Celtic Mysteries of New England"
Written By: William W. Warwick IV
Copyright 2004 - Razing Boondock Saints
www.thenorfolkincident.com

As a young boy growing up in the Irish housing projects of South Boston, Massachusetts there were few summertime activities that would allow a poor kid to cool off and escape the oppressive heat and humidity of our concrete jungle. Despite being surrounded on all sides by Boston Harbor, no one dared go swimming in the ocean due to the now famous pollution problem. Fortunately, there was one place we could go swimming that was free and close enough to Southie that we could catch a ride to. Everyone in my neighborhood looked forward to going swimming in the Quincy Quarries in Quincy, MA.

The excitement of jumping off of 100 ft cliffs into 600ft deep canyons and bragging about it later was the highlight of any kids summer. Even more fascinating was when my father and uncle would take my cousin and I to a secret chamber made from huge granite blocks. The “cave” as we called it, was at the bottom of a steep ravine that was covered by thick brush and trees. If you didn’t know exactly where it was, you would walk right by it. Upon reaching the entrance of the chamber you would notice three things.

The first thing you would notice is that on a hot, humid day there is a cool gust of air that is at least 25 degrees cooler than the surrounding air which streams out of the chamber as if under pressure. When the cool air coming from inside the chamber collides with the warm moist air outside, it condenses and gives off a wispy vapor trail. My father used to tell us that the wisps of air streaming out were the spirits of our ancestors and dead Indians.

The second thing you notice is a spring of water that trickles out from the mouth of the chamber, that seems to come from nowhere, inside of the chamber. The third thing you notice is how carefully the huge granite stones were placed and stacked, creating a rectangular shaft that goes some 40-50 ft straight into the side of the hill. The width of the chamber is approximately 3ft wide and the height of the chamber is no more than 4ft, making it impossible for the average adult to enter the chamber without bending over the whole way.

When we were done swimming in the quarries, my father would always take us to the chamber and tell us the most fascinating stories. He told us that thousands of years ago our family’s ancestors came to New England from Ireland and Great Britain and built many fortifications, burial chambers and other structures throughout the area. He would often bring a lantern and dare us to walk all the way to the end of the chamber, telling us that when we got older, we would be able to spend three days and three nights in the chamber without food and water, as a right of passage. He would point to the condensing air coming out of the chamber and tell us to honor the “spirits.”

Over the years the stories got more elaborate, when he told us that Jesus Christ had traveled to America after being crucified and had the chamber built as a sanctuary and pre-burial chamber for the local Indians, to purify and meditate with their deceased ancestors. The body of the deceased was placed into the chamber for three days and nights and when the Indians were sure that the spirit had left the body, then they removed the body and burned it in a funeral pyre.

“Yeah, right,” my cousin used to say, and for the past 20 years I felt the same way, believing that my fathers stories were just a bunch of ghost stories told to thrill and amuse some gullible little children. All of that changed in the year 2000 when I came across the book “Celtic Mysteries in New England” by Philip Imbrogno & Marianne Horrigan.

After reading this book, I found that Christopher Columbus was definitely not the first European to arrive in North America, since it was now clear to me that there were more anomalous structures in New England than this or any other book could document in detail. Scattered throughout Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusssets, Vermont and Maine are many, many structures whose origin, purpose and age are as mysterious as the few theories that have been put forward to explain them.

The modern history of ancient stone structures begins in 1958, when Robert E. Stone of Derry, New Hampshire opened his property to scientists, archeologists and other researchers. Located on his property were a series of standing stones and boulders that laid out an enormous astronomical calendar. Since then many ancient artifacts, stone tools, pottery, carbon samples suitable for carbon dating have been found. In two excavations in 1969 and 1971, investigators were able to radiocarbon date charcoal samples found at the site to between 1,000 and 2,000 B.C.

Without a doubt, these dates conclusively show that at least some of these megalithic structures were being used over 3,000 years ago! Yet any modern schoolbook still teaches our children that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492, when his last name wasn’t Columbus, it was Colon. Anyone trying to research and investigate the mysterious megalithic structures of New England will find that aside from the stories of local residents or Native Americans, there have never been any large scale archeological studies carried out to determine the origin, and age of these enigmatic structures. When the authors of Celtic Mysteries attended a meeting of local archeologists in New York, none would entertain a discussion on the subject and most scoffed at the idea that these structures were anything but “colonial root cellars.”

The only person willing to go on record about the structures was Dr. Sal Trento, a professor at Lesley College in Massachusssets who told the authors that, “the chambers in New York and the rest of New England are not colonial in nature and that when you put vegetables in these structures – they rot!” Dr. Trento admits he has no idea who built the structures, but that most predate Columbus. A shard of carbon found in one of the chambers in Massachusetts was radiocarbon dated to A.D. 500 – almost a 1,000 years before Columbus! It is important to remember however, that this date tells us when the chamber was last used – not when they were built. Dr. Trento’s work was published in his 1976 book, “The Search for Lost America.”

According to Celtic Mysteries, one of the first well documented stories of early settlers from Europe comes from ancient Phoenician scrolls that have been dated to around 480 B.C. that describe expeditions and trading with a land beyond the pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar in Spain). The Phoenician writer Diodorus wrote in 21 B.C. that a great county could be found, which was many days journey across the Atlantic with vast forests and many types of fruits. He goes on to say that the land was discovered hundreds of years ago (before his time in 21 B.C.) and that the Phoenicians kept its discovery a secret.

This is not such a far-fetched story since I have seen rock carvings in South America that depict Viracocha – the bearded white man and his companions who wore shoes that had a curious curling up on the front of them – like the bow of an ancient ship. These shoes were the same as the ones worn by the ancient seafaring Phoenicians. In addition – if the Phoenicians did develop and establish trade routes with South American Natives, then perhaps that would explain how such high levels of cocaine and nicotine were recently found in ancient Egyptian mummies, since these drugs only grew in South America during the time the mummies were alive.

These tales might explain the origins of some of the South American anomalies, but it doesn’t explain the North American structures. To get a better understanding of these sites, Philip and Marianne went to the New York City library and found a story about an adventurous Irish monk known as Saint Brendan the Navigator who sailed across the northern Atlantic from Ireland to New England and back. As a boy, Brendan was known to have performed many miracles and had many psychic visions. While still a young man he was the head of 3,000 monks at a monastery in Clonfert, Ireland and one day he had a conversation with an old monk named Barrind who told Brendan that he had sailed across the ocean and visited a land of paradise. Intrigued by the monk’s tale, Brendan eventually sets out on his own journey with 14 fellow monks in a small leather clad boat. These intrepid monks journeyed across thousands of miles of open ocean, stopping along the way at various islands and helped by many mysterious people, beings and animals.

Halfway to paradise they landed on another island where they met another group of mysterious monks who washed their feet, never aged and possessed candles that never went out. Further on in their adventures, Brendan’s crew came across a flat and desolate “island” that was just above sea level and covered with purple and white fruits. They were greeted by a group of boys in white robes, young men in blue robes and older men in purple robes, who gave them the purple and white fruits so that their journey could continue.

A few days after leaving the “island,” the monks began to fear that they would run out of food, when suddenly a large object described as a large “bird,” flew over them and dropped a fruit covered branch with red grapes as big as apples into their boat. Then the “bird” guided them to the next island where they stayed for forty days. Eventually Brendan and his crew reached paradise somewhere in the long island sound and made their camp. Within 40 days of reaching his destination, Brendan had a vision that told him to return to Ireland to tell his story. In 1976 an explorer named Tim Severin and three companions constructed a boat using the same materials available to Saint Brendan in the 5th century A.D. He proved once and for all that a voyage across the North Atlantic to Newfoundland was indeed possible.

What was the strange barren island? Who were the robed men and boys who greeted Brendan and his crew and gave them strange purple and white fruits? What kind of huge bird drops off apple sized grapes in the middle of the Atlantic?

Philip Imbrogno suggests that one possible explanation for all these mysterious encounters along Brendan’s voyage may be related to encounters with UFO’s and their occupants. Philip originally became involved in the Celtic Mysteries after publishing his book, “Night Siege,” which documented a series of UFO sightings involving huge Boomerang shaped UFO’s, which frequented the Hudson Valley of New York during the late 1980’s. While investigating hundreds of these sightings, he began to realize that there was a correlation between the stone chambers which dotted the local countryside and the UFO sightings. Armed with sophisticated magnetometers Phil and other researchers conducted studies on some of the chambers and found that many had enormous magnetic anomalies when compared to the local surroundings.

It appears that a lot of the chambers, standing stones and balanced rocks marked areas where magnetic anomalies occurred. In a search for answers to such enigmas, Phil sought the help of a local Native American Indian shaman named Spirit Walker, who agreed to teach Phil about Ninham Mountain and its chambers. Spirit Walker told Phil that the mountain and many of the chambers were placed so that the magnetic and other “spirit” energies would accumulate within the quartz and other mineral laced stones. These energies allowed properly prepared initiates to communicate with and enter other dimensions of consciousness and reality.

Spirit Walker told Phil that explorers with red hair and blue eyes came across the ocean in long boats with 18 people to each boat. They wore fur on their bodies and helmets with horns. The Indians greeted these visitors and treated them as friends and it was these people that built the stone structures that we see today. The people (assumed to be of Celtic origins) stayed for a long time and exchanged ideas and beliefs with the Delaware, Algonquian and the Huron people. When asked how the large stones were moved, Spirit Walker said that the stones were moved by spirit power with a great wind. Phil notes that legendary Merlin the magician allegedly moved the stones of Stonehenge with a whirlwind in a similar fashion. Some of the explanations of the stone structures that Phil came across involved stories about ancient Atlantean survivors who marked out areas of magnetic disturbances where later settlers built their structures on top of them.

The truth is that we may never know who really built the megalithic structures strewn about New England. What is clear is that the structures there now, most resemble the megalithic structures built by the druids and Celtic peoples of Ireland and Great Britain. The fact that these structures were built well before the official discovery of America in 1492 only adds to the mystery. Yet rather than investigate these mysteries, almost every archeological institution that has been approached with any evidence, either ignores it, or scoffs at it.

Far too often the modern academic world will rush to judgment, condemning or worse yet - ignoring anything that cannot be weighed and measured according to their belief systems. The fabled city of Troy was once thought to be a fairly tale until the city was found in the early 19th century. Many biblical stories were considered to be allegorical until the Dead Sea scrolls and other recently unearthed manuscripts verified the validity of a lot of these stories. One can only wonder how many enigmatic objects and other relics are still sitting in museums across the globe gathering dust and forgotten in time, simply because their very existence did not fit in with the current dogma of their day. So any answers to the Celtic Mysteries in New England, like the UFO enigma, will have to continue to come from ordinary people like Philip Imbrogno and Marianne Horrigan whose persistence and dedication to unraveling the truth of these enigmas will have to stand as one of the few records of their existence. This was an insightful and entertaining book and I look forward to any future discoveries that may be uncovered as a result of this endeavor. I hope that in the years to come we may all benefit from the hard work and persistence of these authors and the others who contributed to this work so that we all may gain a greater understanding of the mysterious world around us. I would highly recommend this book.

Justice as far as I am concerned America was populated by an amazing array of races and cultures long before Columbus! You have all the evidence over there and I don't understand why the history of America isn't revised now. I myself have been satisfied as to the validity of Chinese scripts being disovered in Bolivia, African statues in Mexico and the remains of Celtic people in Washington and a few other locations in the USA. All of these artefacts and remains have been conclusively dated to 10,000bc or thereabouts.

Someone really has to get to grips with American history and do a revisionist job on it.

Ben

Bro - you dont know the half of it...

well i take that back, you do know half of it!

change the US history

yeah right.....

that will never happen....
no matter what truth comes along, history books have been written,
GOD forbid theya re wrong.....lol

very interesting, as I never knew this before...
thanks
hugs
P_Goddess

hugs
P_goddess

That it is why it is up to ordinary people to enlighten the "Experts" and their fellow man.

Merlins Cave

“Goin’ to the Quarries”


Summer - 1984

“Get in,” my uncle Peter shouts from his little Blue Toyota Corolla.

I rush up to his window, “what’s up?”

“We’re goin’ to the quarries.”

“did ya call mike?” I ask.

“Yeah, we’re gonna go pick him up.”

Off we went that hot summer day. The project kids from Southie and the poor kids from Dorchester and Quincy would often head down to an old abandoned Granite quarries that was situated just off the Neponset Drive exit of the southeast expressway in Quincy Massachusetts. Whenever the temperature went above 95 degrees you were assured of seeing certain things – especially where young kids from Southie were concerned.

In my project the older kids would light fires in the dumpsters so they could chase the fire engines and watch the firefighters put out the dumpsters. The embers from burning trash would rise up in the air and cause a little fireworks show at night, not a real fireworks display, but enough fun and commotion to make any kid giddy with joy.

When it got really hot, the older kids would open up the fire hydrants so we could all cool off. There was one street in Old Harbor – right next to the Dump that was a One Way only street. Locals would hold up traffic at the entrance while friends would drive their cars up the street to wash one side of their car and then turn around and drive the wrong way, so that they could wash the other side of their car. They had to be quick since the cops would soon come, and shut off the hydrant. An hour later we would turn it back on. This would happen 2 or three times a day. It was all a big game for us. Locals knew of South Boston’s reputation as being the worst neighborhood of troublemakers in all of Boston’s inner city of ethnically divided housing projects. So it wasn’t uncommon for a group of Southie kids to go swimming in the Quincy Quarries even if it wasn’t in their territory.

“Your dad’s coming with us,” Peter tells me.

“Cool, I didn’t know he was back,” I replied.

“I picked him up before you guys and dropped him off in Savin Hill to change.”

“Was he in uniform,” I ask.

“No,” Pete replies.

I knew that meant that he was coming back from “unofficial” business.

“How long is he here for?”

“Until October 14, I think,” Pete replies.

My father and his friends had been coming to the quarries since before I was born. They seemed to know every square inch of the place, as well as the history and “legends” that went with it. My father William F. Warwick (III) was the first-born, followed by his brother Michael. When my father was 6 years old and his father was 22, my grandfather was infected with Polio, which nearly killed him, paralyzing him from the belly button down. My grandfather spent the next 20 years confined to a wheelchair and hospital bed. At the time, my grandfather had two children and had just graduated from the Boston State Teachers College where he met his wife Bernadette Bourie-Sion.

He was diagnosed with Polio on September 3, 1958 and was supposed to have been moving into a new house in Hingham, Massachusssets and starting a teaching job on September 11. The young Warwick family was never meant to be living in the Projects of South Boston, but that was the only alternative since Bernadette had to take care of him full time and my grandfather insisted that the family was not to take any handouts or charity from anyone – especially other family members.

Bernadette was from a well off family of French – Canadian descent whose bloodline went back to the revolutionary war days of early America. Her family broke off ties with her when she opted to stay with my grandfather despite having to live in a housing project. She never left her husband’s side, adding three more children to the growing Warwick Clan even after my grandfather was struck with polio and paralyzed.

After Michael came Peter, then Paul, then finally the long sought after girl that Bernadette had always wanted, Mary-Beth.

At any rate, the reason why the Warwick Family knew so much about the woods and hiking and living off the land, was because Grandpa Warwick, started the 1st Boy Scout Troop in South Boston as a way to get the project kids out of the projects and into a different environment. He wanted to show the kids a different way of life, far removed from the daily grind of the Housing Projects.

He accomplished all this at a time when in the late 60’s and into the early 70’s, there were scores of young boys from Southie and Roxbury and Dorchester being drafted and volunteering to fight in Vietnam. My grandmother still has an article that grandpa Warwick clipped from the Boston Magazine end of the year anniversary edition of 1971, the year that I was born. It read:

Boston Magazine’s Worst Statistic of 1971: More young men from South Boston have died in the Vietnam War, than any other comparable sized community in the United States.

That said it all.

Grandpa Warwick decided that rather than wallowing in self-pity for the rest of his life, he would use his handicap to persuade various important decision makers to see things his way. He used his handicap to get things that other “normal” people couldn’t get. He helped to organize some of the first protests against the Vietnam War, which according to all the news articles I can find, began in Southie and spread like wildfire in the inner cities of America.

His nickname within the family was, “The Mayor,” of Boston of course, since he seemed to know every important decision maker in Massachusssets. We never knew why he was called the mayor, but as children we always had this mental picture of a man in a top hat and a black suit, sometime at the turn of the century, posing as the Mayor of Boston. I always thought I was envisioning the Monopoly Man, a game we often played…it wasn’t until much later in life that I would realize who “the Mayor” was and why I had that particular image in my brain.

Grandpa Warwick always kept a little, “black book,” ostensibly to contact any important person he needed to speak to. In it were the telephone numbers of the real mayor of Boston and many other “famous” and “infamous” people.

“Cool…he’ll be here for my birthday.”

“Yep” Pete replies.

By the time we picked up my cousin Michael and my Dad, it was almost 3pm. We made our way down the Southeast Expressway and got off at the Tuxedo Shop and drove up the steep hill, where we had always gone to go to the Quarries. At the top of the hill on the right hand side was an old beat up chain link fence that we would always jump over to get access to the quarries.

As soon as we jumped the fence and walked about 100 feet we came to a huge drop-off. The cliff in front of us dropped for about 150 feet down to the water filled canyon below.

“Ice-Box,” my cousin shouts.

“You got to be crazy to jump that,” Pete replies.

“It can be done,” my father adds. “You just have to know where to jump, and how to hit the water the right way.”

We knew he had done it before, so we didn’t argue.

“What about Nigger’s Heaven,” Mike asks.

“Same thing, but you have to jump at high tide, otherwise you’ll get splattered on the rocks below.”

My father had a reputation as being a RBMF – a real bad motherfucker, in our neighborhood and we had all seen him jump nigger’s heaven once before - on a dare from a kid from Dorchester.

“Where are we going today,” I asked.

Dad looked at Pete and then looked at Mike and I.

“You guys are going swimming in Canyon.”

“The Canyon,” was a place where the water was always warmer since it had been in the full sun all day.

“Can Tom – Doggie come with us,” I asked?

“Sure,” Pete says.

“Look you guys head down there, we’ll meet with you in a little while, we gotta go check something out,” my dad says to us.

“OK,” I replied and Mike and I were off to go swimming in our favorite watering hole.

“Hey,” dad shouts, “don’t leave until we come get ya.”

I waved back that we had heard him and gave the “ok” sign, since mike had already gone over the hill.

Mike and I knew this was probably the last time we could go swimming, since the water would soon be too cold and we would be stuck in school. When we arrived at the Canyon, it was nearly 5pm and empty, except for a few kids down in Ice Box.

Luckily we came across, “The Raft” a floating platform made from old 55 gallon drums and other trash that had been tied together to make a raft. We would play, “King of the Hill,” for hours on end, trying to push each other off the raft.

“Hey, Mike,” I shout, “did you see Tommie’s (my dog Tommy) new trick?”

“No.”

“Watch this,” I shouted back to him with glee. My dad had gotten our dog Tommy to jump off the lower cliff that mike and I had been jumping off. It was bout 20 ft in the air and it always amazed everyone who saw it. I climbed the rocks and jumped off and mike asked me what he was looking for. I said, “Watch Tommy!”

“Come-on girl, come-on jump!”

Tommy took a step back on the cliff outcrop – then slowly stuck her head over the edge surveying the water below. With one fast step and a jump she suddenly lurched forward and went paws first, jumping in the water.

“Holy shit,” Mike shouts so loud that the echo reverberated in the canyon, “Shit, Shit, Shit…”

“When did you teach him that?”

“Peter did it, not me.” I replied.

Watching our glee and adoration of her performance, my dog Tommy took it upon herself to jump off the cliff again, and again – without any command from me or anyone else. By the third jump, my father and uncle had returned from their excursion.

“What’s wrong?” my Dad asks.

“Who screamed Shit?” Peter adds.

“Nothin’ - Mike saw Tommy jump off the cliff,” I told them.

My dad and Peter let out a laugh so hard that it echoed across the canyon.

“You like that huh,” my dad says as he winks at us. “Look we gotta start heading back now - OK,” my dad tells us. Mike and I wondered about what they had left for…they had that trademark, “Secret Squirrel,” look about them that they always had whenever they were up to mischief.

“Where did you guys go?” Mike couldn’t resist asking.

“do you really want to know,” uncle Pete answers.

“Yeah,” I shout out.

My father gives Peter a Stern look.

“Maybe when you get a little older guys ok.”

With that my cousin and I never spoke of the mysterious object or even remembered anything concerning that days events – until nearly 20 years later when another tragedy struck my family.

So begins the story of Sandy's Hill.

The Celts Rule!

Justice as far as I am concerned America was populated by an amazing array of races and cultures long before Columbus! You have all the evidence over there and I don't understand why the history of America isn't revised now. I myself have been satisfied as to the validity of Chinese scripts being disovered in Bolivia, African statues in Mexico and the remains of Celtic people in Washington and a few other locations in the USA. All of these artefacts and remains have been conclusively dated to 10,000bc or thereabouts.

Someone really has to get to grips with American history and do a revisionist job on it.

Ben

Becasue of the Templar/Warwick/Jesus connection

Ever heard of Oak island in NOva Scotia (new Scotland)

Ever heard of Oak Tree Hill in Warwick Castle?

The word Celt is the Anglicised form of the Greek word Keltoi, which means "the people who are different.*" In Scripture, all nations, except the Twelve Tribes of Israel, are referred to as Gentiles (Foreigners), so the only people who are different are Israel. The word Celt is therefore another word for Israelite. The Celts are part of the Ten "lost" Tribes of Israel; as are the Tuatha de Danaan and Milesians. The Irish people are a mixture of Celts; Danaans; Milesians; Judah/Zarahites (of the "Red Hand" - Genesis 38:28-30§); (Dan-ish) Vikings and Norsemen and are all racially cousins......(http://jahtruth.net/celtisr.htm).....


Here's a bit more about the Phoenicians:

http://jahtruth.net/spaprop.htm

and "...At Los Lunas, near Albuquerque, New Mexico there is a rock with The Ten Commandments carved in the ancient script...."

Official historical records, both domestic and foreign, including at least four official Vatican documents*, confirm that Joseph of Arimathaea fled the Holy Land with Mary the mother of Jesus and others; came to England; settled and was eventually buried, along with Virgin Mary, in Glastonbury after the Crucifixion of Jesus the Nazarite (Num. 6), during the vicious persecution of the first followers of The New Way - Christ.

* Council of Pisa (A.D. 1417); Council of Constance, also in A.D. 1417; Council at Sienna 1424; Council at Basle in 1434.

sTRANGE UOPI SHOULD TALK ABOUT YHR WAY.

i AM THE uPUAT. ONE OF MANY E PLURIBUS UNUM.

nOT AT GLASTONBURY.

nOT A NAZARENE. eSSENE. FROM NAZAREA.

jOSPEH IS JAMES THE JUST YESHUA'S BROTHER.

nO BODY ON EARTH.

tHE LAST SHALL BE FIRST IN LINE, LINE IS DYING.

><

hi

The Mysterious Megaliths of New England

By Paul Tudor Angel


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Located in the heart of modern-day New England stand sites of such great antiquity; sites so enigmatic, so sophisticated and seemingly inexplicable, serious scientists and archaeologists have denied their study because of their monumental implications: It would force them to throw away
their pre-conceived notions about the achievements of ancient man into the historical garbage can.

Mystery Hill, the Upton Cave, Calendar I and Calendar II, Gungywamp and Druid’s Hill are just several of the names given some incredibly important historical sites of which many have never heard a whisper. But their existence—and their importance—is becoming harder and harder to hide as more are discovered and interested folk become exposed to their grandeur.

Sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s, early American colonists began discovering and utilizing underground "root cellars" made of large, but manageable pieces of dressed stone as storage houses for food stuffs. Colonists were also finding numerous stone buildings, usually of "one story, circular or rectangular in form, and up to 30 feet in length and up to 10 feet wide and eight feet high or more." Many included roof slabs or lintels of several tons. Many also had carefully crafted openings in their roofs which allowed a small amount of light to pass through to the interiors.The colonial newcomers were convinced that these so-called root cellars had been constructed by the former Amerind inhabitants of the area—irregardless of the fact that their Indian neighbors showed little hint of an ability to work in large stone or the desire to do so. Before long, the inheritors of these properties thought their own American ancestors had built these cellars—some which were eighty feet deep and lined the entire way with roughly hewn stone.

Simultaneously, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of oddly-inscribed flagstones were being found in the surrounding New England woods, carted off by farmers for use in stone walls or in larger stone structures in the settlements of the growing northeast. The angular cuts on these stones looked much like the marks a plow makes when it strikes a submerged piece of stone—at least they looked that way to most of the simple country farmers of the day. Others believed the markings appearing in rocks all across New England were "the action of the roots of trees." For decades nothing at all was thought of them. As any New Englander can tell you, the entire northeast is strewn with large chunks of striated stone material left from the last era of glacial recession.

But a local Puritan clergyman, Cotton Mather, was not convinced. In 1712 he discovered some strange incisions on an exposed seaside rockface in Dighton, Massachusetts—far from where any plow could have marked it. Winter ice and constant submergence at high tide under the Taunton River began obliterating some of the older markings and Mather was concerned the inscriptions would be lost for posterity.

He immediately wrote to the Royal Society in London, England, to inform them of his find and to convey his belief that the rock carvings were in fact an ancient scriptural alphabet—perhaps several differing ancient alphabets. Unexpectedly, his letter generated little interest. The scientists of the Royal Society were already busy exploring newly discovered rock inscriptions in neighboring Ireland. These European inscriptions were later identified as Irish Hinge Ogam, a form of Gaelic Keltic writing unknown for centuries and stubbornly undecipherable. It is referred to as "hinge" Ogam because a central dividing line or a facet edge was used to separate the subtly different individual characters. Little did anyone know at the time, the inscriptions found on both sides of the Atlantic were firmly connected.

Yet how could Celtic writing, a style reminiscent of that from the first millennium B.C., be in America? Who were the authors of the many rock engravings? How could the carvers possibly have gotten to America a thousand years before the birth of Christ? Why had they come and what evidence is there to support such a far-fetched notion? And what of the large stone structures found across the American northeast, eerily similar to types found in Europe? The answers were being spoken loudly and clearly if someone could only listen to what the rocks and buildings themselves had to say. But time seemed to be running out. Thousands of the inscribed rocks were being broken up for building material and the larger stone structures were being dismantled or vandalized, destroying the monumental works of these mysterious builders.

For answers, we first turn to an odd stone arrangement found in the hills of New England. In 1823 a stone complex in North Salem, New Hampshire known as Mystery Hill became the property of a settler named Jonathan Pattee. An ardent abolitionist, Pattee was said to have turned the stone caves and structures of Mystery Hill into a way station for the Underground Railroad, hiding slaves in the ancient edifices found there. Pattee, an insurance millionaire of the time, built a home directly upon several of the most important ancient buildings of the site. Experts estimate that during the next 50 years, contractors bought and removed over 40% of the stone structures found at Mystery Hill. To this day, many of the older churches, stone fences and stone houses in the area contain bits of stone from the site (although most of the stones were used as street curbing and for the construction of the nearby Lawrence Dam). Ancient inscriptions can still found be on the stones used to build these more modern-day edifices.

Even as the Mystery Hill site was being hauled away by quarrymen, other sites like it were not going unnoticed by more learned men. In 1893, Professor Hugh Morrisson, Chairman of the Architecture Department of Dartmouth College and Daniel Fiske, an interested author, wrote about the impossibility of the megalithic structures at Mystery Hill and the surrounding New England area being the work of Amerinds or American settlers. They each focused on an extraordinary building known as the Upton Chamber, one of the many, what they called, "unexplained stone works" of the area.

The Upton Chamber is one of the the largest and most perfectly built stone chambers in New England and is all underground. It is mammoth—a six foot high and fourteen foot long tunnel leading into the side of a hill with an inner chamber of small quarried stones. The chamber is topped with several large oval stones weighing several tons as a roof and measures 12 feet in diameter and 11 feet high. The Upton chamber has been dated by experts to 710 A.D.1

Even with the publicity generated by the Upton Chamber, it took until 1936 to find an owner for the Mystery Hill property who truly appreciated the importance of the site and the structures within. In that year William Goodwin purchased the property and erected a high fence around much of the site, ending, for a time, the rampant vandalism. He was the first owner to begin the restoration and study of Mystery Hill. Goodwin believed, erroneously, that the site was built by Culdee Monks from Ireland. He spent the rest of his life trying to find evidence to support his theory. Irish Monks did in fact arrive and settle in the new World, but over a thousand years after construction of the mysterious megalithic sites had begun. (See TBR, October 1995)

In 1950 Mystery Hill was leased by a far-sighted and open-minded man named Robert Stone. He later purchased the property in 1956 and began in earnest the restoration, study and preservation of the area around Mystery Hill. Stone’s informed (still-ongoing) restoration of the site has yielded some astonishing finds.

The Mystery Hill complex, the largest and most sophisticated of its kind in North America, covers over 30 acres and is composed of monolithic standing stones, stone walls and underground chambers, most of which are aligned to obvious astronomical points. Even now the site can be used as an accurate yearly calendar utilizing the stones set up over two thousand (perhaps as long as 5,000) years ago. The lack of household artifacts and grave goods leads us to believe that the site was a ceremonial center and neither living quarters nor a "city."

Over the years the more interesting features and structures on-site have been given un-scientific names that insinuate inferred function. The "Watch House" is the name given to a chamber structure located outside the main complex at Mystery Hill. The entryway of the structure is not easily accessible. After passing through a small entrance hole, a narrow stone passageway leads into a large interior space. An existing glacial boulder was used for one of the walls of the chamber and smaller field stones make up the other walls. The roof is a massive, quarried slab of granite of several tons. On the back wall of the chamber the stones contain a high percentage of white quartz, a stone found in its pure form in many of the neolithic structures over the world and treasured by ancient peoples for its reflective qualities. This particular chamber is aligned to the February first sunrise and lunar minor south. At sunrise on this date the sunlight enters the entrance of the chamber and slowly moves along one wall until it illuminates the quartz crystals at the back wall, making the semi-precious gems sparkle noticeably. February first was one of the eight most important divisions of the Keltic year as we shall discuss in more detail later.

The "Oracle Chamber" is one of the most interesting and important structures located at Mystery Hill—or anywhere for that matter. It is significantly larger than any other chamber found at the site and contains unique characteristics found nowhere else in any of the other megalithic sites in New England.



The Oracle Chamber has two entry passageways that form a "T," with one of the arms forming another unique chamber under a five foot thick wall/ceiling of stonework. One enters the Oracle Chamber through a vestibule, once capped by large roof slabs. A 42-foot stone-lined drain exits from the wall and still keeps the underground excavation free from flooding. The bedrock floor of the Oracle Chamber was channeled for drainage as well and the corbeled roof, made without mortar, does not leak, the interior staying remarkably dry. A "secret bed," a niche cut carefully into the wall that is 6’4" long by 22" wide by about 12" high, is just the right size for a man to lie within it and be completely hidden from view but still able to monitor activity within the chamber.

A 4" by 6" sha