Ever went down into the woods and came across an eerie surprise… say in the form of a highly unusual tomb?
The 1930s memorial in Washington happens to be the final resting place of businessman John S. McMillin, his wife and children, and one of the family’s employees.
Though the mausoleums commonly prompt an image of ornate columns and imposing gates but at this unusual ‘Afterglow Vista’, one quite literally pulls up a chair and joins the family’s table.
A woodland trail leads you into this memorial a via a set of impressive wrought iron gates topped with the words ‘Afterglow Vista’.
Visitors will be greeted with two some stairs that lead to a rotunda in open-air, and quite frighteningly, a round limestone with a concrete table surrounded by six stone chairs.
The chair bases serve as channels to crypts for McMillin family ashes, while the inscription on the backs of them are names of each deceased family individual laid to rest there.
The memorials are arranged in the same order as the families dined in for decades around the striking table.
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The McMillin family mausoleum was built by John S. McMillan who was a lawyer, businessman and political figure. He commissioned the structure as a memorial for his family, themed around the things that he believed, including symbols from masonry, the Bible and the Sigma Chi fraternity.
The stairs represent the steps within masonic order. The steps on the east side of the mausoleum stand for the spiritual life of man and the winding in the path symbolises how the future cannot be seen.
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According to the details by the local media, the stairs were constructed in sets of three, five and seven mirroring the three stages of manhood – youth, manhood and age. Five represents the five orders of architecture (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite).
As for seven, this references the seven liberal arts and sciences (Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy).
The columns were crafted in order to be the same size as those in King Solomon’s temple. The intentionally broken column represents the broken column of life – the belief that man dies before his work is completed.
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Construction commenced in 1930 and was completed in 1936, costing about $30,000. McMillin had planned to include a bronze dome atop the structure and he had actually ordered the dome but his son, Paul, cancelled the order as at the time, the family company did not have the $20,000 that it would cost.
Thanks to the prevalence of TikTok, recent visitors have been documenting their trip to the mausoleum, enthralling audiences and drumming up further intrigue for the eerie structure.
The mausoleum’s care is monitored by the Sigma Chi fraternity’s Monuments and Memorials Commission.
