November 2013 | Salem House Press

The Most Haunted Ghosts Stories that Shaped America’s History

November 20, 2013February 14, 2020 adminLeave a comment

Oh, Salem was named Arkham by H.P. Lovecraft. An area encompassing Salem to Ipswich. Inside these bounds is Arkham Asylum. In real life it is even scarier than what Bob Kane or Lovecraft could imagine.

Danvers State Hospital is where they invented the lobotomy. Its building are connected to a series of tunnels that had trains move food and laundry from building to building. Kirkbride in fact connected all of his asylums he built by such tunnels. In these tunnels patients would wander and doodle perverse or surreal illustrations on the wall. The film Session 9 was filmed within its confine. Next to it is a potter’s field in which the patients only received a number to mark their identities. Now it is luxury condos…

Before they were converted for the punishment of the wealthy, my friend Jonathan Archer took one of its towers down that housed the ward for the sexually insane and attached it to a new addition to his mansion.

Jonathan Archer is the descendant of Samuel Archer III who built the first commercial property in which the Parker Brothers sold their first Ouija board out of, Thomas Perkins (Opium dealing Boston Brahmin who is the predecessor to the Skulls and Bones) once owned, and one of the oldest secret societies in America had owned. The Salem Marine Society who pilfered artifacts from around the world through the tunnels attached to this building to their museums still retain a clubhouse on top of the building that stands in that location now. They sold it to Frank Poor who founded Sylvania.

The Hawthorne Hotel is built on a property that once held a building that burned down 6 times taking many lives. In its parking lot once stood the Crowninshield-Bently House which was featured in H.P. Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep”. Its other parking lot is holy ground for a Jewish Temple once stood there.

Further down the tunnel, this building connects to the second oldest jail in the country. A truly haunted penitentiary that has been converted over to luxury condos to abuse the wealthy once more. This is also attached to a potter’s field haunted by Giles Corey. Just beyond that is the location of the haunted Lyceum in which James Russel Lowell read Dante’s Inferno in English for the first time. A building attached to the nefarious George Peabody’s home on the common.

Why Our World Would End If Political Corruption Was not Around

November 19, 2013 adminLeave a comment

Would That Be a Bad Thing?

As we know in Salem, politics and corruption made our seaport the richest in the nation. This advancement did not come legally. Otherwise there would be no need to dig 3 miles of tunnels. This was the foundation of our government. George Washington slept in the Joshua Ward House and might of walked to his birthday party through a tunnel to the Mechanic Hall. He might of even praised the Salem local businessmen for their ingenuity for avoiding paying duties or taxes to the British.

Now John Quincy Adams also walked through these tunnels for years before he was president. Did he do anything while sworn in to stop these gentlemen from paying their share of the infrastructure they relied on more than anyone else? Did they pay one cent for the roads that were built to move their cargo into the interior of the nation?

What about James Monroe when he toured Salem? His Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield put him up in his house and traveled through the tunnels to be entertained in the homes of Senator Nathaniel Silsbee and the founder’s of J.P. Morgan & Chase, George Peabody, home. No!

Then on the local level, all the mayors were part of the smuggling including Silsbee’s son. The head of Customs, Joseph Hiller, was part of it too along with the weigher and gauger and the captain in charge of the revenue cutter. Benjamin Crowninshield was also the Customs Agent for Marblehead.

On the state level Joseph Story and Stephen White were in the state congress along with many of the other smugglers in town. The members of the Salem Commons Improvement Fund were entrenched in all levels of government.

So I ask, if our world ended would it be a bad thing?

The universe hates vacuums. Once our world ends, another would just take its place. If corruption, greed, and secrecy was so integral to our world; would you want to remain living in it if a better world was offered to you? No, so lets stop. Let them thrive and strive as we leave to somewhere better. The good news is, you do not have to leave your town to do it. Its a state of mind. The old world tips their hand with every dollar they spend to convince you to act in such a way that profits them. If we were not so powerful, they would not spend a dime to influence how we thought. They would just force us to do it. In that statement lies the true strength in the people. So let the world fall.

Thomas Perkins and the Tunnels of Salem

November 12, 2013 adminLeave a comment

Thomas Perkins the founder of Mass. General Hospital, Perkins School for the Blind, the Perkins Library had a guilty conscious. He was a drug dealing slave trader. When Opium was outlawed in China he thought it was a good move. He felt the competition would shrink under fear of the law allowing him to almost create a monopoly on its sale. One of the other tricks Perkins did to keep his reputation untarnished, was to allow his cousins to run the company in name only. Some of these cousins belonged to the Forbes and Delanos. Yes like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Perkins met the Walkers (George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush) in Milford, Ma. Their influence at Yale can still be felt. The link between drugs, big business, and politics with Yale alumnus start from this pair. Even though we can not say Perkins was a bonesman, but we can say that their crypt is built on his property. Some famous politicians who went to Yale sit on both sides of our political system. Alumnus include the Clintons, the Bushs, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Kerry. Perkins was not a member of Skulls and Bones but he was a member of the secret society called the Salem Marine Society which still has their club house on the roof of the Hawthorne Hotel. As you guessed, Perkins was on of the many using the tunnels of Salem.