In the rural area of Penrose, Colorado, a foul smell came from a funeral home on October 4th, 2023. It was claimed to be a place with environmentally friendly burials, but it had at least 189 improperly placed bodies.

By law, dead bodies must be embalmed or refrigerated within 24 hours after death. Although the owner of the “Return to Nature Funeral Home” based in Colorado Springs, Jon Hallford, and his wife, Carie, have not been charged with their wrongdoings yet, they are facing a lawsuit and civil filings from a real estate company.

This has been going on since 2017, though bodies are just now being found. It took until October 13th for all bodies to be removed from the 2,500-square-foot area. Authorities have not stated what was being done with the human remains; families impacted by this now worry they have received fake ashes that were supposedly their loved ones.

News has spread this across the U.S., and it is even being discussed in high schools. Here at Liberty High School a high schooler, Alex Nesta-Cruz, explained her point of view, “Well, I haven’t really heard anything about that. It seems terrible. I don’t really have any comment on that. Just praying for the people’s families.” The situation was so impactful that walking into the hazardous site caused an employee to be rash upon entering. Though now she has fully recovered, Hallford said in a Gazette interview, “I knew through mortuary school about the cancer-causing (chemicals) but never really thought about it.” The bodies at this funeral home have decayed to the point where the bodies are unidentifiable by looks. It will take months to identify whose corpses were in the funeral home, as DNA samples have to be used.