Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe MILWAUKEE, April 19 (UPI) -- Private mausoleums -- those small stone building that hold the dead in older U.S. cemeteries -- are booming, mainly because of baby boomers. "It's those dang pesky baby boomers that are finally going away," said Doug Keister, author of "Going Out in Style" and "Stories in Stone," two books on mausoleums. Advertisement Industry sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mausoleum sales have been growing at 10 percent to 15 percent a year even though death rates are flat. The mausoleum momentum is being fueled by increasing numbers of people who find the prospect of having themselves entombed in an above-ground mausoleum a whole lot better than being buried six-feet under. "It's the attempt to sanitize death," said Edwin Shneidman, an emeritus professor of Thanatology, the study of death, at the University of California-Los Angeles. As with most buildings, architecture and decor determine the final cost -- mausoleums range from $25,000 to millions.
