Skull and Bones Tomb

Yale's Skull and Bones society, founded in 1832, conducts coffin-lying initiation rituals inside a windowless Gothic fortress at 64 High Street in New Haven. The Tomb reportedly houses stolen human skulls, including allegedly Geronimo's, taken from his grave by Bonesmen at Fort Sill in 1918, and its membership roster includes three U.S. presidents and a Secretary of State who ran against each other in 2004.

"Skull and Bones! Accept or reject?"

That's what you hear at midnight on Tap Night at Yale, when fifteen juniors are shaken awake by members of the oldest secret society in America. If you accept, you get a new name based on your physique ("Long Devil" for the tallest, "Little Devil" for the shortest), a rumored $15,000, and access to the Tomb: a windowless, high-Gothic fortress at 64 High Street in New Haven, decorated with bones and armor.

If you reject, well, nobody rejects.

The society was founded in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft after a dispute among Yale debating societies. The Tomb was built in three phases: the first wing in 1856, the second in 1903, and a pair of Neo-Gothic towers added to the rear garden in 1912. The building has no windows on the lower levels. What happens inside stays inside.

And what happens inside is strange. New members lie in a coffin during initiation and recount their complete sexual history to the assembled Bonesmen. The rituals center on death and rebirth, which is fitting for an organization whose insignia is a skull over crossed bones with the number 322, supposedly referencing the year Greek orator Demosthenes died.

The roster reads like an alternate history of American power. President William Taft (son of co-founder Alphonso). President George H.W. Bush. President George W. Bush. Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry and Bush ran against each other in 2004. Both were Bonesmen. Neither would discuss the society during the campaign.

Then there are the skulls.

In 1918, a group of Bonesmen stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma allegedly dug up Geronimo's grave, nine years after the Apache leader's death, and brought his skull back to the Tomb. A letter published in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2006 described the theft in specific detail. Additional unpublished letters suggested members believed their fellow Bonesmen had actually done it. Geronimo's descendants sued Yale in 2009. Yale's official position: "Yale does not possess Geronimo's remains."

The society has also been accused of possessing the stolen skulls of President Martin Van Buren and Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. No proof has surfaced for either claim, but the accusations have persisted for over a century, which says something about the society's reputation.

The Tomb is not technically Yale property. The university has stated it "does not own the Skull and Bones building or the property it is on, nor does Yale have access to the property or the building." It sits on Yale's campus like a dark riddle the university claims not to own.

The Tomb carries a weight that does not require a traditional ghost. No ghost tours run here. No phantom keeper roams the halls. But a building that may contain stolen human skulls, where initiates lie in coffins and rehearse rituals of death, where the most powerful people in American politics have gathered in secret for nearly two centuries, carries a different kind of weight. The bones, if they're really in there, belonged to someone. Geronimo fought for decades to keep the U.S. government from taking his land. The idea that his skull ended up as a fraternity trophy in Connecticut is a haunting that doesn't require a ghost.

The Tomb stands at 64 High Street, windowless and locked, in the middle of one of the most walkable campuses in the country. Students pass it every day. Nobody goes in unless they're chosen.