The Smell That Starts It All
It always begins with a smell.
Ask any investigator, coroner, or journalist who’s seen the inside of a failed funeral home -they’ll tell you the same thing. Before the horror comes the scent: sweet and chemical, heavy with silence.
Neighbors call it “a bad odor.” Reporters call it “the first sign.” But what it really is, is a signal - a system gone blind to itself.
In 2023, Colorado learned that lesson the hard way. Refrigeration failed. Paperwork was falsified. Hundreds of bodies lay unrefrigerated while inspectors waited for a complaint that never came. The families trusted the system. The system trusted its own forms.
That’s how every scandal starts — with faith standing in for verification.
At Pantheon Platforms, we’re building tools to make that faith measurable — systems that remember, log, and alert before the smell ever arrives.
Because grief deserves structure.
And dignity deserves proof.
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Read the full story in When Cerberus Fell Asleep: How America’s Funeral Industry Lost Its Soul (and Why the Dead Deserve Better Systems).