By Tim Binnall
A musician in Florida has crafted a rather macabre tribute to his late uncle by turning the man's skeleton into a working guitar! The bizarre instrument was reportedly the brainchild of a Tampa-based heavy metal artist 'Prince Midnight.' According to him, the guitar's unique journey began back in the 1990s when his uncle Filip passed away in a car accident over in Greece and his skeleton was subsequently donated to one of the country's medical schools. Over two decades later and much to the surprise of the man's family, the institution contacted them a few years ago with the news that they no longer needed the bones and wanted to give them back to Filip's next of kin.
Rather than pay a hefty price for a burial plot in Greece or the continued storage of his uncle's remains in the country, Prince Midnight opted instead to have the skeleton shipped to him in Tampa. "I went through all the red tape, which is a tremendous amount of trouble," he recalled, "you've got to contact the funeral home. The State Department's involved." After successfully navigating that bureaucratic nightmare, the musician finally received Filip's bones, but was then stuck with the question of what exactly to do with them until, one day, inspiration struck.
"It just popped into my head: I'm going to turn Uncle Fil into a guitar," Midnight explained, noting that his late relative would "love that idea," since he "was a super metalhead" who introduced his nephew to the music he plays today. As one might imagine, his mother was not exactly thrilled with the idea and initially balked at the outrageous suggestion. However, Midnight was able to convince her by asking if "you think Uncle Fil would rather be a guitar or a box of bones?" This led to her giving a tepid blessing to the guitar and the musician set about making it himself. He observed that the concept proved to be more challenging than he'd expected, since "no one's ever made a guitar out of a skeleton, to my surprise."
After considerable trial and error, Midnight eventually found success by fusing Filip's spine to the neck and bridge of a Fender Telecaster guitar. Midnight unveiled the now-dubbed 'Skelecaster' on his social media accounts this past week and has uploaded a video showing the instrument in action. As for how it plays, he conceded that "it is not a typical guitar, so it's got some quirks," specifically that it produces a somewhat unique sound due to where he has to place his hands within his uncle's rib cage while playing. Be that as it may, he expressed satisfaction with the one-of-a-kind tribute to his uncle and mused that "it's pretty metal to play a guitar made out of a skeleton."