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All the United States Connecticut New Haven Skull and Bones Tomb

Skull and Bones Tomb

The headquarters of the famous Yale society.

New Haven, Connecticut

Added By
J.W. Ocker
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Skull and Bones Tomb   J.W. Ocker
Skull and Bones Tomb   J.W. Ocker
“Secret Society Buildings New Haven,” from a drawing by Miss Alice Heighes Donlevy (circa 1869-1903), showing the former Skull and Bones headquarters to the left center   Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database
Archive photograph of 15 Bonesmen and their grandfather clock   Yale University Library Manuscript and Archives Department
Skull and Bones logo   Yale University Archives
View of the Tomb   ragesoss/Flickr
Photograph of Skull and Bones resting on a pillow, from album belonging to Class of 1903 Skull & Bones member   Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database
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About

Yale College in New Haven, CT, is well-known for its tomb societies—also called senior societies, and landed societies. These elite, secretive self-run student organizations have been around for more than a century and a half, with mysterious-sounding names like Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head, Book and Snake, and Sage and Chalice. Each one of the landed societies has its own headquarters building with access more or less only granted to initiates.

The oldest and most famous of all these societies is the Skull and Bones. Founded in 1832, it has inspired numerous stories due to its strange rituals and high-ranking roster of alumni. Three U.S. presidents were members of the Skull and Bones (William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush), as were various media leaders, presidential cabinet members, congressmen, finance industry captains, university presidents, and Supreme Court justices.

The Skull and Bones Tomb is a bare, symmetrical, sandstone building and the quintessential Yale tomb…imposing, windowless, and full of secrets. It was built in 1856, and has had wings and other additions built onto it in the intervening years.

The Skull and Bones society is particularly renowned for exulting in the macabre. This extends from strange rites and initiation rituals to the objects that they keep in their inscrutable tomb. Death is apparently their décor of choice, with skeletons, skulls (both real and artificial), coffins, and other grim funeralia, statuary, and artwork adorning the inside of the tomb. Most infamously, some have claimed that in the early 1900s the Bonesmen stole the skull and bones of Geronimo, the Apache warrior and Native American hero. The rumors became pronounced enough that the descendants of Geronimo sued to get it back.

Adapted with Permission from: The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker

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Memento Mori Rites And Rituals Secret Society Colleges

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  • Collector of Experiences
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  • Calvin the Courageous

Published

May 15, 2012

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  • The New England Grimpendium: http://www.amazon.com/New-England-Grimpendium-J-Ocker/dp/0881509191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279457058&sr=8-1
Skull and Bones Tomb
64 High Street
New Haven, Connecticut, 06511
United States
41.308519, -72.930261
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