Some distant Quaker relatives of mine -a trio of brothers, in fact- were buried in Knightstown’s Glen Cove Cemetery. My mom and I were circling the grounds searching for their shared tombstone when something unexpected caught my eye. Rising in the distance was what has to be the strangest, eeriest mausoleum I’ve ever seen. In an instant, the family headstone hunt took a backseat to this haunting architectural oddity. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about it. 

When I think about cemeteries, two kinds usually come to mind: the sprawling, carefully landscaped municipal grounds and the tiny, forgotten graveyards tucked away in the countryside. It’s rare to find a pioneer burial ground hidden in the heart of suburbia, but that’s exactly where Collins Cemetery sits in Muncie.

I suspect many folks who pass it see Bryan Cemetery as just another kink in the road between Centerville and the open countryside. For locals, though, it’s where generations of loved ones rest. For history buffs like me, it’s also the final home of the iron fence that once surrounded Wayne County’s old Centerville courthouse¹. I’d stopped by about a decade ago to snap photos of that fencing, but I never wandered among the stones themselves. That changed a couple of weeks ago.

My mom and I were speeding home after a visit to Liberty Township’s abandoned Mt. Pleasant Church when something caught our eye- a small hillside burial ground about a mile and a half east. We both filed it away, but it took a few years before curiosity finally pulled us back. What we found was Orr Cemetery. It’s a place you’d only notice if you happened to be looking at just the right moment. Fortunately, we had been.