Oakwood Evergreens & Meth Cremations | 4M #206

Welcome to the two-hundred-and-sixth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #206, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

The ultimate road trip

If you ever need an excuse to take a road trip, consider visiting some of the cemeteries in Choice Mutual’s 2025 survey of the 140 Most Beautiful Hidden Cemeteries in the US. More than 3,000 respondents contributed to the list, which includes hidden gems from all across the country, with some standouts in the top 10 (below): Three of the top five are on the islands of Hawai’i, while New York and California were also well-represented. One interesting tidbit that Choice Mutual recognized is that names like “Oakwood,” “Evergreen,” and “Magnolia” repeat “across states, tying remembrance to nature.”

Davis Mortuary update

Last week Colorado investigators reported that they had identified four of the 24 bodies found in a “hidden” room at Davis Mortuary, the former Pueblo County coroner’s funeral home, in late August. Patty Emerson, a former hospital pathologist who had known the co-owners of Davis Mortuary since the 1980s, was informed that her late husband Mel was one of those bodies. Mel, whom Patty believed had been cremated more than 14 years ago, was identified through his well-preserved fingerprints, which were on file from the couple’s days as foster parents. Patty hopes to have Mel’s remains cremated by a different funeral home as soon as a new death certificate is issued. As of this writing, no charges have been filed against the owners of Davis Mortuary.

Not your typical Wednesday

Fourteen employees of a Montana animal shelter had to spend several hours each in hyperbaric oxygen chambers at a local hospital after being exposed to methamphetamine. Why, you may ask, was meth in an animal shelter? Well, it seems that the shelter shared a city-owned retort (which they used to cremate deceased animals) with law enforcement, and that day, the FBI was burning confiscated illegal narcotics. A “negative air pressure issue” with the incinerator created a backdraft of smoke that was forced into the shelter area by the building’s HVAC system. Both the employees and the shelter pets were evacuated.