me: wow I wish someone would upload something interesting. Caitlin: baby’s in the ceiling me: *o boi*

"You don't need school to know you're not supposed to hide infant corpses in the ceiling." Wiser words were never spoken.

The Scooby Gang was right, Humans are the only real Monsters.

When I lost my daughter at 23 weeks gestation, the first funeral home I contacted was pushy and aggressive about getting a plot. They had already picked up her body at that point. I contacted a different funeral home and from the get go only focused on what I wanted. They asked about a plot, but didn’t push it any further when I said I only wanted a cremation. They then waived the fee bc a stillbirth, born sleeping baby, is a nightmare. He sat and talked me through some of the worst emotions I could have ever imagined. I will forever be grateful for the funeral home that finally handled her remains and I’m so grateful for speaking up and standing up for my rights.

Recently a coworker was dealing with the sudden and violent death of a family member. If I hadn’t of started watching your videos a year ago, and more recently started reading ‘From Here to Eternity’, I would never have had the awareness or confidence to speak with her about the death. I would have been so much more awkward and more specifically I wouldn’t have had any of the answers to the questions she was asking, like: “doesn’t the funeral home take the body right away? The funeral should be in about a week right? Does she have to be cremated? What does embalming do?” Just being able to give her answers to these types of questions without being “creeped out” by talking about death was such a comfort to her and multiple times she told me “I needed to hear that” Thank you Caitlin!!

There's a Google review of the place from a year ago complaining about the smell...

I thank God for the generous man that took care of my son after he died from SIDS. I was a low-income mother a single mother. He was survived by his twin brother. Of 7 weeks. The funeral directors understood how limited my income was. They said that they prayed about it I came to them one day with the payment that they told me that it was going to cost cremate my 7 week old son. They handed me my son cremated of course and told me to spend the money for his brother on his Christmas only two weeks away. That man saved my Christmas and he saved my soul

You should make a video on the bodies of Chernobyl or on the handling of radioactive bodies

Team: How strange & peculiar do you want this video ? Caitlin: Yes

This makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable because I used to work as a florist and did funeral arrangements for Cantrell! So, thanks for that

Imagine finding out your child was never returned. That's a moment your trust in the world is greatly damaged. I can't imagine.

In France we complain about the endless rules and laws and controls regarding the industry, but honestly now I'm glad we have them.

If you work in a funeral home and you die does your family get a discount?

I'm really digging the Sherlock Holmes get up. Since you're a mortician can I call you Sherlock bones. 😂 P.s. I know that was corny but I'm not sorry!

I remember at the funeral home I was hanging around had the cremated remains of a man named Henry. None of his family ever picked him up. The interns would have poker games and allowed Henry to ‘sit in’. He often won as well.

Imagine you’re taking a test in mortuary school and one of the questions says “You’re hired as a mortician at a new funeral home, what is the legal limit of infant corpses allowed in the ceiling rafters?”

I'M DEAD "Nobody puts baby in the ceiling."

Nothing I do will ever be as perfect as Caitlin's bangs.

On of my dad's closest friends is a mortician and owns a funeral home. He understands that funerals can be the most difficult times for a family. He has met with people on Sundays and Christmas morning to help plan their loved one's funeral. He has even not charged families or returned payments to those that he knew could not afford even a simple funeral. He and his team take care of the whole family.

When I gave birth to my stillborn daughter at 6 months along at Vanderbelt University hospital in Nashville Tenn they cremated her for me , this was in 2002 , at no charge and they did a amazing job during the labor and afterwards allowing me to grieve hold and have my family spend time with her before taking her away for final arrangements. They had a charity in place for just my situation and they hold a memorial every year as well.

I love the rodeo metaphor: "The babies were not Cantrell's first ride at the unethical rodeo".

Caitlyn- today I was on a hike with my friends and asked them all how they want to be treated after death. They all said cremation (no embalming) and I explained I wanted a natural burial- just shroud. They didn’t realize this was even a possibility and were genuinely excited by the idea. Thanks for everything you do- death positivity is environmentally friendly AND friendly on the wallet :)

They made my grandma look like a different person. We wiped off the makeup and did it ourselves..my aunts coffin was leaking at the funeral. They were family friends. Horrible😪😡

Director: “I had no idea how this happened” Me:....so how many bodies you misplacing a year my guy?

Personally, I prefer not to store my dead infants in the ceiling. jokes aside. I thought you were going to talk about ceiling murals. Boy was I mistaken.

I did taxidermy for 5 years. The inspection procedure is brutal. It is amazing we are more concerned over dead animals than humans ! Great videos. Love your channel !

Michigan Department of Licensing: "Aw, shit; Here we go again."

Husband : what you watching Me : Babies in the ceiling

There is a convenience store in my town that used to be a funeral home back in the late 1800s/early 1900s. When the undertaker died, several bodies were found in the attic.

I really feel like this is the adult equivalent of a kids tv show talking difficult topics with funny costumes and humour so you don't have do fear them anymore, so good

“Unknown fluids” found on the faces on bodies stored in the garage.... anyone a little worried for the same reason?

“Babies in the Ceiling” sounds like an unreleased Misfits song.

how desensitized to you have to be to be ok with babies in the ceiling. thats almost creepier than coffin births...

A funeral home in my town doesnt charge for a child's funeral. People are so grateful

This funeral home has since been shut down, but members of this family have opened another home. 🤔

Stuff you never think about. Interesting. She really does some of the most thought inducing videos. *as a loss mom I super appreciated the warning in the beginning.*

It frustrates me seeing this story anywhere 😣 It brings back the horrible memory of finding out my daddy’s body was being held in a goddamn garage 😕 being lied to and deceived about something like that hurts alot ....I hope that man is going through hell literally 👿😪

When my father passed away, my mother didn't have enough to pay for the funeral in full and so she paid half, agreeing to work with the funeral home and make payments later. Things were very very hard after that since my father earned the majority of our income and repaying the funeral home was not easy. A couple months after that, my grandmother passed away (my mother's mother) and had a funeral in the same funeral home. It wasn't long after that that the funeral home waived what my mother owed to them. It was an incredibly kind gesture.

There was a funeral home nearby in Fort Worth (Johnson Family Mortuary) that got busted for having 8 decaying bodies stored in the basement. While not on this scale, the painful salt in the wounds of the grieving were that families had paid for services that were never fulfilled. This is evil, plain and simple.

God. They were accumulating cadavers like they were forms someone hadn't gotten around to filling out.

I just started reading Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. It is written so well, and I love the way you wrote it so much like the way you talk. Sometimes I swear I can hear you reading it in my head.

"Nobody puts baby in the ceiling" omg classic I love this channel officially a deathling subscribed

I couldn’t imagine losing a child. I couldn’t imagine even more not being able to respectfully hold a funeral for a child.

Bored at work with nothing to do. DEAD BABIES IN THE CEILING. Well what do you know it's time to take lunch and watch this.

Me: *reads title* Those WHATS in the WHAT?!

"Nobody puts baby in the ceiling." That's it - I'm now dead. DEAD, I tells ya!

Note to self: Do not eat while watching ask a mortician. I can usually eat while talking or watching about gross things but the visual with this one almost made me gag. That being said, as usual, you educated and made it interesting.

A High School Classmate of mine left her job teaching and got licensed and certified as a Funeral Home Owner/ Operator in a small town in NC. She did because she felt the local, been there for years Funeral Home was ripping people off, over charging and was no longer "Connected" to the Community it served. It was a turning point for her and her family when they had some very unfair charges leveled in the Funeral Expenses in a child's embalming and burial. Both are still in business, except my friend has a lot of business due to their fair pricing and extreme honesty in all dealings. Thanks for this Catlin! As always, very enjoyable.

I live in Detroit and this story shocked and saddened me for so many reasons. What's worse is that right after this, another funeral home here was busted for having lots of unclaimed babies too. They were supposedly working with Wayne State University's mortuary school. I love Wayne State and was thinking about applying there to finish my mortuary science studies, but now I'm very torn about that. Anyway, what really saddens me is that so many babies are going unclaimed. My husband and I have lost 3 babies to miscarriage and 2 to stillbirth. I can never imagine just leaving those babies behind in the hospital like medical waste. These are innocent babies, not tumors or amputated limbs! I understand that funerals are expensive, but that doesn't mean that parents should just leave their deceased children behind like a bad memory. When we had our first stillborn son, we didn't have a pot to piss in. Since he was born at the University of Michigan's hospital, we donated his body to their medical school. They cremated his remains for free and returned them to us a few months later. Our second stillborn son was given a free cremation and funeral by local funeral home. It's a small, family-owned funeral home that sets aside a fund for Detroit area families experiencing miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death. They will cover all of the costs for a funeral, cremation or embalming, and a burial plot. The only costs for the family are for any kind of fancy urn or headstone. They will help the family get discounts and the lowest price possible on those things. We are better off financially now, but the loss happened in early December, and funeral costs would have cleaned our savings out and left our one living child with no presents under the Christmas tree. My point with this story is that hospitals, funeral homes, and support services need to communicate much more with each other so that grieving families aren't left in the dark when their sorrow and pain are so fresh. Pregnancy loss is already still such a taboo topic. Grieving parents feel so isolated, and having no one to help with the care and disposition of the baby is like pouring pounds of salt into the wounds. Henry Ford Hospital gave us a list of funeral homes in the area, and directed us to the one that did the free funeral services. They helped us so that we had our son's pickup arrangements made before I had even received my discharge papers. It made things so much easier, so that upon discharge, we could just go home and be at peace/try to get back to our usual routine... because the world doesn't care that you just lost your baby.

"to know that your not supposed to hide infant corpses in the ceiling" Well there go my plans for the weekend

The mortuary that handled arrangements for my stillborn son was beyond kind. We went to them again when my father passed 8 years later and were again treated beautifully. Some funeral homes have wonderful empathy.

The funeral home I used for my father does not charge to bury children.

Conversation starter (or possibly ender) #32: "So, how about those babies in the funeral home ceiling?"

This put a lump in my throat. My infant daughter passed away, and one of my biggest fears is that her ashes (which I want buried with me when I have my natural burial) is not really her ashes. Thankfully I have to remind myself that the funeral home I chose is wonderful and we became friends with them! 😔 Those poor families.

Caitlin!!!!!!! Are funeral homes required to have generators in case electricity is out for extended period? If not what would be done with corpses that need to be kept cold?

while watching this my husband snuck up behind me and put his hand on my face... needless to say I almost lost it

Completely agree about apprenticeship, and not just in the funeral home industry. With rising costs of education, it’s eliminating the ability of lower income classes from obtaining better jobs.

I agree with random inspection being more common when it comes to licensing. I have no experience in the funeral industry, but I work with animals and live in a state that requires a lot of licenseing to own native species (which I need for educational purposes), so ive seen first hand how easy it is to get away with doing whatever you want once you have the license. I'm in a Facebook group with other animal educators, and ive seen posts of people thanking each other for helping them "get ready" for their yearly inspection. You should not need a group of people to come to your house and take a whole day in order for you to pass an inspection, you should have the conditions in line with what is required ALL THE TIME. It pisses me off, because I know that means the animals arent being taken care of properly if they need that much help to make their conditions passable when they know an inspection is coming.

“Brought to you by death enthusiast like you” big PBS vibes haha

That funeral home had been fined many times back in the late 70's and 80's when I still lived outside Detroit and worked in the city. It is so sad that this happened makes me sick to tell the truth... The town I live in now in N. Michigan our local funeral director is sooooo wonderful! He refuses to charge for a funeral the service and burial/cremation for infants and toddlers under the age of 2!! He and his wife are such wonderful people and I am grateful for them in this town...!:) ☮🐱

I'm eating pizza when suddenly 🤢"UNKNOWN FLUIDS"🤢

It was so sad when that happened. If I remember correctly they also found remains somewhere else connected to the funeral home. How anyone could do anything like that is beyond imagination.

So I went and looked at the google reviews for Cantrell and I think the creepiest thing wasn’t the fact that people were talking about the babies, but the fact that there was people who genuinely liked Cantrell. It gave me the shivers seeing all of these positive reviews about a place that hid babies in the ceiling.

Love this channel. One question: How many runs does a funeral home get before it’s shut down? Geeeeez

I am speechless....my heart is breaking for every family that has dealt with this monster of a funeral home. Thank you for helping us to be wiser consumers.

This reminds me of the Kermit Gosnell scandal, he was reported by patients, coworkers and other abortion clinics - for three decades complaints about his illegal Clinic stacked up at the health department with no inspections of his practice or premises. He was only caught because he was running a pill Mill through the clinic on the side and was busted for writing too many opiate Rx - not illegal, unsanitary, untrained abortions. *sigh* Some industries really do need common sense regulations and THOROUGH, TIMELY INSPECTIONS.

“When they came to search the funeral home . . . In the dark” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhhh . . . NOPE! I- NO THANK YOU. I WILL NOT BE COMING FACE-TO-FACE WITH AN UNEXPECTED, POSSIBLY DECOMPOSING CORPSE IN THE DARK OF A FUNERAL HOME, THANKS! THE CALL TO SEARCH FOR SUCH THINGS IS A SIGN TO TAKE A VACATION.

My son was a day old when he passed away, although I knew he had a problem I had to give him a chance as he would of had operations to help him if he survived 24 hours he developed pneumonia which didn't help, he was born quite a long way from home as needed a specialist hospital the undertaker was a great help as he collected him and brought him home, the nurses wrapped him in a blanket and put a suit on him so he wouldn't be cold, that was what I wanted, I think I only had to pay fuel cost and headstone to put on the grave he would have been 22 this year so things might have changed since then.

The dislike is from Cantrell. Also, what sort of heart does it take to hold a corpse hostage because the family is poor? If services had already been rendered, send them to collections like normal humans

Dear Caitlin and viewers, I am going through a bad depression because of unemployment and apparent ending of a long relationship. Watching these videos for some reason is helping me feel very positively distracted and helps me not to think of those problems for a moment. Thank you.

Lol, that magnifying glass is her favorite prop

I'm a simple girl. I see a new Ask a Mortician video, I click.

😬 why did detroit let this funeral home continue after the first /couple/ of issues smh

Plus 3:07 onward Good on ya for working with low income families. Just because they’re low income does NOT mean they DON’T love a family member any less. Hell, they may be “low income” because they spent so much on medicalisation they simply could not afford the step that comes after that final millisecond they have to decide if the cessation of life support/therapy/etc etc....

I don't know WHY I'm always eating while watching your videos, but this is stomach churning and so horrifying. 🥺🤢

I did a presentation on this for school I'm pretty sure I traumatized my class

“I want to speak to your manager!” Is much more suitable for this topic than just some regular ol’ corpse blood

It's just so gruesome 😢 In our city is a service that cremates fetuses if they don't have a certain weight to be buried by their family and it's free. There is a beautiful heartshaped headstone with a wonderful quote engraved in it for all those poor little beings that never had a chance to see this world. I lost my first child very early into pregnancy but loved it so very much and was glad that someone takes care.

My newborn died in 2011 and the funeral home charged me nothing. I’m so thankful

I swear, I'm saving money for my own cremation and have already told my family if anything should happen to me just to have a family get together/dinner in remembrance of me. This channel has seriously solidified that decision for me! Also, in relation to the video...what happens when people seriously don't pay? I assume there is some sort of process set in place for that situation. It obviously can't be left as a burden to the funeral home to pay for a burial...so say the family has literally nothing to pay...what happens to the body? (assuming most places don't hide them in the attic 😑)

I love you so much, Caitlin! Thank you for helping everyone understand their rights when it comes to death! I've had this conversation with my family many times all thanks to you! I'm 24 and made my advanced directive. 💕

I lost 2 Daughter's to stillbirth. My first born in 2002 at 23 weeks from a constricted umbilical cord. The hospital cremated her for me. They also held ceremonies for all the babies lost that year and planted a tree in her name. My youngest I lost at 39.5 weeks during Labor in 2018 from a placenta arruption due to preeclampsia and Hellp syndrome. The hospital set me up with a Funeral home that provided services cheap to Families. They experienced a loss before and it was their way of helping families in similar situations. I am so grateful for them. I paid $300 for services and Burial. It would be devastating to get a call my Daughter's were left to rot in a attic without my knowledge. It's already hard living with the fact you had to say Goodbye to your Baby, before you even said Hello and the feeling of not being able to protect them, as a Mother. To have this done is just horrific. I am glad they are out of Business. I wouldn't want any favors from Mr. Cantreal like he states, they were. I pray the families find peace. It's got to take some toll knowing this. I can't even imagine.

“Then it got worse...” Caitlyn, you’re my #1 favorite role model, YouTubing mortician trailblazer! You’re the only one able to make death-videos funny-charming-tastefully done and informative. Thanks for the fun👻!

I absolutely love your videos. They are so important. I hate the way our culture treats the subject of death and dead bodies and I want it to change. You helped me change the way I see death! For that I am *eternally" grateful.

Caitlin, The fact you can turn something to most people scary and horrifying, you make light out of it the situation but in a good way and also educate. Just wanted to say thank you and I appreciate you. I'm pretty sure I can die without worrying after years of Ask A Mortician and also your books. Much love from UK 🖤

I think the most unsettling two words in this video (more even just in general) might be "unknown fluids"

My niece sadly lost her baby at 6 months old Our local funeral home did not charge her a penny They had a baby fund set up to provide the funeral for free Bless them they provided two cars white coffin the lot.

As soon as I heard "michigan" I got my hopes up that this was about the shady funeral home by my house but nope

Thank you for the warning. I watched it anyway, because you're awesome. But as a mother I appreciate the warning.

I always worry my son was never buried. The hospital heavily medicated me and then had me sign a ton of paperwork none of which was explained. I was just told that my son died in my belly and being told to sign papers. I delivered him and once he left the room I never saw him again. The next day I had to take clothes to the funeral home (if I wanted) and they refused to let me see him. The entire funeral home staff walked out in a group and wouldn't let me any further. Everytime I visit his grave I dont feel peace...I truly feel in my heart my sons body isnt there.

I'm a retired court reporter, and years ago I took a meeting of our state's the thanato practice board. I don't remember anything about it and they didn't order a transcript, but what I do remember is that they were the most pleasant people I ever worked for. Great senses of humor. Fantastic group of people. Just like you. And thank you for informing the public about human composting. That's what I'm planning on. I'm 70, and hopefully by the time I pass, it will be legal in all states. It's good for the environment.

I swear these topics are just so interesting. The only thing I ever knew was from some TV show called Six Feet Under, and that was late nothing compared to what you have here. Just so interesting I can't really describe it.

Caitlin needs to upload more. I can't stop watching these interesting and informative videos! Hope she gets a new "the meow" soon! "The meowS" is a good name....

im from the detroit area, an this was all over the local news a while ago.

I live in metro Detroit, I was wondering when you were going to cover this story.

"I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life." - Sherlock Holmes Bring on the bizarre beautiful

OK, so now I'm waiting for the story that can top "Ceiling Babies." Or am I?

Inspection is insufficient in so many industries and other businesses.

Wait, at what point did they say “this place is closed indefinitely”? Like, that many issues in close succession, I would think, should mean no license, no business, not allowed.

Caitlin . Caitlin. Hey Caitlin. 😄 Can you talk about Kendrick Johnson’s case ? That’s an eerie one! & please share your opinion on organ harvesting !