Founded in 1832, Skull and Bones is an elite secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Operating under the business name, Russell Trust Association and informally known as “Bones”, it chooses or “taps” only 15 senior students a year who become patriarchs after they graduate. Its past members (called Bonesmen) have included many of the most powerful men of the 20th century including William Howard Taft, Percy Rockefeller, Prescott Bush, John Forbes Kerry, and George W. Bush (who himself tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration).
The Skull and Bones society is featured in many conspiracy theories, which claim that the society plays a key role in a globalist/corporatist conspiracy for world control, that it is a branch of the Illuminati, or that it exerts an unusual amount of control over certain branches of the US government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency. It is heavily shrouded in secrecy and Bonesmen are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum, the windowless building on the Yale campus that is called the Tomb.
The “Tomb” was built in 1856 and includes a small, enclosed courtyard where Skull and Bones secret rituals are held. One former student, Ron Rosenbaum, described it as such:
“It’s this sepulchral, tomblike, windowless, granite, sandstone bulk that you can’t miss. And I lived next to it. I had passed it all the time. And during the initiation rites, you could hear strange cries and whispers coming from the Skull and Bones tomb.”
According to CBS News, Rosenbaum made many attempts to get inside the vault-like compound but the best he could do was hide out on the ledge of a nearby building and videotape a nighttime initiation ceremony that was held in the Tomb’s courtyard. Rosenbaum explained what he saw:
“A woman holds a knife and pretends to slash the throat of another person lying down before them, and there’s screaming and yelling at the neophytes. There is a devil, a Don Quixote and a Pope who has one foot sheathed in a white monogrammed slipper resting on a stone skull. The initiates are led into the room one at a time. And once an initiate is inside, the Bonesmen shriek at him. Finally, the Bonesman is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silent. And Don Quixote lifts his sword and taps the Bonesman on his left shoulder and says, ‘By order of our order, I dub thee knight of Euloga.’”
The video below contains edited segments of a video shot by a former member as he toured throughout the secret Skull and Bones compound giving us an unprecedented glimpse inside the secret society’s lair. Following the tour of the Tomb, are edited segments of the Rosenbaum video showing key parts of a real Skull and Bones secret initiation ceremony.
