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Smithville Man Puts Sawed Off Finger On eBay To Fund Roof

By Joe Hren

Posted October 7, 2011

John Baker is trying to make the best out of bad luck. In the past two years, he's lost his leg and right index finger. He was forced to get his leg amputated because of cancer. And then last year he accidentally sawed off the tip of his index finger.

"Picked it up, put it in a dumped out Coke can I had and put it on ice," Baker says. "Then I took it up there, to the hospital. And it was too mangled up to sew it back on so I stuck it in my pocket and brought it home."

But, Baker, the proprietor of Smithville's Baker's Junction Haunted House, saw in his mangled digit an opportunity.

"And when I got home, I put it in salt and mummified it, to leave it in salt for six weeks to turn it into a mummy," he says. "I thought it'd be a lot more complicated than that but there's nothing to it. I poured it in liquid plastic and made a keychain."

The keychain now stands out amidst the ghoulish potpourri of skeletons, demons and dilapidated baby dolls that punctuate his family-operated attraction. Baker's fingertip may be more than just a grim sideshow.

"I put it on eBay for $5,000 for a starting bid and $10,000 if you wanna buy it now. And it'd take $5,000 to put a depot roof on and I got two of them I need done, so if someone is crazy enough to pay for a roof they can have a finger."

Baker is not holding his breath for any buyers. While he says there has been a lot of interest, he has not gotten any offers.

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