Before the American Civil War, embalming was rare, experimental, and largely unnecessary. Most people died close to home, buried within days by family or community. War changed that.As hundreds of thousands of soldiers died far from where they were born, families demanded the return of bodies across vast distances. Heat, time, and transport made traditional burial impossible. In response, a new profession emerged almost overnight: battlefield embalming.In this episode of Asphodel Archives, we explore how the Civil War transformed deathcare in the United States—introducing modern embalming practices, professional corpse preservation, and the first large-scale confrontation between public health, commerce, and grief.We examine the work of early embalmers like Thomas Holmes, the logistical realities of transporting the dead by rail, and how the death of Abraham Lincoln permanently normalized embalming in American funerary culture.This episode traces how a wartime necessity reshaped civilian burial practices—and how the desire to see the dead one last time changed the business, ethics, and expectations of death in America.

Topics: Civil War history, embalming, death rituals, funeral history, battlefield medicine, transport of the dead, American deathcare, 19th-century burial practices.

To create your own Will (or Trust) check with trust&will to get it done. (*)

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For sixteen years, a company called National Prearranged Services (NPS) promised peace of mind: pay for your funeral in advance so your family wouldn’t have to decide in grief. Headquartered in Missouri, NPS sold prepaid funeral plans across sixteen U.S. states and appeared to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in consumer trust funds.Behind the brochures and polished audits, those funds were never safe.Instead of placing prepaid funeral money into legally required trust accounts, NPS executives routed the deposits through a web of affiliated insurance companies and shell entities controlled by the same family. Money meant to sit untouched for decades was siphoned off to finance luxury homes, private aircraft, real estate ventures, and insider loans—while falsified reports kept regulators in the dark.When the scheme collapsed in 2008, nearly 97,000 families discovered their “fully funded” funeral plans were empty. The missing amount—estimated between $450 and $600 million—forced funeral directors to bury people at their own expense, absorb catastrophic losses, or turn families away in the worst moments of their lives.This episode examines one of the largest funeral fraud cases in U.S. history, the federal prosecution of Doug Cassity, and how fragmented state oversight allowed a pyramid scheme built on grief to survive for over a decade.Topics: true crime, funeral industry scandals, prepaid funeral fraud, deathcare ethics, financial crime, consumer protection failures, institutional oversight, unclaimed trust funds, U.S. federal fraud cases.

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In the nineteenth century, being declared dead was not a certainty. It was a judgment shaped by limited medical knowledge, social status, and fear.

This episode of the Asphodel Archives examines taphophobia, the widespread fear of premature burial, and the conditions that made it plausible in Victorian England. We trace how uncertainty gave rise to safety coffins, signaling systems, and paid vigilance, turning the grave into a site of experimentation and commerce. What emerges is not just a story of fear, but of how societies try to impose order on the unknowable.

The episode closes by looking at why these practices disappeared and what replaced them. While the bells and breathing tubes are gone, the underlying concern remains: how to make death legible, documented, and survivable for those left behind.

Further reading and resources:

Many listeners ask how modern families reduce the administrative uncertainty that follows a death. Today, this is handled less through devices and more through documentation. For those interested in wills and basic estate planning, an optional affiliate link to Trust & Will is included. Using it supports the podcast at no additional cost to you and is not legal advice.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gary Laderman (Emory University) about how death shapes culture, religion, and power. We discuss why the sacred is double-edged, how the U.S. funeral industry grew out of the Civil War and the rise of embalming, and why modern life has not become less religious, but differently religious. We dig into true crime and horror as cultural rituals, the death penalty as a story America tells itself about justice, sacrifice, and national identity, and the uncomfortable ways social media and AI are transforming grief and our relationship to the dead. This conversation does not sanitize death, and it does not treat these questions as abstract.

Dr. Gary Laderman is a "misfit" scholar and Emory University professor who explores the hidden side of American spirituality. He is a leading expert on the culture of death, celebrity worship, and the religious history of psychoactive drugs. Rather than looking at traditional churches, he focuses on how we find the "sacred" in modern life, from funeral homes to pop culture.

His instagram and website (both personal and professional) should be regularly checked for the next big thing- in the meantime his newest book " Scared Drugs" can be bought and (hopefully) read here.*

*Disclosure: Links below may contain affiliate tracking. Purchases made through these links help support the podcast at no additional cost to you.

In this episode of When Cerberus Is Asleep, we travel to Noble, Georgia, where a trusted crematory operated for years without oversight, inspection, or verification.

Between 1996 and 2002, hundreds of bodies sent to the Tri-State Crematory were never cremated. Funeral homes received paperwork. Families received urns. Regulators never looked. What was eventually discovered in the woods behind the facility would later be described as a mass grave hidden in plain sight.

This episode examines how the scandal unfolded, the surrounding community, and the people involved, including families, funeral directors, and investigators who were left to confront the consequences. More than a crime, this is a case study in what happens when deathcare relies on trust alone, and when silence is mistaken for dignity.

When Cerberus Fell Asleep is a true crime series from Across the River, exploring real cases where systems designed to protect the dead quietly failed.

Sponsored by Pantheon Platforms.

In Ancient Egypt, death was never personal, it was procedural. This episode uncovers the spiritual and administrative machinery behind mummification and the afterlife: the priests who managed souls, the workshops that preserved bodies, and the belief that immortality itself could be engineered.

Sunset Mesa was supposed to be a small Colorado funeral home serving its community. Instead, it became the center of one of the most disturbing scandals in U.S. deathcare - falsified cremations, missing paperwork, and bodies sold without consent. In this episode of When Cerberus Is Asleep, we examine how a collapse in documentation and oversight allowed the unthinkable to happen and why every part of this industry depends on systems that never go silent.

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What does it mean to build technology for an industry that no one talks about?

In this opening episode of Across the River, Charon’s Intern — the creative voice behind Pantheon Platforms — tells the story of Charon Compliance™, a copyrighted ethical SaaS platform built for the funeral industry. It worked flawlessly, but no one was there to use it.

This is the story of what happens when you build before anyone’s listening — when good code meets the wrong moment — and how failure can turn into philosophy.

A reflection on ethical tech, compliance, and the business of building an audience before the product.

💀 Topics:

• Building ethical and compliant software for real industries

• Why the first launch failed — and what silence teaches

• From startup to storytelling: turning compliance into culture

• Reframing business growth through trust, not algorithms

🌍 Mentioned:

Pantheon Platforms Inc. · Charon Compliance™ · The Bureaucracy of the Afterlife™

🎧 Listen if you’re interested in:

ethical entrepreneurship · business storytelling · building in public · SaaS culture · thoughtful product design

🪶 Follow the Bureaucracy:

Substack: pantheonplatformsjournal.substack.com

Store: pantheon-platforms.store

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