Ep. 4 Pandemonium at The Palmer Mausoleum

In a quiet Michigan cemetery stands a crumbling mausoleum with a dark history—and strangely enough, no one was ever buried inside. The Palmer mausoleum was built as a monument to a prominent local family, but the story behind it is far more disturbing than the structure itself. Family tragedy, a deadly argument over cattle, and a murder that ended with a life sentence all became part of the Palmer family’s history. But there’s an even stranger twist: while the mausoleum was meant to serve as the family’s final resting place, the Palmer bodies were actually buried in the hillside nearby—not inside the mausoleum. Over the years, the structure deteriorated, leaving behind a massive stone monument with no remains inside and no one left to claim it. Eventually, the question became what to do with a decaying mausoleum that had essentially outlived its purpose. In this episode of Buried in Michigan, we uncover the Palmer family’s tragic history, the murder that shook the family, and the strange story of a mausoleum that was built for the dead—but never actually held them.