ORMON GRIMSBY (a.k.a. “The Undertaker”): BIO

Born at precisely 12:01 A.M. on October 31, 1853, Ormon Horatio Grimsby was the only child of wealthy and prominent Boston-area physician Lucius Xavier Grimsby and his beautiful but distant wife, Evangeline.

Very early on, Ormon displayed a fascination with all things medical, becoming an accomplished vivisectionist by the tender age of five thanks to his father’s liberal nature in allowing his young son a steady stream of pets.  Lucius never tired of supplying Ormon with new and different animals, turning a blind eye to the wild improbabilities in the boy’s stories of freak accidents and mysterious illnesses befalling each and every creature that joined the household.

Before long, Ormon learned to read fluently and began to devour dense books on anatomy, breezing through their lofty scientific jargon as if it were Mother Goose.  Indeed, to the casual observer, it looked as though Ormon was sure to follow in the footsteps of his esteemed father.

But something wasn’t right in little Ormon’s head.  There are those who claim he was turned into a monster, unable to feel empathy for others, by his frigid mother who never forged a bond with her infant son.  Whatever the case, as he entered adolescence, it became clear to his father -- and even clearer than it already had been to his mother -- that Ormon was a bad apple.  At the time, some said his mother had known this from the earliest days of her pregnancy, feeling as though something was eating away at her insides rather than growing there.  Today, speculation points to the strong possibility that this was the reason for her icy demeanor toward the boy.

For the pubescent Ormon, surging hormones brought not only many new and strange desires, but also growing rage and resentment toward his mother, who had barely uttered a complete sentence to her son since the day he was born.  This volatile, simmering stew of emotions finally came to a boil on the day of Ormon’s 13th birthday, when he asked for a kiss from Evangeline.  She promptly declined, and in a fit of psychotic rage, Ormon severed her red lips from her face, vowing that his mother would never again kiss anyone if she wouldn’t kiss him.  He then vanished without a trace, never to return to his family home.  Evangeline survived her injuries but became thoroughly withdrawn, unwilling to show her mutilated face in public even once throughout the remainder of her life.

The details of Ormon’s existence, from this horrific moment at the age of 13 to his reemergence as a talented undertaker roughly seven years later, are virtually unknown.

Public records show, however, that he purchased and renovated a drafty old mansion in the small town of Renfield, Massachusetts at the age of twenty-one.  This ancient house, with its austere façade, would serve as both his personal dwelling and place of business until the end of his days.  Precisely how he managed to amass the funds necessary for making this purchase is unclear.  Popular theory maintains that it was his father, Lucius, who provided the money after having discovered his son’s whereabouts and striking up a secret correspondence with him.  It is widely believed that Lucius had an irrepressible soft spot for Ormon, his only child, whom he saw as a tortured genius.

As the only business of its kind in the town of Renfield, Grimsby Funeral Parlor thrived for many years, making Ormon a well-respected figure among the townspeople and a fairly wealthy man, to boot.  By all accounts, Ormon was passionate about his work and his talent as an undertaker was common knowledge.

However, Ormon’s professional bliss was brought to a screeching halt in the summer of 1913 when a very shrewd and able competitor opened for business just down the road.  His name was Barnabas Crowe and word of his extraordinary gift for beautifying corpses quickly spread throughout Renfield, sealing Ormon’s fate in its wake.  It is said that Ormon simply could not compete with the sheer artistry of Mr. Crowe’s work.

And so, Ormon’s once thriving business steadily waned in the face of his competitor’s otherworldly prowess with foundation and rouge.  It seemed that the people of Renfield preferred Barnabas Crowe’s slick and sanitized brand of undertaking over Ormon’s very solid but decidedly more homegrown style.
 
But, true to form, Ormon would not take rejection quietly.  Unwilling to see his success turn to failure, he hatched a murderous plan to generate new business.  In September 1913, as the chill winds of autumn set in, the suicide rate in Renfield suddenly spiked.  New bodies were being discovered virtually every day.  It appeared that the victims were taking their own lives by means of one grisly method or another, the only consistency being that a note was found with each body detailing the desire of the deceased that his or her corpse should be undertaken by none other than Ormon Grimsby.  For a time, Grimsby Funeral Parlor enjoyed a booming business once again.

However, Ormon’s diabolical scheme soon revealed itself to have one critical flaw: the suicide notes.  Even the small, relatively inexperienced police force of Renfield was able to see that the name of Ormon Grimsby was the only common thread among all the suicide cases.  It wasn’t long before the Renfield Police shifted their position from viewing the deaths as unrelated suicides to viewing them as a string of homicides, perpetrated by a single killer.  Ormon became their prime suspect.

On the night of October 31, 1913, exactly sixty years to the day of Ormon’s birth, police executed a stakeout in the shadows surrounding Grimsby Funeral Parlor.  Police reports indicate that Ormon slipped out the front door of the parlor just before midnight, climbed into the driver’s seat of his horse-drawn hearse, and stole away into the crisp, autumn night.  He was then trailed by police until his hearse finally came to a stop in front of Renfield Park.  The reports further indicate that a young couple, probably clandestine lovers, stood outside the park entrance, saying their goodbyes for the night.  The police watched from a distance as Ormon approached the couple.  A moment later, the young woman reportedly screamed, causing the police to swing into action, emerging from the shadows and emptying every last chamber of their revolvers into Ormon’s flesh.  Arriving at the young woman’s side, the police were greeted with the vision of her young lover, lying in a pool of his own blood, his left wrist slit wide open.  He was dead on the scene.  Ormon’s limp body, lifeless and riddled with bullets, was reportedly taken into police custody and hauled away in a cart.

It is likely that the young man and woman would have recognized Ormon and thus felt no threat from him.  Though the police reports are unclear on this aspect of the case, contemporary forensic experts speculate that Ormon and the young man may have shaken hands, giving the murderous undertaker his opportunity to strike.  It is believed that Ormon held the unsuspecting young man’s hand firmly in his grasp while suddenly brandishing a blade with his free hand, and then inflicting the wound by dragging his blade across his victim’s wrist.

There was no funeral held in the town of Renfield for Ormon Grimsby.  To this day, his name is cursed by townspeople both young and old. Immediately after Ormon’s death, the authorities in Renfield ordered the demolition of Grimsby Funeral Parlor in an attempt to erase the town’s collective memory of its monstrous proprietor.

However, no one knows exactly what became of Ormon Grimsby’s remains.  Some say that town officials, unable to locate a single living relative, simply sent the body far away, to be buried in anonymity, where it could no longer stir the nightmares of an entire town.

Yet, as unbelievable as it may seem, this is not the end of Ormon Grimsby’s remarkable story.  In October 2005, some ninety-two years after his documented death, a strange person calling himself Ormon Grimsby, and claiming to be a zombie, darkened the TV screens of public access viewers in Raleigh, North Carolina, appearing as the host of a deeply disturbing and horrifying show called “Monster Creature Feature.”