After an enterprising life, one resilient Colorado casket can finally rest in peace.
The sturdy wood vessel lined with a silky white interior originated as a traditional mortuary viewing casket before a midlife career change took it to the stage. The fame and theatrics were followed by years of repose in a basement before the casket was put up for sale this month on Facebook Marketplace.
Now the casket is carrying out its twilight years as a prop in the back of a Greeley man’s recreational hearse.
Once a cushioned conduit to the other side, the casket now bursts with the wisdom of a life lived outside the box.
That journey began in 2013, when William Haltom produced a stage play in Denver of queer cult-classic “Sordid Lives.” He found himself in need of a casket for the production, which centers around a coming-out story amid a death in the family.
Haltom, a licensed cosmetologist, had done hair and makeup for a local mortuary, which happened to be ready to offload a viewing casket. Mortuaries offer casket rentals for families who plan to cremate their loved ones but still want funeral viewings or visitations. Those caskets’ liners can be changed between uses.
Haltom cast the donated casket in his play, which ran for six weeks. When the final curtain dropped, he was left with one authentic casket in his possession.
“I thought I might produce the show again, and it’s not easy to come up with a casket, so I thought I’d just hang onto it,” Haltom said.
The casket collected dust in Haltom’s basement for a little more than a decade until he and his partner decided to move and figured they had to address the coffin in the room.
“It needed to go,” Haltom said. “People are going to be seeing the house, and it’s awkward to explain why this is down here.”
What better time to peddle a casket than spooky season?
So Haltom listed the big, wooden box on Facebook Marketplace for $300 with a caption full of pumpkins, ghosts and a tag line boasting “Spooky casket for sale — perfect for Halloween!”
Haltom divulged the casket’s backstory in the post, hoping its authenticity might entice a lover of all things macabre.
Adric Martinez took the bait.
The 41-year-old Greeley resident is a fan of all that goes bump in the night.
Halloween decorations are up at Martinez’s house year-round. He and his fiancée are getting married this year on Oct. 31. And Martinez gets around town in his very own hearse, christened “Blood Bath” for its white paint job with red splatters dripping down the hood.
“Halloween just seems when people are truly happy,” Martinez said. “I am really into horror movies and the old Victorian gothic style stuff is just really appealing to me, so Halloween rolls into all of that.”
Martinez bought Blood Bath seven years ago. The hearse has air compressors so Martinez can make the vehicle bounce up and down. It’s a prized possession he was gutted to sell — along with the casket in the back — after the pandemic, when money got tight.
He recently saved up enough and, with the help of a small loan, bought Blood Bath back. The previous owners thought the casket in the hearse was haunted, so they got rid of it.
Martinez has been in the market for another casket to outfit his hearse ever since. When he saw Haltom’s listing on Facebook, he knew it was meant to be. After trading a couple of social media messages and agreeing on a $150 price tag, Martinez became the proud owner of the storied casket.
“What’s a hearse without a casket?” Martinez said. “That’s just a station wagon.”
He appreciates the object’s lore. What once provided a soft transition from life to death also carries past lives of its own.
When he picked up his new purchase, he and his mother-in-law-to-be toted the casket up the stairs and slid it into its new abode, where it now houses a plastic skeleton. From there, Martinez drove straight to a trunk-or-treat event to showcase Blood Bath’s latest accouterment.
“My car feels complete,” Martinez said. “I feel good about it. I got a good deal on it. I met some good people out of it. I think this will be the casket’s final resting place.”
However, the casket — it’s not a coffin — might still have another vocation left in her. (As a morbid bit of mortuary trivia, a coffin is technically a six-sided, tapered box, while a casket is a large, rectangular receptacle.)
Martinez is now plotting how he can DIY the box into a subwoofer speaker.
What can one intrepid burial accessory teach us about a life well-lived? Take chances. It’s never too late to reinvent yourself. And don’t place all of your eggs in one casket.
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