture.

Since the beginning of humanity, people have been questioning the bigger picture of existence.

What is really out there?

Where do we go when we die?

Are there aliens, ghosts, bigfoot?

So tonight we're out in the great outdoors and- - I'm loving it.

- And we're... And we're sitting around the fire to tell some little campfire stories.

We're gonna talk about some cryptids, just weird stuff going on in the state.

And you know, urban legends that we grew up with.

- Don't get too spooked.

(dramatic music) - I'm so scared.

- And I'm like ready to walk out in the dark right now.

Do I need to prove it?

- No, no, no.

Okay.

See this is why I should not... This is why when I was a kid I never would read campfire stories.

And this is why.

- This is something we never did either, honestly.

- See, that's surprising for you.

- Yeah, we went camping all the time.

But like if anything at night we played like bear.

So like hide and go seek.

Except everyone hides.

- Oh, we called it ghost in the graveyard.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Same thing.

- We would do that.

But I mean, I would go camping, just me and my mom a lot.

And my mom does not do horror.

(dramatic music) So this one's not really scary at all.

It's just an urban legend that's really famous.

And I'd heard of this when I was younger.

I've never been to Fargo.

Won't even pretend like I have.

Really?

- I have.

- Did you... Did the movie "Fargo" happen when you were there?

- No.

- Okay, well, then I don't care.

- Fair enough.

(Ryan and Mickey laugh) - I'm so sorry.

But yeah, I think... Yeah, it's an urban legend and I was like, "You know what?

I'm already so scared," and I knew I was gonna be scared.

So this is like, I wrote some that are very much, I'm detoxing from my fear.

- Okay.

- Then you thank it.

- Oh my god.

Sorry there was a noise.

I'm so scared.

I think it was wind.

I'm so- - I just about panicked 'cause you looked over me.

So I thought something was behind me and I'm like, "I'm a goner."

I am... Bye.

- Okay, lemme just read.

Lemme just read.

Lemme just read the story.

- I totally thought you were looking behind me.

- Where was I even gonna go?

Okay, sorry.

- Towards the light.

- This episode's just gonna be me freaking out.

I could fill an entire 30 minutes of just me like almost crying.

Okay, so in Fargo... - Back to Fargo.

- This is our detox, this is our detox moment.

In Fargo, North Dakota, eight blocks from the Minnesota border sits the Horace Mann Elementary School.

The school was built in 1915 and it's still in use today, which is really old, marking this year as their 110th birthday.

Woo.

- Is it actually haunted?

- No.

- Oh.

- Well, okay, actually, we'll get there debatably.

Debatably, okay?

- I wanna hear it.

- So before the school was built, the land served as the county fairgrounds and it was referred to by Hector's Addition.

And so me being me, I was like, "Why would you call it that?

That's a stupid name."

- That's a little judgemental.

- Hector's Addition?

- Don't rush right into it.

There might be a meaning.

- Not like Hector's Park?

Anyway, so I was like- - Maybe Hector wanted it named the Addition - But I got curious and I was like, "Okay, let's find this out."

And I actually learned some interesting parts about Fargo's history that I did not know and it fits really well into our show.

So Hector's Addition was named after Martin Hector and he was a prominent businessman in Fargo.

He's a very good example of the American dream.

He was born in Norway and moved to Minnesota in his teens with his family.

He originally was from like, I think over by Duluth more so.

- Okay.

- But the railroad was expanding into what is now Moorhead.

So he went there and that was in 1872 and he wanted to start his own business, Lathing.

- Okay.

- It's something with construction, but it was a family trade.

So he's basically just stayed in the family business.

But he ended up doing a little career change because... So a few months after he got there, like right away, it was very much wild west still.

- Understandably.

- Yeah.

And there was like a gunfight that broke out at a local saloon and it was between these two like rival outlaws.

And then somehow another saloon's owner heard the commotion and decided, "I'm gonna go there."

Because that's what you do when you hear gunshots is you run towards 'em.

- You run towards 'em, yeah.

- And so this guy ran towards them and unfortunately he was killed by a stray bullet.

He is the only one that died, was other saloon's owner.

That gave Martin this really random opportunity of... That owner had just ordered a large shipment of liquor for his saloon.

And it was supposed to arrive in the next few days by train.

But with him dead, the shipment was just sitting there unclaimed.

And so Martin was like, "I could make some money off of this."

So he ended up using his like very small amount of savings to buy the liquor, like an insane discount, because the guy was dead.

- Rightly so.

- And he went to where Fargo is now because Fargo was experiencing significantly faster growth than Moorhead was, unfortunately for Minnesota.

But you know, whatever.

No one's bitter about it at all.

- Well, now you can't even tell the difference between the two.

- Exactly.

Never been, so could not tell.

But so he opened a storefront and originally it was in Moorhead, but then he was like, "This isn't working.

So he moved it like eight blocks into Fargo, like literally across the bridge.

Moved into Fargo and then it did great.

And so he stayed extremely successful in his store and then eventually was like, "You know what?

Liquor's great, but money is where the money is."

So he went into banking as one does.

Imagine having that much money, you can just open a bank.

Yeah, he gave a lot of money to the town over the years.

And yeah, he was... I think he fits into our show because he really... He made his start from a murder.

Like he was like, "That guy got killed.

Lucrative."

- A smart guy.

- Yeah, he also bought like half of the airport for them.

- Oh my word.

He did a lot.

- Oh, he built like a school and I think he did stuff- - I feel like that happens a lot though.

I feel like the people who make it big enough to like start their own bank, they generally like build a school or a hospital.

Or something to like really benefit the town.

- For him, like there has to be karma in there too.

Like I think there's gotta be some guilt of like, someone dies and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna take..." Yeah.

- That might be why he did it.

- Oh, I think he's probably just a good person.

I don't know.

I can't speak to his character.

I dunno him.

But anyhoo.

- Yeah, honestly like, it just sounds like going after the liquor was just- - [Mickey] Smart.

- Intelligent and- - Yeah.

And he did great things with his money and we got this really cool myth.

It's not a myth, it's real.

Anyhoo, Hector's Addition became home to traveling performers and circus groups that would come through the town frequently.

'Cause this is like, there was no entertainment.

So this time it was when Fargo and Moorhead were really flourishing and so the larger attendance got larger... Or like the larger the audience got, the larger the circus had to get.

And it had like really big shows.

Like it started to be 100s of performers and animals.

And for reference, so Barnum and Bailey Circus, like PJ Barnum or whatever his name is.

They're still one of the biggest touring circuses in the world.

And they made a stop at this fairgrounds and brought 64 completely full railroad cars.

Like it was a big deal.

Yeah.

Big town or big circus.

- That is an event.

- So... So according to the legend, an elephant handler and his elephant, Ellie, aptly named, was walking around the property one night and Ellie unexpectedly had a fatal heart attack and collapsed.

RIP.

And as devastating as this would've been for her handler, disposing of an elephant's body is not a small mission.

And to have her picked up and hauled to the home base of the circus would be insanely expensive and time consuming.

And they couldn't just leave her there.

Or the town would've been like, "Why is there this giant rotting corpse on our land?"

You know, that'd be a good reaction to have.

But the only thing that they could think to do was to just bury her right there.

- Mm hmm.

- So instead of the circus was supposed to be the following day and the townspeople would like not really take too kindly to an unauthorized elephant burial regardless, so during the night, a group of circus workers dug a hole big enough to fit this elephant.

And kids who had been out playing that night reported seeing a group of adults frantically digging a large thing.

So unless they killed someone- - A very large someone.

- Very large, someone... A few tons, if you will.

So years later, 1915 would come around and the town would build the Horace Mann School right where Ellie was said to lay.

Over time, reports had come in that strange sightings and sounds were coming from around the old school building.

People would hear stomping and loud trumpet sounds echoing through the halls.

From outside the building, people reported seeing a translucent animal figure through the windows adding to the mystery of where Ellie truly is.

So there's... Has there ever been more proof than word of mouth?

Not really.

But do you really need to see it to believe?

Not really.

- Not really.

- And I would like to think that there is an elephant getting to play with children in her afterlife.

Yeah, that's the Horace Mann Elementary School myth.

- I feel like I have heard that story before.

- It's a quite like popular urban legend.

- Okay.

- I mean, I heard of it in the cities and so I'd think it wouldn't be that surprising if it was like a... At least a little bit known urban legend out here.

- Right, but I also don't know if I'm confusing it with the story of the elephant and Thomas Edison because I believe that elephant was Ellie.

- Yes, I think it was.

- So.

- It's almost like there's a reason why elephants are nicknamed Ellie.

- I don't get it.

(Ryan and Mickey laugh) (dramatic music) - So this is iconic in my opinion.

Like this I think is why Minnesota is amazing.

This is not even... Okay, you'll see, you'll see.

I'm itching- - I think that this is a perfect embodiment of how urban legends should exist.

It's giving Jack... Jack Rabbit?

- Jackalope.

- Jackalope.

It's giving Jackalope.

- Jackalope.

You're talking the horned rabbit.

- Yeah.

- A jackalope, yep.

- All right, so this is the story of the Minnesota Iceman.

So the Iceman was first introduced to the world by Frank Hansen.

Hansen claimed that the specimen was discovered floating in a block of ice off the Siberian coast by a Russian seal hunting vessel.

And he was simply employed as a caretaker for it by an unnamed eccentric California millionaire rumored to be the actor Jimmy Stewart.

Like the dude from "It's a Wonderful Life."

Okay, I did not know who that was.

- Yes, I do know who he is.

- I've seen him in "Rear Window" and "A Wonderful Life."

But that was... Yeah, anyway.

It was never proven, so who knows?

I'm gonna go on a limb here and we know it's not him, but it used to be like very heavily rumored.

- Okay.

- So the Iceman is a complete hairy humanoid male carcass frozen in a block of ice.

The creature is around six feet tall.

He has large hands and feet and his hair is three to four inches long all over his body.

He also looked to have suffered injuries of a broken arm and an eye knocked from its socket, which is really gross if you ever look at a picture of this.

- So was he found in a block of ice or was it found and then put in a block of ice?

- He was discovered floating in a block of ice off the Siberian coast.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Which we'll get to, but so theoretically like it's like a rectangle now.

Like it like... They like cut it into a perfect rectangle with this thing.

- They cut it into the actual block, yep.

- So from the injuries of it, at some point they believed it was the outcome of being shot in the back of the head with like a gun, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

- A 100%.

- Yeah.

So Hanson was a promoter and exhibitor just for the record, so it only makes sense to tour fairs carnivals and malls with the Iceman obviously.

So the Iceman traveled all over America and Canada during the '60s and '70s.

And at some point Hansen changed his story that instead of this whole Siberian or ice thing, that it was actually a Japanese whaling ship had found the body.

And then it was... Later he was like, "Actually it was found in a deep freeze facility in Hong Kong because..." Yeah, and then finally, that it had been shot on a hunting trip in the Whiteface Reservoir region of Minnesota.

So we go from the Siberian Sea to Japan, whaling ship- - Yep.

- To deep freeze center in Hong Kong, to a hunting mission in Minnesota.

(Mickey screams) Oh, sorry.

(Mickey laughs) Sorry.

- I can't do this.

That's what I was expecting.

Just like kick the chair and start running.

Continue if you may.

(Mickey and Ryan laugh) - So it's widely assumed that the actual origin of the Iceman was Vietnam, which like was not mentioned in any of the other theories- None of the above, all right.

- But yeah, so there was like this story of a huge ape that had been killed in... Oh, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation, I'm sorry.

Da Nang, Vietnam?

Okay, we're going with that.

Da Nang, Vietnam in 1966, near where Hansen had been stationed during the war.

He was over there during the Vietnam War.

- Okay.

- But out of all the stories, the Minnesota name stuck, which is hence Minnesota Iceman.

Which I kind of... I wish that I had known what they would call it before that.

But I feel like they would've just called it like literally Siberian Iceman and then Japanese- - Just always the Iceman.

Everywhere it's been found or labeled to have been found, he is always in ice.

Hey, maybe he misplaced him.

- He's a world traveler.

And the other thing is like, it's a big thing to like travel with.

I feel like customs would've had something to say, which actually I don't- - It was a different day and age though.

- So during his travels, Hansen had been detained multiple times by Canadian custom officials for transporting human remains.

And the FBI was tipped off multiple times that the Iceman was actually just a disguised murder victim.

- Oh.

- But they never thought to investigate.

(Mickey and Ryan laugh) There was a very real possibility that this guy killed someone and then was like, "I need to hide the body.

I need a new attraction.

Two birds, one stone."

- So why would you just let someone go, if that's the case?

- Well, 'cause it's not- - I can understand like, "Oh, that looks fake as can be.

There's no way that's real."

- If suddenly like this guy starts having like 18 of these attractions, yeah, that's a different story.

But like one, like yeah, that's okay.

- Again, I still think like, depending how real it would've looked- - I have seen it.

It looks... It looks... Yeah, it looks like a hairy human.

Like it looks like a monkey.

It looks like a really evolved monkey.

- Interesting.

- Yeah.

So the Iceman did catch the attention, however, not of the FBI but of cryptozoologists across the world for obvious reasons.

And so Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans... Heuvelmans.

Sorry, sir, were two of those intrigued by the Iceman.

And they were actually given a private examination of the body in December of '68 at Hansen's home.

So the two made detailed drawings and wrote the creature described in technical terms.

They were completely convinced of its authenticity.

- Authenticity.

- That word.

They even reported that during the examine... I forgot about this, they even reported that during the examination, the glass case somehow broke.

Which like, okay, okay, magically breaks, whatever.

But it admitted an intense odor of rotting flesh.

- So it's real to some degree.

- Yes.

- You just don't know if it's creature or human.

- It's a 100%... Well, okay, we'll get into that.

We'll get into that.

They reported that- - Sorry, I'm Russian.

- [Mickey] No, no it's okay.

They reported that it smelled like rotten flesh.

- Right.

- Yeah.

And there's some... There's gonna be some arguments up here.

So after the testimonies of the... Say the word.

- Authenticity?

- Came out to the public, John Napier, a primatologist, like monkeys.

- Yep, primates - At the Smithsonian Institution who was really interested in cryptozoology.

So he was given the opportunity to do another like private examination of the Iceman himself.

He had a very different experience.

He was like, "Yeah, no, this is definitely latex."

He fully was like, "This is fake."

He was like... Not a second thought, in his mind he was like, "That is a latex model."

And then Hansen replied and said, "Well, of course, I just took the genuine original specimen out of the display because I didn't want to be arrested for like killing some type of human thing.

And that is why I had to replace it with this latex model."

And that's what you saw.

And it was actually backed up by Sanderson who said that it was clearly a different body than the one that he had seen.

- He had seen, okay.

- And well- - Interesting.

- Yeah, when they went back to the reference photos... Thank God photography existed in this day of age.

But so when they went back to the reference photos, the form and pose did vary.

In one of them, the mouth was opened, in another, it was closed.

The hands were positioned differently.

I think like the eyeball was in a different position, like the one that had been knocked from the socket.

- Right, yep.

- Most people... Or most believe that it was multiple models, but others think that it was the result of being thawed and re-frozen each year.

- Which would kind of make sense as well.

- It would especially because they all look very similar.

It's just the pose is different and we know that he was letting it thaw at certain points.

If you have something frozen and then you... It like melts into water, it's gonna look different.

Like it's gonna move.

So doesn't just stay in the same place.

So like, you know what?

Credit where credit's due.

I do believe- - Plausible.

- Yeah, I was like, "I do believe when he was like, this is latex."

I just find it so disturbing.

Even the idea that he was letting it thaw though.

'Cause like that means it's decomposing.

- Absolutely, yep.

- That's disgusting.

Which just means all these people are looking at like a frozen half decomposed corpse.

- Mm hmm.

- Nasty.

Well, hopefully the FBI made the right decision not to investigate that.

So after all of that, Hansen took the Iceman out of the public eye on the request of the California based owner and later introduced a new completely different latex model of the Iceman.

- Oh my gosh.

- And then- - Well, if you're gonna keep doing that, it's hard to believe the story then.

- Yeah, I dunno.

He was like, "All right, this one's done.

Let's bring a new one."

Like what?

And the fact that that one... He was like, "No, this one is latex."

All right.

But yeah, so at the end of the day, it was like a total hoax.

It was a total hoax, complete BS.

No way that was real.

But I do like that Minnesota got its name attached to it for literally no reason.

There's like... He's not even from Minnesota.

(Mickey laughs) It's just like he got hunted in Minnesota and that's the name that stuck.

So then we are forever known to be part of this- - But it wasn't even wasn't even the first story, right?

- No, No, it was like fifth.

California based owner... Yeah, traveled through here at fairs and stuff.

But no, Minnesota had nothing to do with it.

We just got... Someone, he once said that it might have been a hunting trip here and then it became the Minnesota Iceman and then it stuck like that, traveled all around the country.

Everyone knew it as that got shown as a hoax.

So then our name got dragged through the mud.

You can actually see the original Iceman on display in Texas, which is again, not in Minnesota, but in Austin, Texas at the Museum of Weird.

Like it's on display there.

They bought it on eBay in 2013.

- That sounds faked.

- Well, guess what?

The whole thing is fake.

(Mickey and Ryan laugh) - What did you do to me?

- I love this story so much.

Like I just love that this guy was like... Like it's so old.

Like when they would like take a fish and then like clay and make like a fake mermaid and they'd be like, "It's a mermaid skeleton."

It's so that, but it's like this guy was like so sure that he was gonna get away with it and just saying like, "No, like a California based owner bought this.

And I'm just his little helper."

Like boy, shut up.

- Why did he find you?

- Jimmy Stewart... He's like, "I need..." Who like... You go to your agent and you're like, "I need someone to be able to show my private collector's edition of a corpse."

Like, okay, sure, sure.

- I can't get in trouble for moving a body, but someone else needs to try this.

- Literally.

- Like what?

- But yeah, I'm gonna... I will go on the limb, hoax.

There's no way- - It's not sounding very plausible.

- The elephant, I don't... I think Ellie Ellie the elephant is possible.

- Believable story.

- Yeah, it's a believable story.

(Mickey screams) Sorry, leaf.

Oh my God.

(Mickey laughs) It's a believable story.

But I don't think it happened just the way that they said it did.

This... No way is any part of it true.

- So my one question with the school, so like going back to the elephant.

Was the school just built on the same grounds or like directly above where this element's supposed to be?

- The school's decently big.

- Yep.

- So, but it's supposed to be like directly on top.

- Directly on top, okay.

But no bones.

No bones, no nothing.

- They've never checked.

- Well, when you're digging for a foundation, I would think you would have to run across some sort of bone.

So I wonder if they either, A, just pushed it into the pile, like we don't want to talk about this.

Which does happen in history.

That's actually a very common thing in history.

- It's 1915, they're not gonna deal with that.

- That's what I mean.

Just push it into the hole, bulldoze over it.

- And little did they know, they could freeze it into a block of ice and make a million... I don't know if they made it.

We hope you enjoyed this episode.

And if you wanna support us and our station, you can see more behind the scenes content and full length uncut sessions on our Patreon at Patreon.com/Hiseerie.

(dramatic music)