Pyramid of Modern Mummification

Salt Lake City, Utah

A 40-foot-square, 26-foot-high metal pyramid, built in the late 1970s, acts as the headquarters of Summum, a religion that practices mummification. The interior of the pyramid is off-limits, but the group offers its mummification services to anyone with enough cash and a dead loved one, $15,000 per pet or $67,000 per human. The religion's founder, Summum Bonum Amon Ra (aka Claude "Corky" Nowell), claimed to know the secrets of the universe (as revealed to him by an alien race) and was himself mummified after he died in 2008.

The mummification process, according to Summum, takes at least three months.

The pyramid is set in a small, neatly-tended lawn inside a gated compound in an industrial area. Sunflowers crowd the eastern fence, and "Divine, Consecrated, Sanctified" water is available from a sidewalk-side spigot from 9 to 5.

A large sign reads, "The Grand Principal of Creation is: 'Nothing and Possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.'" For similar inscrutable religious messaging in Salt Lake City, visit Gigal Garden.