See a video of another one-eyed hero here

To be a professional freak, you must either be born with an odd physical deformity, adorn yourself with tattoos and body modifications, or survive a devastating bout with cancer – and then get creative. That’s how Chicago’s Pumpkinhead the Cyclops Boy, a member of The Brothers Grim Sideshow, began his career as a human oddity.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the handsome 23-year-old husband and recent father was diagnosed with cancer of the sinus – an adenoid cystic carcinoma tumour, to be specific – and chose a major appearance-altering surgery over the threat of death.

The tumour followed his optic nerve endings, rendering it necessary to remove the entire
eye to ensure all the cancer was gone. Not only would the young patient lose his left eye and eyelid, but he also sacrificed a portion of his left cheekbone and half of his mouth. The procedure left a golf ball-sized hole where his eye used to be and a large dent in his temple.

Initially a rubber prosthetic eye was developed to plug the socket, but without an eyelid there was nothing to hold it in. It would have required special large glasses to keep the fake eye from bouncing out. Rather than look permanently wide-eyed or in constant shock, he ditched the eyeball for a patch.

Fortunately, his right eye retained 20/20 vision. Of course, this gave him a perfect view of his new Cyclopian look, which he wasn’t terribly thrilled with. Luckily, his loving wife Eileen stayed at his side throughout the experience. “After the surgery it was kinda freaky,” she says. “But you get used to it. I had to take care of him. It was pretty much second nature after that.”

After a few years of wearing a specially designed prosthetic in his mouth and under his cheek, along with the eye patch, he remarkably developed a sense of humour about his condition. When driving without his patch, he would turn toward another motorist at a traffic light, smile, and give the driver an unexpected fright.

His missing peeper also came in handy at a Halloween party as part of his skeleton costume. But Cyclops Boy knew he had greater potential. “I was having a beer and I got curious. I thought I could drink through my eye socket and it would go right down my throat,” he explains. “I thought it would be a cool bar trick.” What a great way to win a few bets.

Sure enough, he can tilt the neck of the bottle right into his socket and pound an entire beer without discomfort, although the frosty drink sometimes chills his head as it goes down (it’s the only time it gets draughty in there).

Cyclops Boy continued to experiment with his unusual orifice to see what other new powers of entertainment his cancer had given him. He soon discovered he could inhale a cigarette orally and exhale the smoke through his eye. With his prosthetic taken out, his tongue realised its true dexterity by lunging upward and wagging through the empty socket. And he earned his other eventual stage name of Pumpkinhead with a stunt involving a torch in his mouth and a glowing eye – just like a Halloween lantern.

Suddenly, Cyclops Boy was embracing his freakishness and having fun. Even Eileen was into the eye socket antics. “I think it’s pretty cool!” she says, “We were both giggling after he realised he could do some unique things.”

Armed with his unparalleled talents, the one-eyed wonder made his first foray into the sideshow world by auditioning for a local radio show’s search for freaks. The host, a DJ called Mancow, loved the act and hired him on the spot. Mancow dubbed him T2, after the Terminator, whose eye got blown away in the Schwarzenegger blockbuster. T2 further enhanced the image with a flat-top haircut and a leather jacket.

He was ready to shock his first big crowd. “They started going nuts, I felt like a rock star,” T2 said. The event not only launched a new career, but also introduced him to several other seasoned performers, such as fire manipulator William Darke and the Torture King, Tim Cridland, formerly of the Jim Rose Circus.

Despite the sudden celebrity, T2 wasn’t prepared to be a full-time freak. He had been maintaining his regular 40-hour-a-week job as an electrician since his surgery. And above all, he was a family man. By the time he’d become a star, Cyclops Boy was also Cyclops Dad to three young children – and Cyclops Coach in their youth sports. So travelling with the sideshow became a rare event. “Most guys who do this for a living are scraping by. Me, I don’t need the money, I don’t like missing baseball and football with my son,” he explains. “The price has to be right for me.”

Local shows are easy to manage, such as an opening act for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. However, a promotional tour for Slim Jim beef sticks, featuring wrestling legend Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage, was lucrative enough to lure him to six different cities across the United States.

During a show in the mid-90s with the Torture King, T2 met The Brothers Grim Sideshow impresario, Ken Harck. Harck’s show – a tribute to the sideshows of yesteryear – includes sword swallowers, human blockheads, and born freaks like the Wolf Boys of Mexico. Harck befriended the one-eyed performer and later recruited him. It was Harck who gave him his current moniker, Pumpkinhead the Cyclops Boy. The two work together whenever possible. “He’s a great attraction,” Harck says. “He’s certainly a showstopper.”

Sometimes, he literally is a showstopper. Many people have passed out watching his five-minute performance. The brief show starts with Cyclops Boy dressed in a dark, hooded cloak and sunglasses. A narrator introduces him to the crowd and offers a toast, at which point Cyclops Boy removes his glasses, pours the beer through his eye and spits it out his mouth. After his other eye-opening tricks, he closes the set by waving goodbye with his tongue reaching through the socket. Those who haven’t fainted, stare in shock and pure disgust.

A few vomit. But in the end, many of them are sympathetic to the way in which he lost his eye and applaud him for overcoming his cancer and his bizarre appearance. “Other people have had the same surgery I’ve been through, but I’ve never heard of anyone else doing stuff like this,” Cyclops Boy says. “I enjoy doing it. Something good came out of it, that’s how I look at it, rather than all doom and gloom and being depressed about it.” And that’s a triumph even greater than defeating his cancer.