Undocumented "Warwick Chamber" may be evidence of pre-columbian Celtic burial chambers.

Copyright 2000-2008 - William W. Warwick IV - All Rights Reserved

Celtic Mysteries of New England - Warwick Chambers, Quincy Massachusetts

As the dog days of summer heat up, I am reminded of my youthful childhood antics growing up in the housing projects of South Boston, Massachusetts. If you are unfamiliar with these places just go see one of the recent movies, "Good Will Hunting," "Boondock Saints," "The Departed," or "Southie." All take place in the tough inner city neighborhood that I grew up in and called "Southie," to outsiders and "Townies," by the rest of us. Like most of the movie stereotypes in these films - I came from a well educated, but extremely poverty stricken family.

My grandfather William Warwick II or "Junior," as is his friends called him, contracted polio when he was 22 years old. He attended Boston State Teachers college on Beacon Hill, and met my Grandmother, Bernadette there. Both of my grandparents were going to college so they could become teachers, but a quick swim in a local watering hole one hot summer day in 1958 changed all that. Ironically my grandfather had contracted the "Aids," of his generation, by swimming in a river creek and jumping off a bridge dedicated to the polio stricken former president - Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Within 48 hours of contracting the virus, he went from a tall, red headed, blue eyed hell raiser, to being encased in an iron lung and being paralyzed. He didn't die, but he was confined to a hospital bed and wheel chair for the rest of his life.

Later on in life when I got older I found out that we really did have some pretty wealthy and influential family connections and I was dismayed at my grandparents decision to not accept help from those willing to do so. But my grandfather was adamant, that no matter what, "you had to play the hand that god deals you." What that meant for him was that he would rather raise his kids in housing project than accept the fact that he was paralyzed and helpless to affect other people's lives.

So instead of "taking a hand out," as my stoic grandfather would have called it, he chose to live in one of the better of the three housing projects in Southie called "Old Harbor." It was officially named the "Mary Ellen McCormick Housing Development," but we just called it a project. We called it home, but others would have called it a Ghetto or a slum.

To say we were poor, would be an understatement, because we didn't just come from a poor family, we came from a "cripple," family. Like the AIDS virus which came decades after polio vaccines were found, back in the 1950's thousands of people were afflicted by this fast acting and deadly virus. Unlike AIDS, which might take decades to show symptoms, polio was a violent and commonly fatal disease, which could maim, disfigure and paralyze whole sections of the body in hours, not days or weeks.

The stigmatism of having a family member infected with polio was not unlike the stigmatism that many families must have felt when their loved ones contracted AIDS or a similar virus. No one really knew what caused people to catch the polio virus, adding even more hysteria to a frightful affliction.

Being bedridden for the remainder of his life, and before TV took up so much of our free time, my cousin and I would thrill to hear my grandfather retell stories. Having graduated from Boston Latin School himself, where public declamation is a requirement, he knew many of the great and classic stories by heart. He was a master storyteller with the wit and charm of an Irishman, and the encyclopedic knowledge of a British aristocrat.

His body might have been broken, but his mind was intact. My cousin and I would revel in the night time stories that he would tell us just before going to sleep - when my cousin and I slept over my grandparents house almost every other Saturday night.

He told us stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Pericles, Achilles, The Golden Fleece, The Argo, and so on. He had a book series called the Harvard Classics and by the time we were starting our schooling at Boston Latin School we were well versed in Greek, Roman and other philosophical and semi-religious myths and texts.

Every Saturday night was a different adventure and a different theme. Sometimes my cousin and I would make paper crowns and paper swords and pretend that we were Knights doing battle.

One of the few summertime activities that we could afford to do was to go swimming at the "Quarries," or turning on a fire hydrant. Despite being surrounded on all sides by Boston Harbor, no one dared go swimming in the ocean due to the now infamous pollution problems. The "L" street brownies might make their annual dip in the ocean in the middle of winter, but they didn't exactly go swimming in it…

Fortunately, there was one place that all the poor kids from Southie and Dorchester and some of the suburbs could go swimming and hang out. The vast areas of abandoned granite quarry´s across Quincy, Milton, and the Blue Hills of Massachusetts were a virtual wonderland of history and exploration to city kids used to reading about the glorious history of Boston and the American Revolution.

Within the Quarries were separate swimming holes with names like "Icebox," "Shingle´s," and "Dead Man´s Cliff." There was no end to the stories and tales that would be told around these mysterious and sometimes deadly places. Some of the quarries cliffs were over a hundred feet from the surface of the water and some of the depths of the water to the bottom were over 500 feet below the water level.

Stories ranged from the Loch Ness Monster in the quarries eating swimmers to more scary stories about "Whitey," killing "rats" and sticking them into the trunks of cars and rolling them off the cliff to sink down to the bottom. There were documented cases of people jumping into the water and never being seen alive again and sometimes the bodies weren´t recovered. These undeniable facts only added to the mystery of these enchanted places.

"Rats," were a term we used in Southie to describe anyone who gave Police "information," on anything that pertained to Southie. It was a literal Code of Silence that everyone obeyed, even some of the cops and it was enforced by our local gangster James "Whitey" Bulger Jr., whose brother was the past Massachusetts Senate President - Billy Bulger.

One brother took a path that led to great things and immense power and scandals, who had a reputation for being a ruthless and cunning adversary, while the other brother made his mark by robbing banks and even did a stint at the world famous Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco…(Southie Humor)

The rest of the world knows only of the bad Bulger brother but probably have never heard of the good one or at least the better one of the two - his brother Billy. The Bulger's and the Warwick family all grew up in the same housing project - Old Harbor. What most of the world knows of "Whitey," comes from the character portrayed in the movie, "The Departed."

Most of what I know comes from being there and because my father was nearly killed by him. I know Whitey because he tried to assassinate my father in 1993, shortly before all the bodies started to be dug up as Kevin "Two Weeks," fingered Stephen the Rifleman Flemmi and others for murdering various people for various "offenses." Kevin Weeks got his nickname because he turned government witness less than two weeks after being incarcerated.

I know the real "Whitey," who flooded the streets of Southie and other poor neighborhoods from Providence - Rhode Island to Maine with cheap and deadly drugs like heroin, cocaine, crack, and PCP.

During one fall in 1984, dozens of young people from Southie committed suicide after smoking PCP supplied by Whitey and his cohorts. One of my best friends growing up was Tony Dooley, who lived two doors down from me and was about 9 months older than me. Depressed over his older brother Tommy´s murder just a few years prior, he got messed up on PCP and decided to hang himself in his bedroom closet one Sunday evening. He had just turned 15 years old.

The two brothers who killed Tony´s older brother Tommy were protected by Whitey and his crew, and so no one, not even the police could arrest them, even though 30 people witnessed the beating. Whether by chance or design, there are two scenes where the camera is doing a helicopter shot over Tony´s house and mine, and so while I found the movie as thrilling as everyone else in the theatre did, it was hard to hold back the flood of memories that came with it.

About every five seconds I would turn to my dad and say, "Did you see that, that was Tony´s old house, do you think," and my father would nod yes or no. In one particular gross scene where the character playing Whitey pulls out a severed hand at the dinner table and takes the wedding ring off to give to the dead guys wife, my dad turns to me and says, "they got that wrong, it wasn´t a whole hand, it was just a finger…"

Our mutual glee of seeing part of our lives portrayed on the big screen was dulled by the very real memories and consequences of being stuck in Southie and ruled by a psychopathic serial killer who seemed to have a cop or FBI agent or informant in every corner of New England.

By the time Whitey and Jackie the Rifleman Flemmi came to assassinate my father in Detroit, Michigan on April 23, 1993, so many crimes had been committed by these two, that people wondered how on earth they hadn´t been caught yet. It was only later on that the world found out that one of the most decorated FBI agents in Boston, John Connolly, had been protecting and feeding information to Whitey in return for Whitey´s informing on the Italian Mafia based out of Prince Street in Boston´s North End of Boston.

Gratefully, the State Police of Massachusetts and other law enforcement were able to indict and bring down most of the bad guys, including Steven "The Rifleman," Flemmi for the 30 years of murder and mayhem they created. In the course of a few short years, shortly after they tried to kill my father, the man we used to call "Whitey," the friendly ghost, because you could never see him, but he seemed to be everywhere, went from being a legendary heroic figure to one of the most wanted men in America. It wasn´t just the FBI and cops that wanted Whitey, though; it was also the Italian mafia, the families of the people he murdered and the people he betrayed who wanted revenge on the now, "king of rats."

In a recent interview with John Martorano, who was a contract killer for the Italian mafia in the last few decades, he said, "There´s a bounty on that guy, now, lots of people want to get him." So when we were kids and we were told stories about dead bodies and missing people in the Quarries, we knew that they could very well be true.

There were few places in and around Boston where the cocky, young and diverse neighborhood kids from the inner city project rats like us, to the more affluent suburban kids, could go and get together without a fight taking place.

Up in the quarries, any fights or threats were answered with an ever increasing level of "dares" designed to test each man's ability to overcome his fear. Each time one of the challenges was met by both parties, they would up the ante, and go to higher cliffs and more dangerous jumping areas.

"Oh yeah?"

"I dare you to Jump Icebox!"

Fights were settled with feats of courage, braveness and sheer stupidity. By the end of a hot summer day, with your reputation and often your life at stake, there would often be an ambulance waiting at the Neponset Drive Highway Exit to take the next victim to the hospital.

The excitement of jumping off of 60ft cliffs surrounded by 200ft deep canyons and bragging about it later was the highlight of any kid´s summer, even if you just witnessed it. If someone you knew jumped so and so, it was cool and you had bragging rights.

But, even more fascinating adventures were afoot when my father and my uncles 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 and never even know it was there. Unlike every other prominent part of the Quarries, it had no graffiti on it whatsoever. My father and my uncles also made sure that no one followed them to the chamber, which was not hard since it was so remote from the main areas, where the kids hung out and swam.

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, which 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.

You must remain in this position until you reach the "chamber" at the end of the tunnel. It was a rite of passage within our family and those we deemed worthy, to see who could spend the most days in the chamber. My father apparently, or so he said, has the record with three days and three nights.

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 rite 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. He once told us that Jesus Christ had traveled to America after being crucified and built the chamber as a sanctuary and healing center 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.

He even told us that a nearby rock – very close to the entrance, was the original stone that King Arthur had pulled Excalibur from to become king. The huge granite bolder had a smooth flat hole in it, like a sword had been imbedded and then pulled out, yet the granite stone looked like it had been melted around the hole and a flat sword like object. But there were no burn marks on the stone and how on earth could you melt granite?

Even today I am at a loss to explain this curious feature. I am sure there is some geological explanation for this, but I have never seen anything like it before nor since. Since it was placed within a few feet of the entrance to the chamber, it is a strange coincident indeed.

"Yeah, right," my cousin used to say, and for the past 20 years I felt the same way, believing that all the stories my father and uncle told us were nothing more than 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.

According to Author Philip Imbrogno, Christopher Columbus was definitely not the first European to arrive in North America. His book documents can only document a handful of the hundreds of ancient megalithic stone structures scattered throughout all of New England, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

There are more structures in these areas than can be explained in a single book. Scattered throughout Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 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 textbook completely ignores this evidence and still teaches our children that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, even though his last name wasn't even Columbus, it was Colon, but like everything else about the discovery and history of our own country, we are left with 19th century dogma and 1950's spaghetti western novels to explain what is otherwise a really great mystery.

It had been assumed that Native Americans migrated and evolved from a land bridge crossing during the last ice age from Russia to Alaska. The most recent genetic studies dispute that theory and have found amongst certain Iroquois tribes of North America, the Gobi desert and the Middle East, a common genetic marker called Haplogroup X. The origin of this genetic marker has been narrowed down to coming from southwestern Europe, the southern tip of the Gobi desert and Spain, Bulgaria, Finland, and Israel.

Although genetic mapping is still in its infancy with not all Native American populations being tested yet the study suggests that perhaps 3% of North American tribes and certain Caucasians all shared this Haplogroup X mitochondrial match. Even more interesting is that this Haplogroup X marker was also found amongst the ancient Basque Peoples of France who have long asserted their "otherness," from their French nation, complete with a unique history and language.

Perhaps my father was right after all! The Mormon Church, he told me, was basically founded on the whole idea that Jesus and biblical tribes travelled to North and South America at various stages and these stories were passed down to us as the "bearded - white haired, blue-eyed," wizard or sorcerer priest-king. He was known by nearly all the South American cultures and described similarly, with names like Kulkukan, Quetzalcoatl, Pahana, Viracocha and other more obscure references.

Unfortunately trying to research and investigate the mysterious megalithic structures of is like searching for the Holy Grail. 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. Some of the sights have been studied, but no more than 20% of the existing structures have been formally and methodically stripped down and sifted for artifacts.

When the authors of Celtic Mysteries of New England 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."

One of the few scholars brave enough to tackle these mysteries and go on record about the structures was Dr. Sal Trento, a professor at Lesley College in Massachusetts 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 of them 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 country could be found, "many days journey," across the Atlantic Ocean which had 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 Phoenician Sailors and merchant captain´s kept its discovery a secret to protect their trade routes.

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 this can 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, Saint 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, animals and unidentified aircraft and water borne craft.

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 North Atlantic Ocean? Could the huge bird have been a UFO or a primitive dirigible or balloon?

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.

Recently when I questioned one my closest Native American brothers about this curious relic and the dream I had about it, after describing the cave like structure, the huge lintels and the orientation and dimensions of Warwick Chamber, he replied immediately and without hesitation that it was, "Atlantean and very old, perhaps over 10,000 years old."

I was astonished that he even said the world Atlantean, but being from the Azteca tradition, his knowledge of their origins was that the Azteca migrated from the east to settle in central America, from a land they called Atzlan.

Although this specific area has never been determined by western scholars, its name is strangely reminiscent of Atlantis.

So my good friend, who is a descendant of the Azteca, would know if such a thing were possible, let alone true. I was shocked, because if he was right, then I would have to re-evaluate all the stories that my family told me about these structures and certainly some history books may need to be re-written.

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.

If you are an accredited archeologist, surveyor or other professional who can help me to date, document and protect this structure, please contact me immediately. I am putting together a film crew for a site visit in late September 2008.