A listener writes “I saw the Iceman in the late ’60s at The Pike in Long Beach, CA. It’s been 55 years, but I still remember it. It was in the back of a refrigerated tractor trailer.
The trailer was divided into a couple “rooms” by hanging blankets. It cost a quarter to see it back then. We entered the trailer in the rear, walked through a curtain past a huge block of ice with the creature inside, and out a door on the front side of the trailer.
We couldn’t linger for more than a few seconds and no photographs were permitted. (No cell phones back then and not many people carried a camera.) Couldn’t really see much, except the creature was pretty much as was described. The block of ice had some small cracks and fissures on top making it hard to see, and I could smell decomp, so I know it wasn’t a rubber fake.
I have read stories that the man who had it was warned of a visit by the FBI, so he hid it and built a fake. The FBI agents were shown that and were satisfied that it wasn’t real. The fake was taken on a tour a few years later, but I don’t think it made it this far. The “real” iceman was supposedly taken out of hiding and sold to another man several years ago who was going to put it on display somewhere in the southern US. That’s the last I heard of it.”