Great Pyramids of Avery
A mausoleum in Avery, Iowa, built in 1939, Great Pyramids of Avery is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Mausoleum associated with documented cultural history. HauntHunt files it with mysterious structures and unusual burials. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.
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Is Great Pyramids of Avery haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
In Hickory Grove Cemetery at Avery, in Monroe County, stand three small sandstone pyramids — a family mausoleum complex built in 1939 by Axel Peterson, the town's resident philosopher and one of Iowa's more durable eccentrics. Peterson published his own newspaper, the Avery Boomer, to promulgate what he called 'truth and common sense,' and he built the pyramids the same way he did everything: on his own logic.
The construction record Iowa PBS preserves is pure Peterson: laborers who owed him debts worked them off in sandstone, and the cap of the largest pyramid is a dump-truck bed bought for four dollars and set upside down — the pharaoh's burial chamber roofed in scrap iron.
Tombs nobody uses
The pyramids were intended as the Peterson family vault. They were never used — the record states plainly that the family, including Axel, was buried elsewhere — leaving the cemetery with Egyptian geometry holding nothing at all.
The file files it accordingly: no haunting is inferred, the notes keep cemetery visitation rules and current condition pending verification, and the pyramids stand as what they are — a self-published philosopher's monument to himself, carefully built, quite empty, and the strangest thing in a Monroe County graveyard by a wide margin.
Documented history
Axel Peterson built these intended family tombs in 1939; they were never used for burials. A cemetery in Avery, Iowa with this much on record gives the file real ground to stand on. The press recorded it; the detail stands as reported history. The record appears in 'Iowa’s Unique Gravestones and Burials'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.
Media reportedIowa PBS
Sources on file
- 01Iowa’s Unique Gravestones and BurialsIowa PBS · local journalism · A3
Field notes & open questions
No haunting inferred; cemetery visitation rules and current condition need primary verification.