Friends,

Fifteen elite souls are plucked from Yale’s junior class each year, anointed to carry the torch of America’s most notorious brotherhood. Their fortress—a brooding, windowless Neo-Gothic monstrosity locals call the “Tomb”—looms like a medieval specter off High Street. Pedestrians passing its stone façade feel a chill of dread mingled with forbidden curiosity.

What blood oaths are sworn in those lightless chambers? What savage rituals unfold beyond those impenetrable walls? The question burns in America’s collective imagination: why are we so desperately, so hungrily fascinated by what we cannot see?

Welcome to the world of the Skull & Bones.

Members of Skull and Bones. Wikimedia.Background

After immersing himself in Germany’s most exclusive esoteric circles—some that even fashioned themselves after the legendary Illuminati of the Enlightenment period—William Russell came back to Yale University with a vision. He sought to establish his own clandestine brotherhood and selected Alfonso Taft as one of its inaugural initiates, extending the ceremonial “tap” that would later become tradition.

Manuscripts & Archives (Yale University)
A black wax seal, circa 1865, with the Skull and Bones emblem.

According to an alternate account, the society’s origins trace back to December 1832, when a dispute erupted among the Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and Calliopean Society debate clubs regarding that year’s Phi Beta Kappa honors. In response, William Russell, Alfonso Taft, and a handful of their fellow students abandoned their clubs to establish their own society, first calling themselves the Eulogian Club. 

Skull & Bones wasn’t a name chosen after careful deliberation. Rather, it stuck after a founding member, posting a notice of their gathering on Yale’s chapel door—the customary bulletin board for undergraduates—impulsively drew a skull and crossbones symbol across the announcement. As he later confessed in writing, he’d done it merely “to attract attention and make a sensation among outsiders!” The symbol accomplished precisely that, and with remarkable effectiveness.

A Home for Skull & BonesThe New Haven Museum
The Skull and Bones tomb as it appeared in its original configuration, with just one rectangular, windowless block

In the early years society members met in rented rooms in commercial buildings in town. Members prized this escape from campus, understandably so given the dismal conditions of Yale College accommodations. The Old Brick Row dormitories that once stood where Old Campus now lies featured ceilings that drooped precariously, floors that creaked beneath one’s feet, walls fractured with age, and an atmosphere permeated by mildew. Warmth from coal-burning stoves fluctuated with available fuel, while the tallow candles and whale-oil lamps contaminated what breathable air remained.

Against such squalor, even the modest chambers secured by Bones would have represented sanctuary.

New Haven remained home to numerous Bones alumni who, having aged into the role of custodians, felt responsible for safeguarding both the society’s growing prestige and its accumulated treasures. These elder members established legal protection by incorporating under Connecticut law as the Russell Trust Association, through which they provided Skull & Bones with its first permanent headquarters.

What remains today as the left-hand block once formed the entire structure, its central doorway since replaced by a slotted window. Darker than its neighbors, the sandstone edifice presented a windowless face to the street. Iron doors—massive, tightly fitted, and towering twelve feet—bore the emblems of the society. Tin plates sheathed the nearly flat roof (iron plates, half an inch thick, would come later). Around the roof’s perimeter stood chimneys and ventilators, blocking the one skylight. The rear revealed only two small, iron-barred blind windows. At foundation level, barred scuttle holes provided the sole access to the cellar beneath.

Conspiracy Theories surrounding Skull & Bones

According to whispers, The Tomb’s macabre collection includes the pilfered skulls of President Van Buren(1782–1862), Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (1878–1923) and Apache warrior Geronimo (1829–1909)—the latter supposedly exhumed by Prescott Bush in 1918.

When society tires of tales involving historical remains, conversation inevitably shifts to the society’s alleged blueprint for global control.

Wikimedia Commons- Presidents Taft, H.W. Bush and W. Bush were all members of the Skull and Bones Society.

This paranoia gained traction when three Skull & Bones alumni ascended to the presidency, while the society’s deep CIA connections—through figures like James Jesus Angleton and the elder Bush—fueled whispers of a shadow government pulling intelligence strings from New Haven.

Some conspiracy theorists link the society to the shadowy Illuminati, while others credit Bonesmen with secretly orchestrating the development of the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project.

Conspiracy theorists have even implicated the Skull & Bones in President Kennedy’s assassination, claiming that Mr. Bush’s position at the helm of Zapata Offshore—an oil company operating in the Gulf of Mexico—provided the perfect cover for recruiting Cuban operatives to carry out the Dallas shooting on that fateful November day in 1963.

Strange Rituals of Skull & Bones.

Few outsiders know what truly happens during the society’s initiation ceremonies, leading to wild speculation about rituals involving everything from occult symbols to sacrificial animals laid across stone altars.

The truth behind the Skull & Bones rituals remains shrouded in mystery: Did Time founder Henry Luce really lie naked in a coffin confessing intimate secrets? Did William F. Buckley actually leap into mud during his initiation? Were the Bush dynasty members—Prescott, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.—each gifted $15,000 with promises of lifelong financial security upon induction?

Despite decades of speculation in Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and countless books, these questions may forever remain unanswered.

Skull & Bones Diversifies

The society’s exclusivity gradually eroded in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jewish students first crossed the threshold in the early 1950s, followed by the society’s first Black member in 1965—though notably, Yale football star Levi Jackson had declined an invitation fifteen years earlier, opting instead for Berzelius. A decade later, in 1975, the organization’s boundaries expanded further when they extended membership to the president of Yale’s gay student alliance.

While Yale University opened its doors to women in 1969, the Skull and Bones society maintained its male-only tradition for another 23 years. The society’s gender barrier finally cracked in 1991 when that year’s class selected seven female students for membership in the following year’s cohort.

This decision ignited fierce resistance from the old guard. Several prominent alumni—conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. among them—physically barred women’s entry by replacing the locks on the society’s headquarters, known as “The Tomb,” and initiated legal proceedings to prevent their induction.

The controversy was ultimately resolved through a second alumni referendum that endorsed women’s admission, leading to the lawsuit’s withdrawal and the historic initiation of the first female Bonesmen in 1992.

Final Thoughts

Unlike most secret societies, Skull & Bones has mastered the art of secrecy through strategic disclosure—offering just enough crumbs of information to satisfy public curiosity while keeping their true rituals, routines, and gatherings shrouded in mystery.

I must acknowledge the impenetrable nature of Skull & Bones despite my decades investigating secret societies in history. Skull & Bones has proven remarkably resistant to outside scrutiny, maintaining its mysteries even as I’ve uncovered others. Its strength lies in its structure—members spend only a brief period as active participants before joining the vastly larger, more influential alumni network that sustains its power across generations.

Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.

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Sources:

“Change In Skull And Bones; Famous Yale Society Doubles Size of Its House – Addition a Duplicate of Old Building” (PDF). The New York Times. September 13, 1903. Retrieved November 5, 2011.

Yale, Skull and Bones, and the beginnings of Johns Hopkins – PMC

The origins of the tomb | Features | Yale Alumni Magazine

An American Conspiracy of the Lost Skull of a General Francisco VIlla

Yale’s Secret Society That’s Hiding in Plain Sight | TIME

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