Hoss, the world’s largest human hair ball

3 min read

2 years ago Robin

An Ohio-based hairstylist has spent the last nine years of his life creating the world’s largest human hair ball out of the cut hair of his clients.
And yes, that’s true.
A man named Steve Warden owns and operates a salon named Blockers in Cambridge, Ohio.
In 2013, after his youngest child went off to college, he embarked on a quest to break the Guinness world record for the largest ball of human hair, and about a month ago, in mid-December, he did it.
Hoss the Hairball weighs a whopping 102.12 kg (225.13 lbs), which makes it over 25 kilograms heavier than the previous curious titleholder.
And because lumps of human hair are constantly being added to it, Hoss is expected to keep growing for many years to come, making really hard to dethrone the creature!
The previous record-holder was a 77.5-kg ball of human hair created by Henry Coffer, a barber from Charleston, Missouri, who claimed the title in 2008. The man, who was 77, had collected his clients’ hair for more than 50 years.

Steve’s four children had been begging him for years to make a ball of human hair large enough to be featured in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book, and in 2013 the hairstylist decided to finally do it.
Thus he started collecting the cut hair of the clients at his salon and even installed a sort of chute in the floor connected to a trash can in the salon’s basement.
Once he finished a cut, he would sweep their hair into the chute for his future endeavors.
None of his clients were bothered by the collection, he said.
Most were just curious.

“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,” Steve Warden told. “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.”

As time passed, Hoss the Hairball grew larger, and one day in 2018, Warden finally contacted Ripley’s about having the bizarre human hair collection displayed in their magazine.
Of course they agreed, but this was only the beginning for Hoss as, in 2018, the giant ball of human hair was put on display at Ripley’s stand at Orlando Comic Con and visitors were encouraged to add their own hair to the growing mass.
It became a must everywhere the hair ball toured, and the amount of donated hair continued to grow.
Hoss also now has buggy blue eyes, a large nose, toothy grin, arms, cow-printed legs and a huge cowboy hat.

“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,” the hairstylist said.