Tucked away in Salt Lake City’s Poplar Grove neighborhood is a glittering pyramid, where the sounds of bubbling water features and the occasional peacock call accompany the aroma of fresh-grown lavender.

That peculiar pyramid is also home to dozens of mummies.

The sanctuary is owned by Summum, a spiritual organization founded by a Salt Lake City resident in the 1970s, which performs mummification services for people and pets. Mummified cats, dogs, and one mummified person reside inside the climate-controlled edifice. The organization just resumed its services in the spring after a backlog of pets from close family and friends of the group forced it to stop taking on new mummies.

Summum is the Latin word for “the highest or greatest,” and in the spiritual group’s philosophy, Summum is the “sum total of all creation,” according to its website. Claude Rex Nowell, also known as Corky, founded the organization in 1975 after “an encounter with advanced beings,” which the group refers to as the “Summa Individuals.”

“We talk about what genuine religion is and spiritual progression,” Summum first counselor Bernie Aua said. “Basically, the underlying theme here is that Summum is about you recognizing, realizing, and manifesting and growing spirit. That’s what it’s about.”

Nowell was the first — and so far, the only — person to be mummified by the group. Summum president Su Menu herself helped mummify Nowell after he died in 2008, along with Aua and Summum’s second counselor, Ron Temu, she said.

But the church has mummified hundreds of pets.

How to mummify your pet

The mummification process for animals can take up to ten months to complete, and it’s costly — with a price tag of about $12,000. Much of that cost is because animal sarcophaguses are often made of bronze, and the chemicals used in mummification are also expensive.

Many who want their pets mummified are not a part of Summum, Menu said. But, Aua added, they need to have a spiritual reason for the group to take on the mummification.

The group requires owners to create a spiritual will for their animal before they agree to mummify them, and the document should include things that the owner felt was special about their pet.

The will should also help keep the animal’s spirit “focused and calm” on its journey to wherever the owner believes it will go, such as heaven, according to Summum’s website.

“We’ll read it during the mummification,” Aua said, “and they write something that they feel is meaningful and will help the animal in its journey.”

Once an owner submits the spiritual will, a form with information on what they want the mummiform to look like and the payment for the mummification process, owners ship their animal’s body in a watertight container on a bed of ice.

When the animal arrives at Summum’s property in Salt Lake City, the group’s mummification specialists will clean the body and remove the animal’s internal organs. The organs and body are placed in a baptismal font inside the pyramid, which uses a solution to preserve them for several months while the “transference” process takes place.

The transference rites include the reading of the pet’s spiritual will, and help the pet’s essence on the journey to its next destination, according to the website. The same process is done for human mummies.

“The whole thing is that for us, we believe that the consciousness is still there, and is able to be guided, or at least put in a very smooth position,” Temu said.

After transference, the animal’s organs are replaced inside its body, which is sewn back up. The body is cleansed again and wrapped with gauze before it is sealed with polymer and fiberglass resin inside a sarcophagus. Remains are placed alongside amber resin and quartz granules which fill up the remaining space.

You can mummify yourself, too

Summum’s mummification process for people is similar, but more costly — around $67,000. The median cost of a funeral with a viewing and a burial was $8,300 in 2023, according to the most recent numbers from the National Funeral Directors Association.

Around a thousand people have expressed interest in mummification, Aua said, but many of them are still young.

There’s also another major obstacle to mummification: individuals must submit a body release document with signatures from every person who would have control of their body after their death, Temu said.

Both Temu and Aua are retired funeral directors, and they’ve gone through family squabbles where one side of the family wants their loved one cremated, while another wants their loved one buried. Mummification can pose a similar conflict, they said.

“The problem is that if they’re going to be mummified, it’s their job and responsibility to make everybody feel comfortable with that,” Temu said. “So if a person’s going to get mummified, that’s strange for a lot of people… so there is a lot of people that would be objectionable to it in a family.”

The funeral industry has taken away the traditional process of family members caring for a loved one’s body after death, Temu said. When he was a funeral director, he’d invite family members to be present as he washed and dressed a body for services — some were hesitant, he said, but they could “absolutely feel that connection” when they were there.

Temu, Aua and Menu all felt a similar connection when they mummified Nowell, Summum’s founder.

“It’s a spiritual experience — it’s a meditation because you’re not talking,” Menu said. “Most of the time it was just very quiet. And happy, actually, not sad; we were happy for him to be moving on.”