Photo: Getty Images
It’s confirmed: an Ohio man is officially a world record holder!
It’s all thanks to a giant ball of human hair.
Steve Warden is a hairstylist who owns and operates a salon called Blockers, located in Cambridge, Warden named the massive ball of hair “Hoss,” which weighs in at a whopping 225.13 pounds, far outweighing the previous record holder at 55 pounds. Guinness World Records notes that the weight of the hairball “is equivalent to 300 cans of soup or 15 bowling balls!”
Warden told Guinness World Records that he used part of his salon to make the record-breaking hairball: “I took a corner of my salon and I built a hole into the side of the wall and into the basement [and] made a chute. …When it came time to actually take all the hair that I saved and actually form it into a ball, I went to the hardware store and I bought several different types of glue,” he continued. “I literally just put gloves on, grabbed a bunch of the hair and kind of formed it into a ball. The first ball was about the size of a baseball.”
Initially, Warden was going to end the endeavor when it was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book. But when Ripley’s Believe It or Not! displayed the hairball at Orlando Comic Con, it grew larger. People interacted with the hairball by donating some of their own locks to it. That’s how Warden opted to keep sending “Hoss” around to continue to allow others to contribute. Warden said it was “fascinating’ and “ever-changing.”
“It actually has changed my life,” Warden told Guinness World Records. “I did it because of the love for my children and my future grandchildren, and just to show that you know, if you have a crazy idea, don't worry about what people are thinking, just do it.”